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Tennessee politicians strip historically Black university of its board

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Trustees of Tennessee’s only publicly funded historically Black university were removed Thursday under legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee. Black lawmakers and community leaders said state leaders, a majority of whom are white, are unfairly targeting Tennessee State University.

The legislation cleared the state GOP-controlled House on Thursday in a 66-25 vote, and Lee signed off a few hours later without commenting on the controversial decision to vacate the board. He instead praised TSU as a “remarkable institution” as he unveiled that he already had selected 10 new replacements.

“I’m pleased to appoint these highly qualified individuals who will work alongside administrators and students to further secure TSU’s place as a leading institution,” Lee said.

The new appointees, largely from the business community, are now subject to confirmation by the Legislature. Their selection will be critical as TSU is already seeking a new leader because President Glenda Glover plans to retire at the end of this school year.

“All we’re talking about is the board … It’s vacating some personalities and bringing others in,” House Majority Leader William Lamberth told reporters. “The goal is to make TSU successful.”

Republican leaders have long grumbled about TSU’s leadership as multiple state audits have found student housing shortages, unsustainable scholarship increases and lingering financial discrepancies. Audits released Thursday morning ahead of the House vote found 56 “significant procedural deficiencies” ranging from the school failing to follow its own procedures, to not properly documenting transactions or identifying improvements to its budgeting procedures.

However, one review stated that it “did not identify evidence indicative of fraud or malfeasance by executive leadership.”

Democrats and others say Republicans are focusing on the wrong issues, pointing out that TSU’s problems are primarily due to its being underfunded by an estimated $2.1 billion over the last three decades. They also allege that the majority-white Legislature distrusts a Black-controlled university’s ability to manage itself.

Rep. Bo Mitchell, a Democrat whose district includes TSU, also questioned removing the board of a historically Black college that the state has failed to adequately fund. “I’ve seen many audits of many universities that look horrendous,” Mitchell said. “Have we ever, ever vacated an entire board of a university before? Have we ever done that?”

Multiple Democrats filed last minute motions and amendments that would have delayed the vote or cut the number of board seats to be vacated to five rather than 10. Ultimately, the GOP supermajority voted down each of the proposals.

“Instead of us rectifying the problems that we created through racist policies by underfunding Tennessee State University, we’re now advocating to vacate their board,” said Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat from Memphis, raising his voice as he criticized his Republican colleagues.

Last year, the Tennessee Legislature provided TSU with a lump sum of $250 million for infrastructure projects to help fix a portion of the shortfall.

Republican Rep. Ryan Williams said that money was “completely blown through” after officials gave too many student scholarships, so many that students were placed in hotels because there wasn’t enough housing. Other universities, including University of Tennessee in Knoxville, have also been required to house some students temporarily in hotels without the same criticism from state lawmakers.

“The challenges are dire,” Williams said. “But we have to have assurances that future investment, or that remedy to this problem, is going to be well taken care of.”

TSU supporters and students watched from the galleries Thursday and cheered at times when Democrats criticized the bill. Some booed Republicans once the legislation cleared, while others lamented at the Legislature’s punishing response to the university’s challenges.

“We have people who realize it takes a bridge sometimes to get where you’re trying to go,” Barry Barlow, a pastor and TSU grad said during a news conference after the vote. “But we have people in the Tennessee General Assembly who will take your bridge of promise and stick dynamite to it.”

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.


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Mississippi Senate passes trimmed Medicaid expansion and sends bill back to the House

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi lawmakers will try to negotiate on expanding Medicaid in one of the poorest states in the U.S. after the Senate voted Thursday for a vastly different plan than one proposed by the House.

The upper chamber’s proposal would insure fewer people and bring less federal money to the state than the version approved by the House last month. But the Senate’s approach includes a tougher work requirement and measures to prevent a wider expansion of Medicaid benefits in the future.

Senators debated the bill for nearly two hours before approving it in a 36-16 vote. The move to increase eligibility for the government-funded health insurance program that covers low-income people has set off a struggle between Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and members of his own party. In a social media post Wednesday, Reeves called the bill “Obamacare Medicaid” and said it would amount to “welfare expansion to those able-bodied adults that could work but choose not to.”

