Category: National

In Fatal Ship Collision, Questions Surround What Happened
A day after a Mexican sailing vessel slammed its masts into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge, new details about the deadly crash began to emerge.
But as the hobbled, 300-foot long ship, the Cuauhtémoc, remained docked at Pier 36 in Manhattan on Sunday, a clear understanding of what went awry in the accident that killed two crew members remained elusive.
“To put it mildly, after being fully briefed on last night’s Brooklyn Bridge accident, one thing is very clear: There are many more questions than answers as to how the accident occurred and whether it could have been prevented,” Senator Chuck Schumer said during a news conference on Sunday.
As the National Transportation Safety Board and Mexican officials began a full investigation into the crash, those questions included what the “mechanical issues” were that authorities said caused the Cuauhtémoc to veer wildly off its course and into the bridge, and what role a tugboat seen in videos and photographs of the incident on Saturday night played in the accident.
The two victims of the crash were identified on Sunday by Mexican officials. América Yamileth Sánchez Hernández, 20, from the state of Veracruz, was named in a social media post by the state’s governor, Rocío Nahle, who sent condolences to her family.
“Veracruz is with you,” Ms. Nahle wrote.
There were 277 people on board when the ship drifted directly into the underside of the bridge on Saturday night, the authorities said. Two crew members were killed.Credit. (Dave Sanders/The New York Times)
The second victim was Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, 23, according to Raúl Rangel González, the mayor of San Mateo del Mar, a coastal town in Oaxaca state where Mr. Maldonado Marcos was from.
At least 22 others were injured in the crash, including 11 who were in critical condition and nine who were in stable condition, the Mexican Navy said in a statement.
The accident occurred after the ship left Pier 17 in Manhattan, just below the Brooklyn Bridge. It was supposed to head south and sail out of New York Harbor, with a stop on the Brooklyn waterfront to refuel before heading to Iceland.
Instead, at about 8:30 p.m., the Cuauhtémoc headed in the wrong direction, under the Brooklyn Bridge, where it was never intended to sail, according to a spokesman for the city’s emergency management office.
McAllister Towing, a maritime towing, docking and transport company based in New York, said on Sunday that one of its vessels “assisted the Cuauhtémoc as it departed Pier 17.”
After the ship made contact with the bridge, “our crew provided additional assistance and promptly notified the appropriate authorities,” the company said in a statement.
“While the cause of the incident is still under investigation, McAllister Towing is fully cooperating with the relevant authorities and will continue to support the review process as needed,” the statement continued.
But Mr. Schumer characterized the tugboat’s role differently, saying, “The vessel did not use a tugboat’s assistance. The vessel pictured widely in posted videos was responding after the fact, not assisting before. Usually, very often, there is a tugboat before to help them get out, especially on a sailing ship.”
In the aftermath of the crash on Sunday morning, the regal ship, with its green trimmed hull and gilded masts, which are about 160 feet tall, sat at Pier 36 in the East River, a firm breeze rocking its disabled masts.
Crew members assessing the sails on Sunday.CreditCredit. (Dave Sanders)
Just before 10 a.m., a group of wounded sailors, including a man wearing an arm sling and another with his head bandaged in white gauze, emerged from the back of a white transport van to board once again. Boxes of supplies, including water and juice, were shuttled to the ship, where many of the 277 people originally onboard reportedly remained.
Bystanders tried to catch glimpses of the ship from behind police barricades. And throughout the day, a steady stream of visitors, most of them Mexican immigrants living in New York, arrived to pay respects, with some leaving flowers at the entrance to the pier.
Roque Anaya, 42, had traveled with his family from Rhode Island to New York City on Friday to see the ship he had learned about in school as a child in Hidalgo, Mexico. He had boarded for a tour, snapped photos with his family and spoken with the mariners making the voyage.
“A lot of things are going through my mind right now: Will it stay here, will it go back to Mexico,” Mr. Anaya said. “They’ll have to fix it.”
The Anaya family had returned to the site of the crash on Sunday to check on the ship’s status.
“It’s a little heartbreaking,” said Jessica Anaya, his daughter, while holding back tears.
On Sunday evening, a small group held a vigil at the pier, laying bouquets on the ground, lighting votive candles and hanging a rosary and a small image of a Virgin Mary on a fence. The organizer of the vigil, Maria Mejia, said the local Mexican American community was “crushed” that the accident had transformed the ship’s visit from a celebration into a tragedy.
The ship is currently docked at a pier in lower Manhattan. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz )
“We were so full of love, full of pride,” Ms. Mejia said. “We couldn’t believe it.”
The commander of the Mexican Navy, Adm. Raymundo Pedro Morales Ángeles, said in a statement on Sunday that the uninjured cadets would continue their training and that the investigation into the crash would be carried out “with total transparency and responsibility.”
“We know that every sailing trip involves risks inherent to our seafaring vocation,” Admiral Morales Ángeles said.
A Mexican Navy official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give interviews said that the Cuauhtémoc would go through an inspection process and that the ship’s fate would not be determined until a technical report was available.
The Mexican Navy said in a statement that the Cuauhtémoc had set sail on April 6 from Acapulco on a mission with the goal of “exalting the seafaring spirit, strengthening naval education and carrying the Mexican people’s message of peace and good will to the seas and ports of the world.”
The vessel had planned to spend 254 days making calls in New York; Kingston, Jamaica; Havana; Reykjavik, Iceland; Aberdeen, Scotland; Avilés, Spain; Bridgetown, Barbados; and London.
The ship — a steel-hulled, three-masted barque — was built in Bilbao, Spain, in 1981 and then acquired by the Mexican government the following year to use as a training ship at its Heroic Naval Military School. Last year, it won the Boston Teapot Trophy, an annual international award given to the sail training vessel that covers the greatest distance within five days.
In his news conference on Sunday, Mr. Schumer wondered aloud whether cuts and hiring freezes initiated by the Trump administration to the Coast Guard had played any role in Saturday’s incident. He compared the Coast Guard’s waterway control operation to the air traffic control duties of the Federal Aviation Administration.
