NEW YORK (AP) — Catch and kill. Checkbook journalism. Secret deals. Friends helping friends.

Even by National Enquirer standards, testimony by its former publisher David Pecker at Donald Trump’s hush money trial this week has revealed an astonishing level of corruption at America’s best-known tabloid and may one day be seen as the moment it effectively died.

“It just has zero credibility,” said Lachlan Cartwright, executive editor of the Enquirer from 2014 to 2017. “Whatever sort of credibility it had was totally damaged by what happened in court this week.”

On Thursday, Pecker was back on the witness stand to tell more about the arrangement he made to boost Trump’s presidential candidacy in 2016, tear down his rivals and silence any revelations that may have damaged him.

However its stories danced on the edge of credulity, the Enquirer was a cultural fixture, in large part because of genius marketing. As many Americans moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, the tabloid staked its place on racks at supermarket checkout lines, where people could see headlines about UFO abductions or medical miracles while waiting for their milk and bread to be bagged.

Celebrity news was a staple, and the Enquirer paid sources around Hollywood to learn what the stars’ publicists wouldn’t say. It may have been true. It may have had just a whiff of truth. It was rarely boring.

When the tabloid paid a mourner to secretly snap a picture of Elvis Presley in his coffin for its front cover, that week’s issue sold 6.9 million copies, according to the 2020 documentary, “Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer.”

For all the ridicule the tabloid received from “serious” journalists, Enquirer reporters hustled and broke some genuine news. A memorable picture of the married Sen. Gary Hart enjoying a tropical holiday alongside a woman he was involved with destroyed a presidential candidacy and brought politicians into the Enquirer’s celebrity world. The tab was considered for a Pulitzer Prize after revealing a sex scandal involving U.S. Sen. John Edwards in the early 2000s.

During his celebrity days in the 1990s, Trump was a fixture in its pages, and often a source for news. When Pecker bought the Enquirer in 1999, one of his first calls was from Trump, who said, “Congratulations — you bought a great magazine,” the former executive testified this week.

As the “Scandalous” documentary illustrates, some of Pecker’s unsavory practices predated his deal with Trump. The Enquirer paid for the story of Gigi Goyette, an actress who claimed she had an affair with Arnold Schwarzenegger, dangling the prospect of a potential book and movie. Then it kept silent as Schwarzenegger, who denied the affair, ran for California governor. The arrangement became known as “catch and kill.”

Pecker said that in a summer 2015 meeting with Trump and lawyer Michael Cohen, he outlined how he would help the presidential candidate, a deal that included the alleged “catch and kill” arrangements with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels.

“They weren’t put into writing,” Pecker testified about his promises to Trump. “It was just an agreement among friends.”

Throughout the campaign, National Enquirer headlines made no secret who the tabloid was backing: “Donald Trump: The Man Behind the Legend,” read one. “Donald Trump: Healthiest Individual Ever Elected,” was another.

The Trump-boosting covers baffled Steve Coz, a former top Enquirer editor, when he saw them at his neighborhood supermarket in Florida. “That is so foreign to anybody who worked at the National Enquirer,” Coz said in the documentary.

Cartwright, lured to a job at the Enquirer by his friend, Dylan Howard, with a promise to break stories like the Edwards scandal, instead found that material about one of the most colorful, compromised politicians in recent history was off limits. Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton were frequent targets of unflattering stories; Pecker called that a double win, since it helped Trump and anti-Clinton stories were popular with Enquirer readers.

Even Cartwright said he was surprised to learn in Pecker’s testimony about the role Cohen played in helping to manufacture outlandishly false stories about Trump’s Republican primary rivals. Ben Carlson was described as a “bungling surgeon and ”brain butcher.” Marco Rubio headlines referenced a “love child” and “cocaine connection.” Ted Cruz supposedly was having five secret affairs and his father was alleged to have a connection with JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

Cartwright remembers wondering with friends at the time about what was going on, only to be told that “you’re sounding like a conspiracy theorist.”

The stories were wild, nothing truthful about them. But thousands of voters saw them, and when the rumors hit the mainstream media, the opponents — particularly an angry Cruz — were forced to address them.

“This is the ground zero of fake news,” said Cartwright, now a correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter.

It has been years since an Enquirer story made an impact. In 2019, the tabloid published texts alleging an extramarital affair by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — also owner of The Washington Post, a thorn in then-President Trump’s side. But it backfired when Bezos publicly revealed that the Enquirer had threatened to publish damning photos if the Post didn’t halt an investigation into Pecker’s American Media Inc. Pecker lost his job as head of the Enquirer’s parent company in 2020, and it was eventually sold.