Republican Sen. Kevin Blackwell, who chairs the Senate Medicaid Committee, has dubbed the Senate proposal Medicaid expansion “lite,” and said it is much narrower that what is allowed under the Affordable Care Act, a 2010 federal health overhaul signed by then-President Barack Obama.

“Many of the comments I’ve seen recently on social media are misleading, inaccurate and designed to be inflammatory,” Blackwell said. “This bill is not Obamacare expansion. This bill is a very responsible, conservative bill geared toward helping the working poor.”

The Senate’s amended bill would extend eligibility only to those making up to 100% of the federal poverty level, just over $15,000 for one person. That is down from the 138% figure, just under $21,000 for one person, approved by the House.

House Medicaid Committee Chairwoman Missy McGee said her proposal could extend benefits to as many as 200,000 people. Blackwell said the new version of the bill approved by his committee could make 80,000 people eligible for expanded coverage, but he projects only about 40,000 would enroll.

Mississippi ranks at the bottom of virtually every health care indicator and at the top of every disparity. Hospitals are struggling to remain open. The state also has one of the nation’s lowest labor force participation rates. Expansion proponents have said the policy could help improve these conditions.

Senate Democrats introduced amendments that would have expanded Medicaid to more people, but Republicans voted them down on the floor. Even still, Senate Democrats all voted for the bill, with Minority Leader Derrick Simmons arguing that Mississippi is experiencing a “health care crisis” and that the bill is better than the status quo.

Opponents of Medicaid expansion say the program would foster government dependency, increase wait times for health services and push people off private insurance.

Republican lawmakers have said expansion without a work requirement is a nonstarter. The Senate version would require people to work at least 30 hours per week to become eligible for expanded benefits, up from the 20-hour work requirement approved by the House.

The Senate makes expansion depend on President Joe Biden’s administration approving its work requirement. But the administration has consistently revoked work requirement waivers, arguing people should not face roadblocks to getting health care.

Only Georgia has managed to tie a work requirement to a partial expansion of Medicaid benefits. But the state only requires people to document 80 monthly hours of work, 40 hours less than what Mississippi senators have proposed. Georgia’s program has seen abysmal enrollment.

The House proposal would have allowed expansion to continue without a work requirement, but the Senate version would disallow Medicaid expansion without one. Blackwell said he is counting on Biden losing in November to a Republican whose administration would welcome a work requirement.

Under the reduced eligibility level approved by the Senate, Mississippi would also lose an additional financial bonus for expanding Medicaid that would be available under the House’s version.

The bill now heads back the House, and Reeves is likely to veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. Lawmakers could override his veto with a two-thirds vote from the House and Senate.

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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.


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Tennessee governor signs bill to undo Memphis traffic stop reforms after Tyre Nichols death

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday signed off on the repeal of police traffic stop reforms made in Memphis after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by officers in January 2023, despite pleas from Nichols’ parents to GOP lawmakers and the governor to give them a chance to find compromise.

The Republican governor’s signature means the law immediately renders some of Memphis’ ordinances null and void, including one that outlawed so-called pretextual traffic stops, such as for a broken taillight and other minor violations. Lee echoed arguments from Republican lawmakers who argued Nichols’ death needed to result in accountability for officers who abuse power, not new limits on how authorities conduct traffic stops.

“I think what’s most important for us to remember is that we can give law enforcement tools, but we’ve got to hold law enforcement to a standard of using those tools appropriately, where there’s an appropriate interaction with the public,” Lee told reporters Friday, earlier this month of his decision to sign the bill. “That’s not what we understand has happened all the time, and certainly their family would attest to that.”

To date, Lee has never vetoed a piece of legislation since taking office nearly seven years ago, only occasionally letting bills become law without signing them to send a message of his concern or disapproval. He rarely bucks his political party’s wishes, and he is notably attempting to push through a contentious universal school voucher bill where he needs Republican support in order for it to pass.