“We know that there has been meddling by the Trump administration into the Coast Guard staffing,” he said, “and now we need to know how this meddling might have impacted the events of last night from a command, communication and local coordination level.”
By late Sunday afternoon, dozens of people in civilian clothing had begun moving rucksacks, duffel bags and other luggage off the ship. Later, more than 100 crew members disembarked with their luggage and boarded waiting vans.
The spokesman for the emergency management office said the ship would remain at Pier 36 for now, but that a plan to move it to a nearby ship yard was being formulated. Crew members who were leaving the ship would be provided with city bus service to Kennedy Airport with a police escort, the spokesman said.
People disembark the Cuauhtemoc in New York. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz)
Rodolfo Hernández, Ms. Sánchez Hernández’s uncle, told reporters on Sunday that his niece had sent photos showing her in Central Park the day before the accident “She was so happy that she was going to go to Iceland,” he said. When news of her death came, he added, “we broke down; we didn’t have the strength to bear it.”
One of her friends, Naysin Tejeda, posted photos and a remembrance of the cadet on Facebook on Sunday morning.
“My precious girl, last night we longed for it to be a lie and it hurts in our hearts that you will no longer be in this world. You left doing what you loved the most,” the post read. “We are proud that you got where you wanted to go, that you got to know NY. ”
May 18, 2025
At Combs Trial, Will Sordid Testimony Help Prove a Criminal Conspiracy?
Sordid sex marathons featuring gallons of baby oil. Physical abuse so savage that the victim was left bleeding and vomiting. A threat to blow up a romantic rival’s car.
Casandra Ventura’s testimony against Sean Combs, the music mogul who was her longtime boyfriend, during the first week of his criminal trial in Manhattan federal court was a depiction of untrammeled decadence. It spared neither the defendant nor the witness herself.
Ms. Ventura’s account of a life defined by Mr. Combs’s desires came in the early stage of what is expected to be an eight-week trial. Her testimony was a first step toward convincing the jury that Mr. Combs was not merely an abusive lover, but the leader of a criminal enterprise that carried out the sex trafficking of three women and committed arson, kidnapping and other crimes dating to 2004.
Whether a jury sees Mr. Combs as merely a violent voyeur or a criminal kingpin depends on more than shock value.
“You can be guilty of sins and not crimes,” said Donna Rotunno, a defense lawyer who represented Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, at his first sex-abuse trial.
In a trial that will feature more witness testimony and reams of other evidence, potentially including videos of Mr. Combs’s sex parties, the government will now build on the foundation provided by its star witness.
Ms. Ventura, 38, known just as Cassie, met Mr. Combs in 2005, when she was 19. She signed a 10-album deal with his label, Bad Boy, and in 2006 released her debut single, “Me & U.”
Soon after she signed, Ms. Ventura began dating Mr. Combs, the start of a relationship that was on-and-off until 2018. Its turbulent nature became public in 2023, when Ms. Ventura accused Mr. Combs of rape and physical abuse in a federal lawsuit. In May 2024, CNN broadcast a 2016 video of Mr. Combs assaulting her at a hotel.
“The purpose of her testimony is to set the stage for the case, the emotional stage for the case, and the overall contours of the charged crimes,” said Rachel Maimin, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
Mr. Combs, 55, is charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He could face life in prison.
Ms. Ventura painted a damning portrait of the man who millions of people came to know as “Diddy,” “P. Diddy,” “Puff Daddy” and the other monikers he adopted while cycling through identities. She depicted Mr. Combs as coercing her to play out his fantasies, including by paying male escorts to have sex with her at parties he called “freak-offs” while he watched. He was, she said, prone to violent outbursts.
The freak-offs, Ms. Ventura testified, were drug-fueled marathons that could last from 36 hours to four days. She said that they left her so drained that she needed days to recover. She said she had agreed to participate out of fear that Mr. Combs would become violent.
“His eyes go black,” Ms. Ventura testified. “The version of him that I was in love with was no longer there.”
Mr. Combs’s lawyers have conceded that their client was a troubled man, one who committed domestic violence and was prone to jealous rages. But they said his transgressions did not meet the definition of the federal charges he faces, and that he was being penalized for his private sex life.
“He is not charged with being a jerk,” said Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Combs. “He is charged with running a racketeering enterprise.”
Teny Geragos, left, said in court that Mr. Combs’s personal behavior and proclivities are irrelevant to the legal case. (Jefferson Siegel/The New York Times)
Mr. Combs is one of the best-known figures in the history of hip-hop. As a rapper, producer and record executive, he was a constant presence in music and celebrity culture for decades. His elaborate “White Parties” were a hot ticket, with figures like Leonardo DiCaprio, Donald J. Trump and Al Sharpton attending.
Yet as he rose to an elite level of American celebrity, Mr. Combs was dogged by accusations of violence and abuse. In the 1990s, he faced allegations of beating a rival executive. He promoted an event at a Harlem gymnasium where nine young people were crushed to death, and he later helped settle a civil case. In 2001, he was acquitted of bribery and gun charges in connection with a shooting at a Manhattan nightclub.
Some observers said that Ms. Ventura’s testimony had provided nearly everything needed to convict Mr. Combs on sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy.
Moira Penza, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York, said Ms. Ventura’s testimony helped prove that the acts were coerced and commercial, as the federal sex trafficking statute requires.
Ms. Ventura said that male escorts were paid thousands of dollars to have sex with her, and that she was fearful of Mr. Combs releasing blackmail videos of freak-offs she participated in.
“Just on Cassie’s testimony, the prosecution is basically there on proving the crimes,” Ms. Penza said.
Racketeering conspiracy cases involve typically several defendants, because the law they are based on is usually used against criminal enterprises with a hierarchy.
Yet, like Mr. Combs, the singer R. Kelly was a single defendant when he was charged with leading a scheme that lured women and underage girls for sex. Mr. Kelly was convicted of racketeering in 2021.