Celebrity news is widespread in the media today. TMZ has largely assumed the Enquirer’s mantle with aggressive celebrity coverage and a willingness to pay for it, with more journalistic rigor. Political talk is also easy to find on the web, and so is disinformation.

The Enquirer averaged 238,000 newsstand sales each week during the last six months of election year 2016, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. During the last six months of 2023, its sales averaged just under 56,500. It limps along: The lead story on its website Thursday was “The Untold Story: Marko Stout’s Journey From Obscurity to Art World Phenom.”

“It’s really a shadow of its former self,” Cartwright said. “David Pecker’s legacy will be that he totally destroyed that tabloid.”

___

David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Police say a 17-year-old has been arrested on a murder warrant after fatally shooting a schoolmate on the campus of an Arlington, Texas, high school.

The slain student was identified as 18-year-old Etavian Barnes by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Barnes was found unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds Wednesday afternoon outside portable buildings on the campus of Bowie High School, according to Arlington Police Chief Al Jones.

No other injuries were reported.

The suspect, who was also a student at the school, was arrested a short time later near the campus, according to Jones, who said the two apparently knew each other.

“We’re still early on in our investigation, our detectives are working to determine a motive,” Jones said.

Jones said the shooting was reported about 2:50 p.m., shortly before classes were scheduled to be dismissed, and the school was placed on lockdown for about two hours before students were allowed to leave.

Arlington Independent School District Superintendent Matt Smith said classes at the school are canceled for Thursday.

“Honestly, I’m at a loss for words by this tragedy,” Smith said. “Schools are supposed to be a place of learning and growth” but that was interrupted by what he called “senseless violence.”

Smith said counselors will be available to students and staff when classes resume.

BALTIMORE (AP) — The first cargo ship passed through a newly opened deep-water channel in Baltimore on Thursday after being stuck in the harbor since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed four weeks ago, halting most maritime traffic through the city’s port.

The Balsa 94, a bulk carrier sailing under a Panama flag, passed through the new 35-foot (12-meter) channel headed for St. John, Canada.

Its voyage marked an important step in the ongoing cleanup and recovery effort as salvage crews have been working around the clock to clear thousands of tons of mangled steel and concrete from the entrance to Baltimore’s harbor.

The ship is one of five stranded vessels expected to pass through the new, temporary channel, including one loaded car carrier. Other ships are scheduled to enter the port, which normally processes more cars and farm equipment than any other in the country.

On Thursday morning, the vessel moved through the channel guided by two tug boats, one in front and one behind. It passed in between red and green buoys marking the channel’s boundaries and glided slowly by the wreckage of the bridge and the grounded Dali, the massive container ship that caused the collapse when it slammed into one of the bridge’s support columns.

Pieces of the fallen bridge are still blocking other parts of the port’s main channel, which has a controlling depth of 50 feet (15 meters), enough to accommodate some of the largest cargo and cruise ships. Officials have prioritized opening a temporary channel deep enough for large commercial vessels to pass through in hopes of easing the economic impacts of the collapse.

The Balsa 94 is expected to arrive in Canada on Monday.

The Dali lost power and veered off course shortly after leaving the Port of Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka last month. Six members of a roadwork crew plunged to their deaths in the collapse. Four bodies have been recovered from the underwater wreckage while two remain missing.

The new channel will remain open until Monday or Tuesday. It will close again until roughly May 10 while crews work to remove steel from the Dali and refloat the ship, which will then be guided back into the port, officials said earlier this week.

The 35-foot depth is a substantial increase over the three other temporary channels established in recent weeks. It puts the cleanup effort slightly ahead of schedule, as officials previously said they hoped to open a channel of that depth by the end of April.

The port’s main channel is set to reopen next month after the ship has been removed. That will essentially restore marine traffic to normal.

In a court filing Monday, Baltimore’s mayor and city council called for the Dali’s owner and manager to be held fully liable for the bridge collapse, which they said could be devastating for the regional economy. They said the port, which was established before the nation’s founding, has long been an economic driver for Baltimore and the surrounding area. Losing the bridge itself has also disrupted a major east coast trucking route.

Officials have established a slew of assistance programs for port workers and others whose jobs are suffering as a result of the collapse.

The filing came in response to an earlier petition on behalf of the two companies asking a court to cap their liability under a pre-Civil War provision of an 1851 maritime law — a routine procedure for such cases. A federal court in Maryland will ultimately decide who’s responsible and how much they owe.