Nichols’ death last January sparked outrage and calls for reforms nationally and locally. Videos showed an almost 3-minute barrage of fists, feet and baton strikes to Nichols’ face, head, front and back, as the 29-year-old Black man yelled for his mother about a block from home.

Nichols’ parents, mother RowVaughn Wells and stepfather Rodney Wells, were among the advocates who drummed up support for the Memphis city council last year to pass ordinance changes.

Many Republican elected officials in Tennessee also joined in the public outcry over Nichols’ death at the time. The month afterward, Lee even mentioned the Nichols family in his annual State of the State speech, saying “their courage, along with the compassion shown by the people of Memphis, is a picture of hope.”

Yet the majority-white Legislature has repeatedly rebuffed many Black leaders’ call for police reforms and oversight, and instead have sided with advocates who don’t want new limits on police authority.

In recent years, lawmakers have reacted similarly when they disagree with how Democrat-voting Memphis and Nashville run their cities. They have preempted local power to undo progressive policies, took more authority over local boards, and kept a hardline approach to crime in Memphis.

Nichols’ parents, in this case, said their attempts to get the bill sponsors to commit to finding some middle ground failed, leaving them and supporters in the Memphis community feeling marginalized and discouraged. Nichols’ parents said they felt misled by Rep. John Gillespie, leading them to skip one trip to Nashville when they thought he would delay the bill. Instead, House Republicans passed it without the Nichols’ parents there. Gillespie argued it was a miscommunication.

When they returned another day for the Senate vote, Sen. Brent Taylor denied their pleas to pause the bill and try to find middle ground. RowVaughn Wells was in tears after the exchange, and the couple left before the Senate passed the bill.

They also penned a letter to Lee before he ultimately signed the bill.

“After the death of our son, you generously offered your support in our pursuit of justice,” they wrote, imploring Lee to veto the bill. “This is that moment, Governor. We need your support now, more than ever.”

Five officers, who were also Black, were charged with federal civil rights violations in Nichols’ death, and second-degree murder and other criminal counts in state court. One has pleaded guilty in federal court. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating how Memphis Police Department officers use force and conduct arrests and whether the department in the majority-Black city engages in racially discriminatory policing.

Democratic lawmakers said the bill is a slap in the face to Nichols’ grieving parents and the government in majority-Black Memphis. Some also were flummoxed that state Republicans were trying to undo changes made in reaction to Nichols’ death even while federal authorities are still broadly investigating policing and race in Memphis.

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Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi and Adrian Sainz contributed to this report.


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4th person charged in ambush that helped Idaho prison inmate escape from Boise hospital

A fourth person has been charged in connection with an ambush that allowed a white supremacist Idaho prison gang member to escape as he was being discharged from a Boise hospital.

Tia J. Garcia, 27, of Twin Falls, owned the car that inmate Skylar Meade and his accomplice, Nicholas Umphenour, fled in after Umphenour shot and wounded two corrections officers who were preparing to bring Meade back to prison early on March 20, Shawn Kelley, of the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office, told a judge Thursday.

She falsely reported the car stolen less than an hour after the ambush, Kelley said, and text messages from the day before showed that Umphenour had instructed her to do so.

Police tracked Meade and Umphenour down about 36 hours after their escape, but the pair is also suspected in the killings of two men while they were on the run. They have not been charged in the killings.

Here’s what to know about the case.

WHO IS THE LATEST PERSON ARRESTED?

Garcia is an acquaintance of Umphenour and Meade, Kelley said, and she picked up Umphenour from the airport when he arrived in Boise on March 17. It’s not clear where Umphenour had travelled from, but prosecutors have said he recently spent time in Florida and intended to return there. Umphenour and Garcia were seen in surveillance video from several places around Boise that day.

Garcia lives with her sister and is unemployed, according to a public defender who represented her during an initial court appearance Thursday. Her criminal record includes six felonies and four misdemeanors, including battery and drug charges as well as fleeing and eluding.

She is being held on $1 million bail on a charge of aiding and abetting escape. She did not enter a plea. The Ada County public defender’s office, which represents Meade, Umphenour and Garcia, declined to comment Thursday.

HOW WAS THE ESCAPE PLANNED?