Elizabeth Geddes, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York who prosecuted Mr. Kelly, said the racketeering law encompasses what Ms. Ventura has already described.
If more evidence emerges about Mr. Combs’s associates paying for escorts, she added, the case would be even stronger.
“All of that facilitation by others will be used by the prosecutors to say, ‘Sean Combs could not have carried out the acts by himself,’” Ms. Geddes said.
How the jury interprets Ms. Ventura’s returning to Mr. Combs even after she said he raped and violently assaulted her, could be critical, legal experts said.
Some legal observers said the defense made an effective argument by saying that Mr. Combs, while an imperfect man who committed domestic violence, did not run a criminal enterprise and was on trial for sexual acts that many might find depraved, but that were consensual.
In cross-examining Ms. Ventura on Thursday, Mr. Combs’s lawyers presented messages in which Ms. Ventura expressed affection for Mr. Combs and enthusiasm about the parties. One message, written in 2009 from Ms. Ventura to Mr. Combs, said “I’m always ready to freak off lolol.”
“For Cassie, she made a choice every single day for years, a choice to stay with him, a choice to fight for him,” Ms. Geragos said during the defense’s opening statements.
One thing to watch, Ms. Penza said, is whether prosecutors calls an expert witness to testify about victims of sexual violence who might address why Ms. Ventura would stay with Mr. Combs.
“This is where expert testimony is going to be important, because sex crime victims often behave in ways that seem unreasonable,” Ms. Penza said.
Ms. Rotunno, Mr. Weinstein’s onetime lawyer, said Ms. Ventura’s testimony may have shown that Mr. Combs was guilty of domestic violence or even sex by force. It did not, she said, prove the federal charges he was facing.
Lara Yeretsian, a criminal defense lawyer in the Los Angeles area, said Ms. Ventura’s testimony was part of a strategy to portray Mr. Combs in such a negative light that jurors would be compelled to convict him.
But, Ms. Yeretsian added, it could backfire if jurors believed the government was trying to hoodwink them with shocking accounts of depravity.
“The jury might say, ‘OK, great, he was a bad person,” she said. “He’s a girlfriend beater. But that doesn’t make him guilty of the charges.’”
May 17, 2025
Teenager Fatally Shot During ‘Ding Dong Ditch’ TikTok Prank
A Virginia man has been charged with second-degree murder after fatally shooting a teenager who was filming a prank for TikTok known as “ding dong ditch” with two friends around 3 a.m. on Saturday, according to court records and local authorities.
The Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office responded to a report of a resident firing shots during a burglary, and found two teenagers with gunshot wounds, the office said in a statement. One of the teenagers, Michael Bosworth Jr., 18, later died of his wounds. The second person was treated for minor injuries, and a third person in the group was unharmed, the sheriff’s office said. The two friends with Mr. Bosworth were both under 18.
The teenagers had been in the neighborhood to make a TikTok video, one of them told investigators in an affidavit filed in Spotsylvania Circuit Court. A “ding dong ditch” prank involves ringing doorbells or knocking on the front doors of houses before running away, and has become popular fodder for social media videos.
“The juvenile advised it’s something that people are doing to put on TikTok,” the affidavit said.
The group had knocked on a few doors in the area, one of the teenagers told a detective, adding that they were not familiar with the neighborhood. They were running away from a residence when they were shot, according to the affidavit. At least one video showing the teenagers doing the prank was still on one of the friends’ phones, the affidavit said.
The authorities arrested Tyler Chase Butler, 27, of Spotsylvania County, on Tuesday on charges of second-degree murder, malicious wounding and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, the sheriff’s office said. He was being held at Rappahannock Regional Jail on no bond, it said.
Mr. Bosworth was a senior at Massaponax High School in Fredericksburg, Va. The high school, which was set to hold its graduation for seniors on May 13, sent a message to the school community that counselors would be available to help grieving students.
A spokesman for the Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office, reached by phone, declined to comment further. A lawyer for Mr. Butler did not immediately respond to requests for comment. G. Ryan Mehaffey, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Spotsylvania County, declined to comment but said a preliminary hearing had been scheduled for June 18.
This style of prank has led to tragedy in the past. In 2020, a man in California crashed into a car of six teenagers, killing three of them, after they played a similar prank on him. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2023.
On Tuesday, a group of students gathered on the football field at Massaponax High School to remember their classmate, according to a video shared by an Instagram account run by students from the school. They shared memories about Mr. Bosworth and wrote messages on balloons before releasing them at sunset.
May 15, 2025
What you should know about Delaney Hall, the place where Newark’s mayor was arrested
Delaney Hall, an immigrant detention facility in Newark, has drawn controversy since President Donald Trump’s administration announced a billion-dollar deal with a private prison company in February to reopen the complex, part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to expand its detention capacity in the Northeast.
Immigrant rights activists oppose the transformation of the former Newark prison into an immigrant detention center, saying it violates state laws and represents an affront to the deeply immigrant community.
The tension over Delaney Hall erupted Friday when Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) was arrested and charged with trespassing after he tried to visit the facility. He tried to inspect the property alongside a Democratic congressional delegation. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin accused Democratic leaders during a CNN interview Saturday of assaulting federal law enforcement.
Here’s what to know about Delaney Hall and the controversy surrounding it.
What is Delaney Hall?
Delaney Hall is a 1,000-bed immigrant detention facility in Newark that is owned and operated by private prison company GEO Group.
It first opened in 2000 to house federal, state and county detainees, according to court documents. From 2011 though 2017, ICE housed up to 450 immigrants from across the country there.
In late February, GEO Group said that ICE had awarded it a 15-year, $1 billion contract to reopen the facility and provide support services for the establishment of a federal immigration processing center. Such services include, “security, maintenance, and food services, as well as access to recreational amenities, medical care, and legal counsel,” according to the news release.