In the meantime, both the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board are conducting probes to determine what caused the ship to lose power and strike the bridge.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday took up Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump’s lawyers argue that former presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for their official acts. Otherwise, they say, politically motivated prosecutions of former occupants of the Oval Office would become routine and presidents couldn’t function as the commander in chief if they had to worry about criminal charges.

Lower courts have rejected those arguments, including a unanimous three-judge panel on an appeals court in Washington. And even if the high court resoundingly follows suit, the timing of its decision may be as important as the outcome.

That’s because Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has been pushing to delay the trial until after the November election, and the later the justices issue their decision, the more likely he is to succeed.

The court typically issues its last opinions by the end of June, which is roughly four months before the election.

Currently:

What to listen for during Supreme Court arguments on Donald Trump and presidential immunity

The Supreme Court will decide whether Trump is immune from federal prosecution. Here’s what’s next

What to know in the Supreme Court case about immunity for former President Trump

Trump is in New York for the hush money trial while the Supreme Court hears his immunity case in DC

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court

Here’s the latest:

In oral arguments that have involved a lot of elevated legal jargon, the Supreme Court justices also sneaked in a few fun metaphors Thursday during Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Striking a skeptical note while questioning Trump lawyer D. John Sauer, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that expunging from the indictment acts that are official rather than personal would hobble the case, making it a “one-legged stool.”

Later, in conversation with special counsel team lawyer Michael Dreeben, Justice Samuel Alito brought up “the old saw about indicting a ham sandwich.” He was referring to the belief that indictments are easy to secure, and that they don’t necessarily indicate any likelihood of guilt.

Alito asked Dreeben whether he had come across a lot of cases in which a federal prosecutor wanted to indict a case and the grand jury refused. Dreeben said there are such cases, before Alito cut him off.

“Every once in a while there’s an eclipse, too,” Alito said, drawing some laughs in the courtroom.

The team under Special Counsel Jack Smith, which wrote that a lack of previous criminal charges “underscores the unprecedented nature” of what Donald Trump is accused of, is up before the Supreme Court in Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Michael Dreeben, a lawyer for the Smith team, said the court has never before recognized absolute immunity for a former president. “Such presidential immunity,” he said, “has no foundation in the Constitution.”

Justice Clarence Thomas asked Dreeben whether he was saying that there was no immunity even for official acts.

Dreeben said yes and also that impeachment and conviction before the Senate is not a prerequisite for a courtroom prosecution. Dreeben said there are plenty of checks to prevent politically motivated prosecutions.

Thomas said that other presidential acts in the past would have seemed ripe for prosecution and yet none occurred. Dreeben responded that the core distinction is that those other acts were not crimes.

Dreeben said the Smith team was not endorsing a system in which presidents would be exposed to prosecution for mistakes or bad judgments.

Justice Neil Gorsuch posed a line of questions Thursday that appeared friendly to arguments by Trump’s lawyers in his bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Gorsuch suggested that if presidents fear they could be prosecuted after they leave office, they could begin preemptively pardoning themselves.

“We’ve never answered whether a president can do that. And happily, it’s never been presented to us,” he said.

But Justice Amy Coney Barrett took issue with a key argument of the Trump team — that under the Constitution, former presidents must be impeached and convicted before the Senate before they can be prosecuted in court.

Barrett said no one has ever suggested the justices would need to be impeached and convicted before they could be prosecuted. Trump lawyer D. John Sauer responded that under the Constitution, the sequence is only mandatory as it relates to former presidents.

Some Supreme Court justices posed scenarios or expressed skepticism Thursday as arguments started in Donald Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said he considered it “implausible” that a president could legally order Navy SEALs to order the assassination of a political rival. That skepticism matters because the hypothetical is something the Trump team, which includes attorney D. John Sauer, has suggested could theoretically be protected from prosecution.

Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Sauer a question that cut to the heart of the case, reading aloud allegations from the indictment and asking him to respond whether Trump’s actions in each instance were private or official.

Trump’s attorneys concede that immunity does not extend to personal actions but instead protects official acts. Sauer said he believed most of the acts are unquestionably official.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who could be a key swing vote, struck a skeptical note about the idea of expunging from the indictment acts that are official rather than personal, saying such a move would render the case a “one-legged stool.”

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Sauer was asking for a change in the immunity law. She raised Richard Nixon’s pardon, asking, “I think that if everybody thought that presidents couldn’t be prosecuted, then what was that about?”