Authorities are still looking into exactly how the ambush was planned and executed. Idaho Department of Correction officials have said that Meade and Umphenour were both members of the Aryan Knights white supremacist prison gang, which federal prosecutors have described as a “scourge” within the state’s prison system.

Meade, 31, was serving 20 years in prison for shooting at a sheriff’s sergeant during a chase. Umphenour was released from the same prison — the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna, south of Boise — in January after serving time for theft and gun convictions.

The two had at times been housed together and had mutual friends in and out of prison, officials said. Meade had recently been held in solitary confinement because officials deemed him a security risk.

The attack on the corrections officers came just after 2 a.m. on March 20 in the ambulance bay of Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. Meade had been brought to the hospital earlier in the night because he injured himself, officials said. Kelley told the court on Thursday that Meade refused all treatment once he got to the hospital.

Two corrections officers were wounded by Umphenour and a third by responding police who mistook the officer for the gunman. All are expected to recover.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE AMBUSH?

The Idaho State Police say that while on the run, Umphenour and Meade apparently killed two men in northern Idaho — Gerald Don Henderson, the 72-year-old resident of a remote cabin near Orofino who had taken Umphenour in about a decade ago, when Umphenour was in his late teens and having trouble at home; and James L. Mauney, 83, of Juliaetta, who was reported missing when he failed to return from walking his dogs.

Investigators found shackles at Henderson’s cabin. Mauney’s minivan was located about seven hours south, in Filer. As agents secured that area, Meade and Umphenour fled in separate cars but were apprehended, police said.

A woman identified as Tonia Huber was driving the truck Meade was in, according to investigators. She has been charged with harboring a fugitive, eluding police and drug possession. Huber’s attorney, Daniel Brown, said Thursday his client “is presumed to be innocent and we stand by that presumption.”

WHAT’S NEXT?

Meade, Umphenour and Garcia face preliminary hearings before Ada County Magistrate Judge Abraham Wingrove on April 8. Huber, who is charged in Twin Falls County, faces a preliminary hearing April 5.

Correction Director Josh Tewalt has promised to review its policies and practices in light of the escape. The attack came amid a wave of gun violence at hospitals and medical centers, which have struggled to adapt to the rise of threats.

“We’re channeling every resource we have to trying to understand exactly how they went about planning it,” Tewalt said last week.

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Johnson reported from Seattle, Thiessen from Anchorage, Alaska.


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Oklahoma judge rules death row inmate not competent to be executed

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma judge ruled Thursday that a death row inmate is not competent to be executed for his role in the 1999 slayings of a mother and son.

Pittsburg County Judge Michael Hogan issued an order in the case involving 61-year-old James Ryder in that county.

“The court could go on ad nauseum discussing the irrational thought processes of Mr. Ryder, but this is not needed,” Hogan wrote in his order. “To be clear, the court finds by a preponderance of the evidence, Mr. Ryder is not competent to be executed” under state law.

Hogan’s decision followed a competency hearing this week in which two experts for Ryder’s defense testified that he suffers from a psychotic disorder diagnosed as schizophrenia.

“James has suffered from schizophrenia for nearly 40 years and has little connection to objective reality,” Ryder’s attorney, Emma Rolls, said in an email to The Associated Press. “His condition has deteriorated significantly over the years and will only continue to worsen.

“As the court concluded, executing James would be unconstitutional. We urge the State to cease any further efforts to execute him,” Rolls continued.

Under Oklahoma law, an inmate is mentally incompetent to be executed if they are unable to have a rational understanding of the reason they are being executed or that their execution is imminent.

An expert for the state testified he believes Ryder is competent to sufficiently and rationally understand why he is being executed and that this execution is imminent.

Ryder was sentenced to die for the 1999 beating death of Daisy Hallum, 70, and to life without parole for the shotgun slaying of her son, Sam Hallum, 38.

Court records show Ryder lived on the Hallum’s property in Pittsburg County for several months in 1998 and took care of their home and horses when they were out of town. He had a dispute with the family over some of his property after he had moved out.