It is one of two privately owned and operated immigrant detention facilities in New Jersey. GEO confirmed that the detention center began receiving detainees on May 1.
Why are advocates upset?
Delaney Hall represents everything community activists and immigrant rights advocates in New Jersey have been fighting against in recent years. As far back as 2018, state leaders have sought to legally wall off public jails and local law enforcement from any engagement with federal immigration enforcement. In 2021, advocates helped enact a law prohibiting New Jersey from renewing or signing detention contracts with ICE in the state.
A federal district judge struck down parts of the ban in 2023 after private prison operators, such as CoreCivic, which operates another immigration detention center in the state, sued. The state attorney general is appealing the ruling, invoking the 10th Amendment that stops the federal government from commandeering state resources for its purposes.
Community and elected leaders have accused ICE and GEO Group of abuse and neglect of detainees. They accused the company of maintaining terrible conditions that verged on the inhumane, according to critics opposing the facility’s reopening. Charlene Walker, of the multiracial interfaith group Faith in New Jersey, said there is no evidence the owners have adequately fixed the dilapidated building sitting in the center of an area known as “chemical corridor” for its environmental pollution.
“We don’t want to see this here,” she said, adding that members have been holding daily prayer vigils outside the prison. “This is against New Jersey values.”
In a statement to The Washington Post, GEO Group said it is proud of the long-standing role the company has played to support ICE’s “law enforcement mission.”
“Over the last four decades, our innovative support service solutions have helped the federal government implement the policies of seven different Presidential Administrations,” the statement said. “In all instances, our support services are monitored by ICE and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure strict compliance with ICE detention standards”
The facility’s proximity to airports has alarmed advocates who fear the state could become the “epicenter” of Trump’s mass deportation dragnet, said Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.
“Delaney Hall is the biggest detention center on the East Coast,” Sinha said. “And we won’t stand for it.”
What has the city done?
Newark sued the private prison company in late March in New Jersey Superior Court, alleging that the facility lacked a valid certificate of occupancy.
GEO Group has denied wrongdoing and dismissed the lawsuit as “politically motivated,” The Post previously reported. GEO Group argues that because it was contracted to provide support services, ICE has “exclusive control” over all access to secure portions of the facility.
The case was transferred to federal court in April, where a judge is weighing Newark’s request to require GEO Group to allow city officials to inspect the complex and block the opening of the facility “pending inspection and compliance with local, State, and administrative codes,” according to the complaint.
Baraka’s arrest and the melee
Baraka, who is running for New Jersey governor, has repeatedly sought to block the opening of Delaney Hall.
At a rally in March, Baraka told a crowd of about 300 immigrant rights activists that he would padlock the building if necessary to prevent it from opening, according to local reports.
On Friday, Baraka and three Democratic members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Robert Menendez Jr. and LaMonica McIver — attempted to inspect the facility during an unannounced visit.
Chaos erupted, and Baraka was arrested and charged with trespassing.
Interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, a longtime Trump ally, accused Baraka of ignoring “multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself.”
A city spokesperson disputed the Trump administration’s characterization of the events that led to Baraka’s arrest.
“He left when they asked him to leave,” the spokesperson said,speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing court case against Baraka. “It wasn’t like he went barging in and was trying to get himself arrested.”
Organizer Viri Martinez, of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, said activists and others present recorded the conflagration. After going inside the gate that surrounds Delaney Hall and failing to gain entrance to the building, Baraka left the facility grounds, she said.
Video obtained by The Post showed that while he was outside Delaney Hall’s gate, DHS officials attempted to arrest the mayor. In the scuffle that ensued, DHS alleged that Democratic leaders assaulted federal agents, citing video posted Saturday to the agency’s X account. Activists who were demonstrating outside and witnessed the fracas said it was federal agents who escalated the situation, throwing at least one protester to the ground.
“If they are doing this and assaulting congresspeople in front of cameras and in front of the community, imagine what DHS is doing to violate the rights of immigrants out of sight,” Martinez said.
Baraka’s first court appearance has been set for May 15, according to court documents.
May 11, 2025
The US Department of Justice will investigate a Muslim-led development that the Texas Republican Party and a senator have targeted
The Justice Departmentwill investigate whether a planned real estate development around one of North Texas’s largest mosques violates federal law, Sen. John Cornyn (R) said Friday after weeks of calling the project antisemitic and anti-Christian.
Attacks over the developmentoutside Dallas have been amplified by Cornyn, TexasAttorney General Ken Paxton (R), Gov. Greg Abbott and right-wing bloggers who baselessly claim it would create a Muslim-only community and impose Islamic law on residents.
Leaders for the East Plano Islamic Center, the mosque that is backing the project dubbed EPIC City, have repeatedly denied the accusations and called the attacks on their planned development Islamophobic. If built, EPIC City would span about 400 acres and create housing, day-care facilities, medical clinics and schools, according to marketing material.
“I am grateful to Attorney General Bondi and the Department of Justice for hearing my concerns and opening an investigation,” Cornyn said in a statement. “Religious discrimination and Sharia Law have no place in the Lone Star State. Any violations of federal law must be swiftly prosecuted, and I know under the Trump administration, they will be.”
Dan Cogdell, an attorney for EPIC City, said the development would cooperate with the federal investigation, noting that the Muslim community behind the project had nothing to hide.
“From day one, their intention was to comply completely and wholeheartedly with the law,” said Cogdell, who defended Paxton during the Republican firebrand’s 2023 impeachment trial. “And they’ve just been vilified, assailed and attacked.”
Cogdell added, “What is crazy to me is how far we haven’t come since 9/11. The words ‘mosque,’ ‘Islam,’ ‘Muslim’ in the year of our Lord 2025 are still such a triggering event.”
The Justice Departmentdid not respond to a request for comment.
EPIC City was announced about a year ago, according to its social media pages. Developers said they would use empty land in Josephine, Texas, northeast of Dallas, to build a “vibrant, multigenerational, and inclusive master planned community.”