Liberal Justice Elena Kagan noted the Founding Fathers did not insert an immunity clause for presidents into the Constitution — but, she said, “they knew how to.”

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pressed Donald Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer at the outset of arguments Thursday, asking where the principle of absolute immunity comes from.

The question was the first during arguments at the Supreme Court in Trump’s bid to avoid prosecution over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Sauer fell back quickly on a Supreme Court case that’s core to the defense — a 1982 decision that held that former presidents are immune from civil lawsuits.

A skeptical Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointedly noted to Sauer that the indictment alleges that Trump acted for personal gain.

She said the Founding Fathers had contemplated the idea of immunity for presidents but had explicitly decided against it.

She made clear her opposition to the Trump legal team’s position, saying she was having a hard time envisioning immunity for a president who creates and submits false documents, orders the assassination of a political rival, and any number of other criminal acts.

First up on Thursday was D. John Sauer, making Donald Trump’s argument that he’s immune from criminal prosecution. A former Missouri solicitor general and onetime Supreme Court clerk, Sauer also represented Trump at the appeals court level.

Trump went to those arguments even though he wasn’t required to be there, but he won’t be in the audience at the Supreme Court today. He’s required to be in New York for his hush money trial.

About 30 demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court before arguments, some wearing judicial robes with kangaroo masks and others holding signs like “Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied.” That’s an apparent reference to the the timing of the high court’s ultimate decision in the case, which could determine whether a trial can be held before the election in November.

Shortly before arguments were slated to begin, Trump fired off a few posts Thursday on his social media network.

In one, he declared in all caps, “WITHOUT PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PRESIDENT TO PROPERLY FUNCTION, PUTTING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN GREAT AND EVERLASTING DANGER!”

Trump also said that without immunity, a president would just be “ceremonial” and the opposing political party “can extort and blackmail the President by saying that, ‘if you don’t give us everything we want, we will Indict you for things you did while in Office,’ even if everything done was totally Legal and Appropriate.”

Of the nine justices hearing the case, three were nominated by Trump — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. But it’s the presence of a justice confirmed decades before Trump’s presidency, Justice Clarence Thomas, that’s generated the most controversy.

Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, urged the reversal of the 2020 election results and then attended the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. That has prompted calls for the justice to step aside from several court cases involving Trump and Jan. 6.

But Thomas has ignored the calls, taking part in the unanimous court decision that found states cannot kick Trump off the ballot as well as last week’s arguments over whether prosecutors can use a particular obstruction charge against Capitol riot defendants.

The justices will probably meet in private a short time after arguments to take a preliminary vote on the outcome. Chief Justice John Roberts would be a prime candidate to take on the opinion for the court, assuming he is in the majority.

They could simply reject Trump’s immunity claim outright, permitting the prosecution to move forward and returning the case to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to set a trial date.

They could also reverse the lower courts by declaring for the first time that former presidents may not be prosecuted for conduct related to official acts during their time in office. Such a decision would stop the prosecution in its tracks.

There are other options, too, including ruling that former presidents do retain some immunity for their official actions but that, wherever that line is drawn, Trump’s actions fall way beyond it.

Yet another possibility is that the court sends the case back to Chutkan with an assignment to decide whether the actions Trump is alleged to have taken to stay in power constitute official acts.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday the outright seizure of Russian assets is justifiable but is only one possibility, with assets instead able to serve as collateral for borrowing in the market to help Ukraine.

“That’s an option that’s been discussed. The leaders have asked us to give them a range of options,” Yellen said in an interview with Reuters, when asked if the leading option was pulling forward the interest on those assets to issue bonds or loans for Ukraine.

“The Europeans have taken a very constructive step and that is most of Russian assets held in Belgium … have now converted to cash and Euroclear earns interest on those assets. The European Union has agreed to segregate that interest and essentially move forward on a program in which it can be transferred to Ukraine. That is an approach that could be broadly supported by countries that are concerned about seizure of assets … there are a range of options.”

(Reporting by Alessandra Galloni; Writing by Lindsay Dunsmuir; Editing by Paul Simao)

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein ’s 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era in determining the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren’t part of the case.

Weinstein, 72, will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. But the New York ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office signaled its intention to retry Weinstein, and his accusers could again be forced to retell their stories on the witness stand.

The state Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 23-year sentence in a 4-3 decision, finding that “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes.” The court’s majority called this “an abuse of judicial discretion.”

In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”

Weinstein has been in a New York prison since his conviction on charges of criminal sex acts for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in the Los Angeles case.

Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala called the Court of Appeals ruling “a tremendous victory for every criminal defendant in the state of New York.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement it would “do everything in our power to retry this case.”

Attorney Douglas H. Wigdor, who has represented eight Harvey Weinstein accusers including two witnesses at the New York criminal trial, called the ruling “a major step back in holding those accountable for acts of sexual violence.”

“Courts routinely admit evidence of other uncharged acts where they assist juries in understanding issues concerning the intent, modus operandi or scheme of the defendant. The jury was instructed on the relevance of this testimony and overturning the verdict is tragic in that it will require the victims to endure yet another trial,” Wigdor said in a statement.

Debra Katz, the prominent civil rights and #MeToo attorney who represented several Weinstein accusers, said her clients are “feeling gutted” by the ruling, but that she believed – and was telling them – that their testimony had changed the world.

“People continue to come forward, people continue to support other victims who’ve reported sexual assault and violence, and I truly believe there’s no going back from that,” Katz said, predicting that Weinstein would be convicted again at a retrial.

She said accusers feel great comfort that Weinstein will remain behind bars.

The reversal of Weinstein’s conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the last two years, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to throw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction.

Weinstein’s conviction stood for more than four years, heralded by activists and advocates as a milestone achievement, but dissected just as quickly by his lawyers and, later, the Court of Appeals when it heard arguments on the matter in February.

Allegations against Weinstein, the once powerful and feared studio boss behind such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” ushered in the #MeToo movement. Dozens of women came forward to accuse Weinstein, including famous actresses such as Ashley Judd and Uma Thurman. His New York trial drew intense publicity, with protesters chanting “rapist” outside the courthouse.

Weinstein is incarcerated in New York at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany.

He maintains his innocence. He contends any sexual activity was consensual.

Aidala argued before the appeals court in February that Burke swayed the trial by allowing three women to testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case and by giving prosecutors permission to confront Weinstein, if he had testified, about his long history of brutish behavior.

Aidala argued the extra testimony went beyond the normally allowable details about motive, opportunity, intent or a common scheme or plan, and essentially put Weinstein on trial for crimes he wasn’t charged with.

Weinstein wanted to testify, but opted not to because Burke’s ruling would’ve meant answering questions about more than two-dozen alleged acts of misbehavior dating back four decades, Aidala said. They included fighting with his movie producer brother, flipping over a table in anger and snapping at waiters and yelling at his assistants.

A lawyer for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, argued that the judge‘s rulings were proper and that the extra evidence and testimony he allowed was important to provide jurors context about Weinstein’s behavior and the way he interacted with women.

Appellate Chief Steven Wu said Weinstein’s acquittal on the most serious charges — two counts of predatory sexual assault and a first-degree rape charge involving actor Annabella Sciorra’s allegations of a mid-1990s rape — showed jurors were paying attention and they were not confused or overwhelmed by the additional testimony.

The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named; Sciorra has spoken publicly about her allegations.

The Court of Appeals agreed last year to take Weinstein’s case after an intermediate appeals court upheld his conviction. Prior to their ruling, judges on the lower appellate court had raised doubts about Burke’s conduct during oral arguments. One observed that Burke had let prosecutors pile on with “incredibly prejudicial testimony” from additional witnesses.

Burke’s term expired at the end of 2022. He was not reappointed and is no longer a judge.

In appealing, Weinstein’s lawyers sought a new trial, but only for the criminal sexual act charge. They argued the rape charge could not be retried because it involves alleged conduct outside the statute of limitations.

___

Associated Press writer Dave Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut. AP writers Jocelyn Noveck and Larry Neumeister in New York also contributed to this story.

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction for sexual assault and rape was overturned by New York’s highest court, reopening the landmark case that launched the #MeToo movement and highlighting the challenges of holding powerful men accountable.

In a bitterly divided 4-3 decision on Thursday, the state Court of Appeals said the trial judge made a critical mistake by letting women testify that Weinstein assaulted them, even though their accusations were not part of the charges he faced.

The court said the trial judge compounded the error by letting Weinstein be cross-examined on a broad range of “loathsome” conduct, including bullying and fits of anger toward associates, that portrayed him in a “highly prejudicial” light.

“It is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges,” Judge Jenny Rivera wrote for the majority.

“The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial,” she added.

Weinstein, 72, has been serving a 23-year sentence in a prison in upstate Rome, New York.

He is not expected to be freed immediately, as he also faces a separate 16-year prison term in California after being convicted there last year for the 2013 rape of an actress at a Los Angeles hotel.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose predecessor Cyrus Vance brought the New York case, will decide whether to retry Weinstein.