Under state law, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services are now tasked with determining the best place for Ryder to be held in safe confinement until his competency is restored.

“Attorney General Drummond respects the court’s decision, but is disappointed that James Ryder is now ineligible to be executed for the horrific slaying of Daisy Hallum and her son, Sam Hallum,” Drummond spokesperson Phil Bacharach said in a statement. “The state will continue working to restore competency so justice can be served.”


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Youngkin vetoes Virginia bills mandating minimum wage increase, establishing marijuana retail sales

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed two top Democratic legislative priorities on Thursday: bills that would have allowed the recreational retail sales of marijuana to begin next year and measures mandating a minimum wage increase.

The development did not come as a surprise. While Youngkin had not explicitly threatened to veto either set of bills, he told reporters he didn’t think the minimum wage bill was needed and had repeatedly said he was uninterested in setting up retail marijuana sales.

In 2021, Virginia became the first Southern state to legalize marijuana, adopting a policy change that allowed adults age 21 and up to possess and cultivate the drug. But the state didn’t set up retail sales at the time and still hasn’t, due to shifts in partisan power and policy differences since then.

Advocates say the disconnect is allowing the illicit market to flourish, while opponents have safety health and safety concerns with further expanding access to the drug. In a statement, Youngkin said he shared those worries.

“States following this path have seen adverse effects on children’s and adolescent’s health and safety, increased gang activity and violent crime, significant deterioration in mental health, decreased road safety, and significant costs associated with retail marijuana that far exceed tax revenue. It also does not eliminate the illegal black-market sale of cannabis, nor guarantee product safety,” he said in a veto statement attached to the bills.

Currently in Virginia, home cultivation and adult sharing of the drug are legal. And patients who receive a written certification from a health care provider can purchase medical cannabis from a dispensary.

Under the bills, the state would have started taking applications on Sept. 1 for cultivating, testing, processing and selling the drug in preparation for the market to open May 1, 2025, with products taxed at a rate of up to 11.625%.

The legislation was supported by a range of industry interests and opposed by religious and socially conservative groups.

Virginia first took on legalization at a time when Democrats were in full control of state government. Elections later that year changed that, with Youngkin winning and Republicans taking control of the House of Delegates for two years, though Democrats are now back in full control of the statehouse.

While there has been some Republican legislative support since the 2021 session for setting up legal recreational sales, bills to do so have failed in 2022 and 2023.

As for the wage legislation, which would have increased the current $12-per-hour minimum wage to $13.50 on Jan. 1, 2025, and then to $15 on Jan. 1, 2026, Youngkin said the bills would “imperil market freedom and economic competitiveness.”

The bills would “implement drastic wage mandates, raise costs on families and small businesses, jeopardize jobs, and fail to recognize regional economic differences across Virginia,” he said in a news release.

Virginia Democrats began an effort to increase the minimum wage in 2020. They passed legislation that year — which took effect with a delay due to the coronavirus pandemic — establishing incremental increases up to $12, with further bumps requiring another Assembly vote.

They and other advocates have argued the legislation would help working families afford basic necessities and keep up with inflation.

Youngkin took action on a total of 107 bills Thursday, according to his office. He signed 100, including measures that his office said would “strengthen law enforcement’s ability to prosecute child predators and expand Department of Corrections inmate access to quality health services.”

Besides the marijuana and wage bills, he vetoed three others. One would have removed an exemption for farmworkers from the state’s minimum wage law.

Another would have required that approximately 315 individuals incarcerated or on community supervision with a felony marijuana conviction receive a sentencing review, according to Youngkin’s office.

“Ninety-seven inmates convicted of a violent felony offense, such as first and second-degree murder, kidnapping, and robbery, would be eligible for a reduced sentence under this proposal,” he said in his veto statement.

Thursday’s final veto came for a bill that dealt with the type of evidence that can be considered in certain workers’ compensation claims. The governor said current law provides a “balanced approach” while the proposal would “create a disproportionate imbalance in favor of one party.”

The part-time General Assembly adjourned its regular session earlier this month and will meet again in Richmond for a one-day session April 17 to consider Youngkin’s proposed amendments to legislation. They could also attempt to override one or more vetoes, a move that requires a 2/3 vote of both chambers, which are only narrowly controlled by Democrats.