As EPIC City was selling shares and building out its plans, none of which featured materials that required residents to be Muslim, an uproar by conservatives overshadowed the project. Cogdell said the first incidents came from right-wing accounts on X, which caught the attention of senior Republican leaders in Texas.
In late March, EPIC City wasslammed with a flurry of investigations. Abbott opened three inquirieslooking into “potential criminal activities,” discrimination in violation of the Texas Fair Housing Act and any potential “financial harm on Texas.” Paxton began an investigation intowhether EPIC City violated Texas consumer protection laws.
The scrutiny intensified in April when Abbott ordered that EPIC City cease all construction,saying that the development “did not submit the required permits to begin construction.” Cogdell saidthe project was in a “pre-planning stage” and was in the process of obtainingbuilding permits.
“We’re getting the applications for the permits,” Cogdellsaid. “Of course, in the meantime, we’ve got to comply with this document request or this motion to compel or this threat letter.”
Cornyn wrote to the Justice Department’sCivil Rights Division on April 11 requesting an additional investigation into the project that he said was an “exclusive religious settlement” governed by “Islamic principles.”
The letter drew condemnation from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whichsent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi opposing a federal investigation.
“Senator Cornyn’s false claims are not supported by any facts,” the letter read. “Across the United States, faith-based communities, including Christian senior centers and Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, exist without facing similar scrutiny. Muslim-led developments must be treated equally under the law.”
EPIC City also issued its own response to the upheaval, writing in an April 5 Facebook post that it was elected officials who were spreading “isolation and exclusivity.” In response, dozens of commenters wrote on the social media post that the development wasn’t welcome in America.
Cogdell said EPIC City will continue pursuing its plans.
“They’re spending more on lawyers than they ever thought they would need,” Cogdell saidof his clients at East Plano Islamic Center. “They are committed to making sure this project gets done, and we’ll do everything we can to comply with the law — for the 1,000th time.”
May 11, 2025
Catholic Church Sex-Abuse Case Details Exposed in Data Hack
In a breach that’s sending shockwaves through legal, religious, and victim advocacy circles, a massive cyberattack has exposed confidential records related to decades of Catholic Church sex-abuse cases, including sealed court documents, internal communications, and victim settlements. The breach, confirmed by multiple law enforcement agencies and diocesan officials, is being described as one of the largest data leaks involving a religious institution in U.S. history.
The cyberattack, first discovered on April 29, 2025, targeted the IT systems of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and several major dioceses, including those in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Forensic analysis by federal cybersecurity experts and private firms indicates that more than 1.7 terabytes of data were exfiltrated, including:
- Unpublished victim testimonies from abuse investigations between 1960 and 2022
- Internal emails between bishops and legal counsel discussing clergy misconduct cases
- Settlement agreements, many previously sealed, detailing payments to survivors and confidentiality clauses
- Personnel files of clergy members under investigation or accused of abuse
- Litigation strategy documents outlining efforts to delay or suppress public disclosure
The hackers, who have not been publicly identified, published a portion of the data on the dark web and provided links to journalists and advocacy groups. The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have launched a joint investigation.
“This is a deeply troubling breach that threatens the privacy of survivors and the integrity of ongoing investigations,” said FBI Cyber Division spokesperson Emily Ramirez. “We are treating this as a national security priority due to the scale and sensitivity of the data involved.”
The USCCB confirmed the breach in a public statement issued May 5, calling it a “malicious and criminal violation of data security and individual dignity.” The Conference said it is working with law enforcement and cybersecurity consultants to assess the full scope of the intrusion and to notify affected individuals.
Bishops from several dioceses have expressed concern and issued apologies to victims whose privacy may have been compromised. Cardinal Joseph Hanley of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles acknowledged that “some of the files released were never intended for public viewing—not to hide the truth, but to protect the victims and their families from further trauma.”
However, critics say the breach has revealed the extent to which Church officials worked behind the scenes to shield clergy and limit financial liability.
“What these files show is not just abuse, but the systematic cover-up of abuse,” said Mitchell Garvey, legal director of the Survivors Advocacy Legal Foundation. “Many of these cases were never going to see daylight. This hack pulled back the curtain.”
The leaked data is already reshaping legal battles in multiple jurisdictions. Attorneys for abuse survivors in Massachusetts and Illinois have filed motions to reopen cases based on newly surfaced documents that suggest Church officials misled courts or withheld evidence.
At the same time, ethical concerns have emerged around the public use of hacked information—particularly as it relates to victim identities and medical histories.
“Some of the files contain graphic, personal accounts of trauma,” said Anne Doyle, editor of BishopAccountability.org. “While the transparency is important, we must tread carefully to avoid retraumatizing survivors.”
Several media outlets have chosen not to publish raw documents or names of victims, even as advocacy groups press for full disclosure.
While no group has formally claimed responsibility, cybercrime experts believe the attack may have been ideologically motivated rather than financially driven. The sophistication of the breach—employing custom malware and multi-stage phishing campaigns—suggests a state-sponsored or activist-backed operation.
Sources familiar with the investigation point to a loosely organized digital collective with a history of targeting institutions accused of human rights violations. Similar tactics were seen in the 2023 hack of an international adoption agency implicated in child trafficking.
“We’re likely looking at a network of activist-hackers who believe institutions like the Church are not being held fully accountable by legal systems,” said Joshua Knight, a cybersecurity fellow at the Atlantic Council. “They’ve weaponized transparency.”
Though the breach centers on U.S. dioceses, officials in the Vatican and other national conferences are bracing for potential fallout. Several files refer to international transfers of clergy accused of abuse, raising fresh scrutiny of the Church’s long-criticized practice of reassigning rather than defrocking problem priests.
Pope Francis, speaking from the Vatican on May 9, said the Church “must always be on the side of truth and the suffering,” while also condemning the breach as a “violation of human dignity.”