“We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault,” Emily Tuttle, a spokesperson for Bragg, said in an email.

Bragg’s office is separately in the middle of a criminal hush money trial against former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Arthur Aidala, a lawyer for Weinstein, called the decision a victory for his client and any American charged with a crime, “no matter how popular or unpopular they are.”

Weinstein has denied having non-consensual sexual encounters with anyone.

‘DISTURBING TREND’

In a sharp dissent, Judge Madeline Singas said the decision “perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence” and makes holding defendants accountable for sexual assault “significantly more difficult.”

She also accused the majority of whitewashing the facts and continuing a “disturbing trend” of overturning jury verdicts in sexual violence cases.

“New York’s women deserve better,” Singas wrote.

Weinstein’s conviction in New York was considered a milestone for the #MeToo movement, in which women have accused hundreds of men in entertainment, media, politics and other fields of sexual misconduct.

“Today’s decision is a major step back in holding those accountable for acts of sexual violence,” said Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer who represented eight of Weinstein’s accusers. “It will require the victims to endure yet another trial.”

Weinstein was convicted in February 2020 in Manhattan of sexually assaulting former production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006, and raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013.

The charges on which he was convicted were first-degree sexual assault and third-degree rape. Jurors acquitted him on other charges.

Some states, including New York, responded to the #MeToo movement by passing laws that let women bring civil lawsuits seeking damages for sexual misconduct that occurred many years earlier even if statutes of limitations had already passed.

Weinstein co-founded the Miramax film studio, whose hit movies included “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction.” His own eponymous film studio filed for bankruptcy in March 2018.

He joins former comedian Bill Cosby among those who have had sexual assault convictions overturned.

Cosby’s 2018 conviction was overturned three years later by Pennsylvania’s highest court. The majority said a 2005 agreement by prosecutors not to charge Cosby with drugging and assaulting a woman meant he should not have been charged a decade later.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Brendan Pierson in New York, Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Susan Heavey in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday appointed Lise Grande as the new special envoy for Middle East humanitarian issues, the State Department said in a statement.

Grande, who replaces David Satterfield, is currently head of the independent U.S. Institute of Peace. She previously worked for the United Nations for more than 25 years, a career that included running aid operations in Yemen, Iraq and South Sudan.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; writing by Paul Grant)

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. economy grew at its slowest pace in nearly two years as a jump in imports to meet still-strong consumer spending widened the trade deficit, but an acceleration in inflation reinforced expectations that the Federal Reserve would not cut interest rates before September.

The slowdown in growth reported by the Commerce Department in a snapshot of first-quarter gross domestic product on Thursday also reflected a slower pace of inventory accumulation by businesses and downshift in government spending. Domestic demand remained strong last quarter.

“This report comes in with mixed messages,” said Olu Sonola, head of economic research at Fitch. “If growth continues to slowly decelerate, but inflation strongly takes off again in the wrong direction, the expectation of a Fed interest rate cut in 2024 is starting to look increasingly more out of reach.”

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.6% annualized rate last quarter, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said. Growth was largely supported by consumer spending. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast GDP rising at a 2.4% rate, with estimates ranging from a 1.0% pace to a 3.1% rate.

The economy grew at a 3.4% rate in the fourth quarter. The first quarter growth’s pace was below what U.S. central bank officials regard as the non-inflationary growth rate of 1.8%.

Inflation surged, with the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding food and energy increasing at a 3.7% rate after rising at 2.0% pace in the fourth quarter.

The so-called core PCE price index is one of the inflation measures tracked by the Fed for its 2% target. The central bank has kept its policy rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range since July. It has raised the benchmark overnight interest rate by 525 basis points since March of 2022.

Consumer spending grew at a still-solid 2.5% rate, slowing from the 3.3% growth pace rate notched in the fourth quarter.

Economists worry that lower-income households have depleted their pandemic savings and are largely relying on debt to fund purchases. Recent data and comments from bank executives indicated that lower-income borrowers were increasingly struggling to keep up with their loan payments.

Business inventories increased at a $35.4 billion rate after rising at a $54.9 billion pace in the fourth quarter. Inventories subtracted 0.35 percentage point from GDP growth.

The trade deficit chopped off 0.86 percentage point from GDP growth. Excluding inventories, government spending and trade, the economy grew at a 3.1% rate after expanding at a 3.3% rate in the fourth quarter.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Andrea Ricci)