The marijuana legislation advanced mostly along party lines, and the minimum wage bills passed strictly on party lines, meaning any override attempt would be almost certain to fail.

Youngkin announced the vetoes a day after the public collapse of one of his top legislative priorities: a deal to bring the NHL’s Washington Capitals and NBA’s Washington Wizards to Alexandria. The teams’ majority owner announced they would instead be staying in D.C.


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Outpaced by Biden, Trump hopes to rake in $33 million during Florida fundraiser

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is seeking to outraise President Joe Biden next week, aiming to take in more than $33 million to top a new single-event fundraising record set by Biden on Thursday with $25 million, said a person familiar with the Trump event who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

Trump is inviting wealthy donors to Palm Beach, Fla., home to his Mar-a-Lago estate, for an April 6 fundraiser hosted by New York hedge fund billionaire John Paulson and listing as co-chairs other high-dollar donors such as Las Vegas-based businessman Robert Bigelow, casino mogul Steve Wynn and New York grocery billionaire John Catsimatidis. Guests are being asked to contribute $814,600 per person as a “chairman” contributor or $250,000 per person. Perks of attendance include a personalized copy of Trump’s coffee table book with photographs from his administration.

The plans to reach the fundraising goal of $33 million were first reported by the Financial Times.

Assuming that Trump succeeds in raking in the jaw-dropping sum, the glitzy event offers Trump an opportunity to shift the narrative following months of negative headlines that have focused on his dwindling political cash hauls and his use of tens of millions of dollars in donations to pay legal fees from a myriad of court cases he faces.

“We are not only raising the necessary funds, but we are deploying strategic assets that will help send President Trump back to the White House and carry Republicans over the finish line,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.

Throughout his career in business and politics, Trump has a well-established reputation for inflating, or understating, his cash position — depending on need. His political committees, too, have relied on accounting gimmicks, including the recent clawback of an over $50 million donation — used to seed a pro-Trump super PAC, it was later refunded to help pay his mounting legal bills.

The haul would showcase Trump’s newfound ability to rake in massive checks now that he is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. Effectively controlling the RNC, Trump and his political operation can take advantage of the far higher contribution limits that apply to party committees. While candidates alone can accept a maximum donation of $3,300, under a new joint fundraising agreement between his campaign and the RNC, a single donor could stroke a check for just over $800,000.

The campaign says it has been increasingly raising more money, taking in more than $1 million a day online for six days in a row, and raising over $10.6 million last week from more than 280,000 digital donations.

Even though the event is slated to give his campaign a massive infusion of cash, it doesn’t alter the fact that Trump still faces considerable financial headwinds.

His main campaign account and the Save America PAC, which has paid many of his legal bills, reported raising a combined $15.9 million in February and ended the month with more than $37 million on hand, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission last week. Democrats, meanwhile, had $155 million on hand.

And while Trump can now collect massive sums in conjunction with the RNC, the fine print of a fundraising invitation for the event shows that Save America — the committee that has been paying his legal bills — will be given a cut of the money before the RNC.

——— Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report from New York.


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Massachusetts joins with NCAA, sports teams to tackle gambling among young people

BOSTON (AP) — Top Massachusetts officials joined with NCAA President and former Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Thursday to announce a new initiative aimed at tackling the public health harms associated with sports gambling among young people.

Baker said those harms extend not just to young people making bets, but to student athletes coming under enormous pressure from bettors hoping to cash in on their individual performances.

Baker said he spoke to hundreds of college athletes before officially stepping into the role of president about a year ago, and he said they talked about the tremendous pressure they feel from classmates and bettors about their individual performance.

“The message I kept getting from them is there’s so much of this going on, it’s very hard for us to just stay away from it,” he said.

Baker said student athletes pointed to classmates who wanted to talk to them about “how’s so-and-so doing? Is he or she going to be able to play this weekend? What do you think your chances are?”