The cyberattack has unleashed a new era of reckoning for the Catholic Church—not just about the sins of the past, but about the mechanisms that kept them hidden. Wall Street, civil society, and religious observers alike are grappling with the implications of digital exposure in a faith institution that has long relied on privacy, tradition, and internal process.
Whether the breach will lead to justice or simply more pain remains to be seen.
May 10, 2025
President Trump removed Democratic commissioners from the Consumer Product Safety Commission
President Donald Trump moved late Thursday to fire the three Democratic commissioners on the five-person Consumer Product Safety Commission, his administration’s latest test to the limits of presidential power over independent agencies.
The move comes as the Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on whether Trump has the authority to remove officials without cause at similar independent agencies, such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board.
Democratic Commissioners Mary Boyle, a longtime agency employee before her appointment, and Richard L. Trumka Jr., who gained national attention in 2023 for suggesting that the CPSC could ban gas stoves because of their indoor air pollution, said in statements that they received emails from the White House on Thursday notifying them of their firings. Alex Hoehn-Saric, who had served as the CPSC’s chairman until earlier this year, said that on Friday, CPSC acting chairman Peter Feldman, a Republican, said that the president was also seeking to remove him.
Trump’s actions leave the safety regulator with just two members on its five member board — Feldman and fellow Republican Douglas Dziak. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The CPSC regulates the safety of everyday consumer products, such as baby toys, strollers, bicycles and even all-terrain vehicles.
The firings took place shortly after members of the U.S. DOGE Service, which stands for Department of Government Efficiency, visited the agency Thursday. The Democratic commissioners objected to two DOGE employees being formally detailed to the agency, according to Trumka.
The three Democratic commissioners said in a statement that they planned to oppose their dismissals in court.
Hoehn-Saric said Trump’s action “is unlawful and is part of this Administration’s efforts to eliminate federal agencies, personnel, and policies that have made Americans safer.”
Trumka also argued that his firing was illegal.
“I have a set term on this independent, bipartisan Commission that does not expire until October of 2028, and I will continue protecting the American people from harm through that time,” he wrote. “The President would like to end this nation’s long history of independent agencies, so he’s chosen to ignore the law and pretend independence doesn’t exist. I’ll see him in court.”
Boyle said she did not intend to back down and planned to continue serving at the CPSC.
“Until my term as commissioner concludes,” Boyle said in a statement, “I will insist on following these time-tested principles, and I will use my voice to speak out on behalf of safety.”
May 9, 2025
The former Memphis police officers faced trial for the killing of Tyre Nichols and were found not guilty
A state jury found three former Memphis police officers not guilty of second-degree murder in the 2023 beating death of Tyre Nichols that helped galvanize a movement to reform police conduct.
The jurors deliberated for more than eight hours after listening to days of testimony that delved into the minutes after police pulled over Nichols for a traffic stop and when the 29-year-old FedEx worker was repeatedly hit and kicked by the officers.
The verdict is a blow for police reform advocates who hoped a guilty verdict would motivate support for their efforts. But supporters of the officers say that they were following police procedure and that the prosecution was driven by public outcry.
Prosecutors argued that the former officers had a duty to protect Nichols but became angry when he fled after being pulled over. Attorneys for the men warned jurors that a conviction would hurt law enforcement’s ability to aggressively pursue suspects in a violent city.
The officers hugged their attorneys and each other after the verdict was read. “Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus,” a family member of one of the former officers repeatedly shouted after leaving the courtroom.
“It is hard to represent a person when the media and the activists have spent so much time prejudging a man,” said Martin Zummach, who represented one of the officers, Justin Smith Jr. Smith is a good Christian, he said. “He is my friend and only just happens to be African American. It’s too bad that everything in Memphis is about race.”
All of the former officers involved in the beating are Black, as was Nichols.
On the evening of Jan. 7, 2023, Nichols was driving to his home in a nearly all-Black neighborhood in East Memphis when an officer noticed him speeding up to beat a red light. The officer didn’t find any warrants after running Nichols’s plates but decided to pull him over.
Nichols managed to run away after being pulled from his car and forced to the ground. Officers caught up to Nichols again less than 100 yards from his mother’s house. One pepper-sprayed Nichols and then beat him with his baton. Another kicked and punched him. This confrontation, which was captured by a police camera at the intersection, lasted a few minutes before officers picked up Nichols and laid him against a car. An additional 22 minutes passed before a stretcher was brought out for Nichols and he was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
He died in the hospital three days later.
“Today’s verdicts are a devastating miscarriage of justice,” Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, who have represented Nichols’s family, said in a statement. “Let this be a rally cry: we must confront the broken systems that empowered this injustice.”
The verdicts come at a pivotal moment for police reform efforts. Advocates hoped the case would show that rogue officers could be held accountable, and they worried that an acquittal could stall their movement. Public support for overhauls sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police has waned significantly since 2020, according to the Pew Research Center. President Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of empowering officers to aggressively “clean up” American cities, and his Justice Department has essentially halted federal efforts to hold local police departments accountable.
“The verdict is not surprising to me in the sense that it’s extremely rare for officers to be charged with a crime, let alone to be convicted for killing anybody in the United States,” said Samuel Sinyangwe, executive director of Mapping Police Violence, which tracks cases of police use of force. “There’s almost no accountability from the criminal legal system when it comes to officers shooting and killing people.”
The three former officers were already found guilty of several federal charges, including excessive force resulting in injury, but they were acquitted last year of the most serious ones, including civil rights violations resulting in death. They have not been sentenced on those charges yet but are likely to face prison time.
In the federal trial, Demetrius Haley was convicted of excessive force resulting in injury, deliberate indifference resulting in injury, conspiracy to witness tamper and witness tampering. Smith and Tadarrius Bean were found guilty of witness tampering.
Two other officers involved in the killing, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., pleaded guilty to state and federal charges.
During the week-long state trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys dissected videos of the beating gathered from a surveillance camera and the officers’ body cameras. The officers’ attorneys argued that the videos didn’t reflect the reality of what happened and the intense pressure the officers faced. If Nichols had cooperated when police attempted to handcuff him, the encounter would have ended differently, they told jurors.
Shelby County Deputy District Attorney Paul Hagerman, left, speaks to RowVaughn Wells, Tyre Nichols’s mother, before the verdict is read Wednesday. (George Walker IV/AP)
The officers were following police policy and convicting them would handcuff the city, defense attorneys warned.
But Mills, one of the officers who already pleaded guilty, painted a different picture, telling the state jury that as he beat Nichols with a baton that night, Martin and Smith were yelling, “Hit him.”
Prosecutors said the trial wasn’t an indictment against all law enforcement, but about the actions of the three men on trial.
The jury found the former officers not guilty of second-degree murder, aggravated assault and kidnapping.
Policing is a demanding and challenging profession, said John Keith Perry, Bean’s lawyer. Bean built a reputation for “professionalism and integrity” and reducing his career to a single moment “does a disservice to the facts and to his record,” he said.
“The path forward must include accountability, but it must also include fairness,” Perry said. “That includes ensuring that Black officers are not disproportionately vilified or discarded when complex situations arise.”
Steve Mulroy, Shelby County’s district attorney, said he didn’t understand the jury’s verdict.
“I personally think any fair-minded person who watches the video would come to the conclusion that everybody there had some responsibility for Tyre Nichols’s death,” Mulroy said.
But his office, Mulroy said, will continue to hold officers responsible for their misdeeds despite the verdict.
“If we’re going to have any silver lining from this dark cloud of the event itself, it has to be that we need to reaffirm our commitments to police reform and to doing what we need to do to make sure that tragedies like this don’t happen again,” he said at a news conference after the verdict.
Tyre Nichols’s photo is displayed during a service at Mount Olive Cathedral CME Church in Memphis on Jan. 29, 2023. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
May 9, 2025
Massive Lollipop Mishap: Boy’s Accidental Amazon Order Triggers Chaos
On Sunday morning, as Holly LaFavers was preparing to go to church, a delivery worker dropped off a 25-pound box of lollipops in front of her apartment building in Lexington, Ky.
And another. And then another. Soon, 22 boxes of 50,600 lollipops were stacked five boxes high in two walls of Dum-Dums. That was when Ms. LaFavers heard what no parent wants to hear: Her child had unwittingly placed a massive online order.
“Mom, my suckers are here!” said her son, Liam, who had gone outside to ride his scooter.
“I panicked,” Ms. LaFavers, 46, said. “I was hysterical.”
Ms. LaFavers said in an interview that Liam, 8, became familiar with Amazon and other shopping sites during the pandemic, when she regularly ordered supplies. Since then, she has occasionally let him browse the site if he keeps the items in the cart.
But over the weekend, Liam had a lollipop lapse. He told his mother he wanted to organize a carnival for his friends, and mistakenly, he said, he placed an order for almost 70,000 pieces of the candy instead of reserving it.
And so the double ramparts of suckers rose on their doorstep, where the excesses of e-commerce crossed paths with their tight-knit community.
Ms. LaFavers said that she discovered something was amiss after a shopping trip early on Sunday, when she checked her bank balance online. “It was in the red,” she said.
The offending item was a $4,200 charge from Amazon for 30 boxes of Dum-Dums. Frantic and upset, she called Amazon, which advised her to reject the shipments. Ms. LaFavers was able to turn away eight of the boxes, totaling 18,400 lollipops, but the 22 boxes containing 50,600 lollipops had already landed.
“My Alexa didn’t even ding to tell me they had been delivered,” she said.
Ms. LaFavers said that she was then told by Amazon that it could not take the candy back for a refund because it was food. So she tried to send back to the virtual shopping world what it had unloaded on her in the first place.
“Hi Everyone! Liam ordered 30 cases of Dum-Dums and Amazon will not let me return them. Sale: $130 box. Still sealed,” she wrote on Facebook on May 4.
The post attracted the attention of local news stations and national media outlets, highlighting the financial treachery of online activity.
Parents commiserated on her Facebook page and shared solutions, like detaching payment methods from online accounts, setting up alerts for large purchases or simply keeping children off phones. One child spent $980 on virtual Roblox game currency. A 3-year-old playing on a phone during an airport delay spent $300 on movies. A woman’s granddaughter spent $1,000 on Google Play.
“As a mom that has experienced unwanted orders, I feel your pain,” a woman wrote.
Companies offer steps on how to prevent and dispute unauthorized purchases in online shopping and games.
Roblox advises parents to use password-protected purchasing, and to call its customer service center before initiating a dispute with a payment provider, which would stall the refund process. Epic, the makers of Fortnite, has safeguards that include an “intent-to-buy” step, and purchase cancellations.
On Apple devices and accounts, family-verification settings include controls called Ask to Buy for a child’s device, or “don’t allow” for in-app purchases.
Google Play’s purchase-verification process also has additional safeguards on family accounts that reverify the user is authorized to make a purchase on apps meant for children ages 12 and under.
Amazon eventually told Ms. LaFavers that it would give her a refund. In an email, the company said that it “worked directly” with her “to turn a sticky situation into something sweet.”
On Wednesday, after the refund came through, Ms. LaFavers decided to give away the Dum-Dums instead of selling them. One neighbor offered to distribute some on Halloween. A local chiropractor asked for two boxes, and a bank in Somerset, Ky., said they would take five boxes.
“I am giving them to the individuals that offered to buy them from me, or I am donating them to a charity or a school or church,” Ms. LaFavers said. “People that I have relationships with were willing to buy those to help me out.”
Spangler Candy Co., the company that has made Dum-Dums since 1924, invited Ms. LaFavers and Liam to visit its factory in Ohio. “We also love that so many people jumped in to offer to purchase the extra cases,” said Kirk Vashaw, its chief executive, in an email.
Liam’s online browsing privileges are on pause. But Ms. LaFavers said he, too, had tried to find a way to recoup her money, telling his mother: “It’s OK, mom, we can sell my Pokémon cards.”