“It was the exact same conversations I was having with my classmates and schoolmates in the ’70s. But back then it was just chatter in the cafeteria or the dining hall,” added Baker, who played basketball at Harvard University. “Now it’s currency.”

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said that since the state made sports betting legal in 2022, a bill signed by Baker, Massachusetts has essentially become a participant in the market.

The creates a burden on the state to make sports betting as safe as possible, she said.

“Think about it. We’re putting an addictive product — gambling — on a very addictive device, your smartphone,” she said. “We’ve gone from sports gambling being illegal nearly everywhere to being legal in dozens of states throughout the country in just a matter of a few years.”

In Massachusetts, it is illegal for anyone under 21 to wager on sports or in casinos.

Because young people are going to be influenced more by the teams they support than by state government officials, Campbell said it is critical to create a public/private partnership like the new initiative she unveiled Thursday, the Youth Sports Betting Safety Coalition.

Campbell said members of the coalition include the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Bruins, the New England Patriots, the New England Revolution and the NCAA. The goal is to craft a sports betting education, training, and safety curriculum for young people 12 to 20, she said.

NCAA data found 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds have engaged in at least one sports betting activity, while the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found about half of middle school students are estimated to have engaged some form of gambling, Campbell said.

Baker said the NCAA is pushing states with legal sports gambling to bar “prop bets” — short for proposition bets — which allow gamblers to wager on the statistics a player will accumulate during a game rather than the final score.

Baker also said the NCAA’s survey of students found that they were betting at essentially the same rate whether it was legal for them or not. It also found that one out of three student athletes has been harassed by bettors and one of 10 students has a gambling problem.

“It’s basically a 50-state issue even if it’s only legal in 38. And if you think kids under the age of 21 aren’t doing this, you’re kidding yourselves,” he said at the news conference at Boston’s TD Garden.

He said the ugliness and brutality of some of the messages on social media platforms of some of the athletes in the NCAA tournaments is disturbing.

Last year, NCAA officials considered a threat by a bettor serious enough to a team that they gave them 24/7 police protections until they left the tournament, he said.

“For student athletes in particular, this is an enormously challenging issue, and for a lot of the ones that are really in the bright lights, as many here will be tonight, this is just one more thing I think all of us would like to see taken off the table,” he said.


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Judge rejects officers’ bid to erase charges in the case of a man paralyzed after police van ride

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Four former Connecticut police officers accused of mocking and mistreating a man after he was paralyzed in the back of a police van in 2022 were denied bids Thursday to enter a program that could have erased criminal charges against them and let them avoid trial.

A judge rejected the former officers’ applications for accelerated rehabilitation, citing the seriousness of Richard “Randy” Cox’s injuries. The program, generally for first-time offenders accused of low-level crimes, requires successfully completing probation.

“The resulting injuries to the victim are of such a serious nature that the court feels that precludes participation in the program,” Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon said.

The four former New Haven officers, Oscar Diaz, Betsy Segui, Ronald Pressley and Luis Rivera, are charged with misdemeanors of negligent cruelty to persons and reckless endangerment. All four declined to comment after the hearing. Their lawyers said they disagreed with the judge’s decision. A fifth officer, Jocelyn Lavandier, faces the same charges and also applied for the probation program, but was not at the hearing as her case was postponed until May.

Cox, now 38, was paralyzed from the chest down June 19, 2022, when a police van he was riding in braked hard to avoid a collision, sending him head-first into a metal partition. His hands were cuffed behind his back and the van had no seat belts. Cox had been arrested on charges of threatening a woman with a gun, which were later dismissed.

“I can’t move. I’m going to die like this. Please, please, please help me,” Cox said minutes after the crash, according to police video.

Diaz, the officer driving the van, stopped and checked on Cox, according to police reports, then called for emergency medical staff and told them to meet him at the police station.

Once at the station, officers mocked Cox and accused him of being drunk and faking his injuries, according to surveillance and body-worn camera footage. Officers dragged Cox from the van by his feet and placed him in a holding cell prior to his eventual transfer to a hospital. His family says officers may have exacerbated Cox’s injuries by moving him around.