May 8, 2025
Large Law Firms Hesitant to Take On Free Immigration Cases
Hours after Donald J. Trump was sworn in for a second term, he issued an executive order laying the groundwork for mass deportations of immigrants and denying them legal assistance.
Public interest groups focused on immigrant rights teamed up to fight the order and called in Gibson Dunn, a major law firm with the resources to help take on the White House. In January, Gibson Dunn, working with the groups, sued the Trump administration seeking to restore legal help for immigrants facing deportation.
Two months later, Gibson Dunn changed its tune.
Even though lawyers from the elite law firm had already been working with the public interest groups on drafting another lawsuit, Gibson Dunn said it could not put its name on this latest case, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because they feared alienating Gibson Dunn.
Lawyers from Gibson Dunn explained that it was afraid of incurring Mr. Trump’s wrath if the firm was associated publicly with a lawsuit that sought to restore legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children, the five people said. Gibson Dunn is not the only large law firm shying away from immigration litigation.
Since March, Mr. Trump has targeted numerous large law firms with executive orders that would cripple their businesses by barring them from representing clients before the federal government. Many of the big firms have opted to reach deals with the White House to avoid Mr. Trump’s issuing an executive order against them. Other firms have challenged the orders in court.
Gibson Dunn has not received such an executive order or reached a deal with Mr. Trump.
But Gibson Dunn’s wariness about the recent immigration lawsuit shows that even firms that have not been targeted directly by Mr. Trump are declining to participate in legal work that challenges his agenda.
Michael Lukens, the executive director for the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, one of the public interest groups that worked with Gibson Dunn on the immigration cases, acknowledged that he was “seeing the industry shy away from engaging in immigration pro bono.” But, he said, “Gibson Dunn had stepped up” by representing public interest groups, providing technical support and continuing to defend individual clients.
He credited the firm, which the Amica Center has worked with for two decades, for its pro bono support through the years.
Groups like the Amica Center have long relied on big law firms to provide legions of young lawyers and paralegals who can help prepare cases free of charge. Traditionally, pro bono work has been intended to help the poor and defenseless.
It is a drastic change from Mr. Trump’s first term, when many big law firms frequently challenged the administration. Skadden Arps has a foundation that funds a fellowship program that enables young lawyers to work for public interest groups. In June 2017, a posting on the Skadden Foundation’s website celebrated the work of a fellow who had helped challenge Mr. Trump’s order barring people from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. That same year, Skadden rolled out an online platform to quickly pair low-income immigrants with legal services.
Some public interest groups expected that Skadden would be a reliable partner on immigration cases during the second administration. But since Skadden reached a deal with the White House in March to avert an executive order, the law firm has declined to join a public interest group on a lawsuit challenging one of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Davis Polk was another big law firm that helped people ensnared in Mr. Trump’s immigration policies during his first term. In January 2017, the firm deployed some of its lawyers to Kennedy International Airport with people who were searching for family members had been detained as part of the Muslim ban.
But shortly after Mr. Trump won re-election, a prominent nonprofit reached out to Davis Polk to ask if the law firm would do research about the legality of one of Mr. Trump’s immigration proposals. The firm simply said no, according to a lawyer with the organization who asked to speak without identifying her group.
The lawyer interpreted Davis Polk’s response as “anticipatory obedience,” in part because the law firm had done similar work in the past. The firm has not been targeted with an executive order or settled with the White House.
Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a nonprofit that litigates cases for immigrants and pushes for their rights, called the large firms’ recent pivots “part of the chilling effect” of Mr. Trump’s executive orders.
“It has gotten much harder to get law firms to take a case on pro bono,” Ms. Shebaya said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump has made it clear he does not want elite law firms doing work that undermines his agenda. In his executive orders, he has criticized firms for representing clients he doesn’t like and conducting “harmful activity through their powerful pro bono practices.”
Instead, he has been requiring firms that settled with him to work pro bono on causes favorable to his administration, such as veterans affairs and fighting antisemitism.
Last week, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that said law firms could be enlisted to defend police officers accused of brutality.
Public interest groups, aware of the pressure facing major law firms, are wary about criticizing the firms that are turning down immigration cases. Officials with some of these groups said they hoped that law firms would become partners with them again when Mr. Trump’s pressure started to wane.
Supreme Court Attorney Deepak Gupta Wants More Competition
“The fact that we’re just 100 days in, and the Trump administration has already been incredibly successful at taking some of its legal opposition off the playing field is truly terrifying,” said Deepak Gupta, a lawyer whose firm has sued the Trump administration on behalf of a fired member of the National Labor Relations Board and a union representing employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
For now, public interest groups are seeking new partners. One of those is David Zimmer, a lawyer in Boston, who recently started his own firm with two other longtime lawyers. Mr. Zimmer, who left the large law firm Goodwin Procter, where he was a partner focused on appeals, said he had already been approached by public interest organizations looking for pro bono help on immigration cases.
David Zimmer (Harvard Law School)
“We opened our doors in March, and have been approached to handle cases that big firms no longer wanted to be associated with,” Mr. Zimmer said.
Democracy Forward and Public Citizen, two large public interest legal groups, also said they were trying to add staff to the fill in the gaps left by large law firms declining to work on cases. Democracy Forward recently hired a number of lawyers who previously worked for the Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Democracy Forward is one of the lead attorneys on 59 cases against the administration. Those cases are among the roughly 350 lawsuits that have been filed challenging Trump administration policies, according to a New York Times tally.
“We are seeing exponential increases in demand for our work,” said Skye Perryman, the chief executive of Democracy Forward. (Shuran Huang /The New York Times)
“Large law firms that were frequent defenders of the rule of law have been unwilling and unable to take up that mantle,” said Skye Perryman, the chief executive of Democracy Forward. “We are seeing exponential increases in demand for our work, and we are going to continue to encourage the private bar.”
May 6, 2025