Cox and New Haven State’s Attorney John Doyle Jr. opposed the officers’ applications to the probation program. Cox remains upset that the officers were not charged with felonies, said his lawyer, Jack O’Donnell.

“He’s been left with a permanent injury and he finds it audacious of the officers to try to avoid even a permanent record,” O’Donnell told the judge. “His life is no longer going to be enjoyable, and the fact that these officers can come forward and indicate that this is not a crime of too serious a nature is something that offends him deeply.”

Lawyers for the officers argued Thursday that Cox’s injuries happened before he got to the police station and they cited a medical opinion that the officers’ actions did not exacerbate the injuries. The attorneys also said Cox appeared to be intoxicated and the officers were not aware of the extent of his injuries at the time.

Four of the five officers were fired last year. The fifth, Pressley, retired. A state board in January overturned Diaz’s firing, but the city is appealing that decision. After Thursday’s ruling, their criminal cases will now move toward trial.

New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker and Police Chief Karl Jacobson said in a statement that the officers must be held criminally accountable.

“The treatment of Mr. Cox while in the custody of the New Haven Police Department was completely unacceptable,” they said. “No one is above the law and we believe the ruling by Judge Harmon was the right one. It allows these officers to go through the criminal process and to receive a fair and impartial trial by a jury of their peers for the criminal charges they face related to this incident.”

Cox’s supporters, including his family and the NAACP, have criticized prosecutors for not bringing felony charges.

Supporters have compared his case to what happened to Freddie Gray, a Black man who died in 2015 in Baltimore after he suffered a spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a city police van. Cox is Black. All five officers accused of mistreating him are Black or Hispanic.

New Haven settled a lawsuit by Cox for $45 million.

Cox did not attend Thursday’s hearing. O’Donnell said travel is complicated and painful for him.

After Cox was injured, city police announced reforms, including making sure all prisoners wear seat belts. The state Legislature last year approved a new law spurred by the Cox case that would require seat belts for all prisoners being transported in Connecticut.


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Facebook News tab will soon be unavailable as Meta scales back news and political content

Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the U.S. and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the U.K., France and Germany last year.

Launched in 2019, the News tab curated headlines from national and international news organizations, as well as smaller, local publications.

Meta says users will still be able to view links to news articles, and news organizations will still be able to post and promote their stories and websites, as any other individual or organization can on Facebook.

The change comes as Meta tries to scale back news and political content on its platforms following years of criticism about how it handles misinformation and whether it contributes to political polarization.

“This change does not impact posts from accounts people choose to follow; it impacts what the system recommends, and people can control if they want more,” said Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson. “This announcement expands on years of work on how we approach and treat political content based on what people have told us they wanted.”

Meta said the change to the News tab does not affect its fact-checking network and review of misinformation.

But misinformation remains a challenge for the company, especially as the U.S. presidential election and other races get underway.

“Facebook didn’t envision itself as a political platform. It was run by tech people. And then suddenly it started scaling and they found themselves immersed in politics, and they themselves became the headline,” said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy who studies tech policy and how new technologies evolve over time. “I think with many big elections coming up this year, it’s not surprising that Facebook is taking yet another step away from politics so that they can just not, inadvertently, themselves become a political headline.”

Rick Edmonds, media analyst for Poynter, said the dissolution of the News tab is not surprising for news organizations that have been seeing diminishing Facebook traffic to their websites for several years, spurring organizations to focus on other ways to attract an audience, such as search and newsletters.

“I would say if you’ve been watching, you could see this coming, but it’s one more very hurtful thing to the business of news,” Edmonds said.

News makes up less than 3% of what users worldwide see in their Facebook feeds, Meta said, adding that the number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by over 80% last year.

However, according to a 2023 Pew Research study, half of U.S. adults get news at least sometimes from social media. And one platform outpaces the rest: Facebook.

Three in 10 U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Facebook, according to Pew, and 16% of U.S. adults say they regularly get news from Instagram, also owned by Meta.

Instagram users recently expressed dissatisfaction with the app’s choice to stop “proactively” recommending political content posted on accounts that users don’t follow. While the option to turn off the filter was always available in user settings, many people were not aware Meta made the change.


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