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Longest government shutdown in US history ends after 43 days
Legal Interview |
2025/11/13 05:39
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President Donald Trump signed a government funding bill Wednesday night, ending a record 43-day shutdown that caused financial stress for federal workers who went without paychecks, stranded scores of travelers at airports and generated long lines at some food banks.
Before signing the legislation, Trump said the government should never shut down again, adding, “This is no way to run a country.”
Trump’s signature draws to a close the second government shutdown he’s overseen in the White House, one that magnified the partisan divisions in Washington as his administration took unprecedented unilateral actions -- including canceling projects and trying to fire federal workers -- to pressure Democrats into relenting on their demands.
The signing ceremony came just hours after the House passed the measure on a mostly party-line vote of 222-209. The Senate had already passed the measure Monday.
In lengthy remarks before affixing his name, Trump said, “It’s an honor now to sign this incredible bill.”
He said the government should never shut down again, adding, “This is no way to run a country.”
Trump was surrounded in the Oval Office by Republican lawmakers and some former members of Congress who are now heading powerful business lobbying groups.
His signature drew applause, but Trump didn’t answer questions on the Epstein scandal or any other topic before the press was hustled out.
Trump signed the government funding bill Wednesday night, drawing to a close the second government shutdown he’s overseen in the White House.
The signing ceremony came just hours after the House passed the measure on a mostly party-line vote of 222-209. The Senate had already passed the measure Monday.
Congress has taken a major step toward reopening the government, but there’s still uncertainty about when all 42 million Americans who receive SNAP food aid will have access to their full November benefits.
One provision in the bill that would reopen the government calls for restarting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but even that doesn’t resolve when the benefits will be loaded onto the debit cards beneficiaries use to buy groceries.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the program, said in an email Wednesday that funds could be available “upon the government reopening, within 24 hours for most states.” The department didn’t immediately answer questions about where it might take longer. |
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Call of Duty Maker Seeks Dismissal in Texas School Shooting Case
Legal Interview |
2025/09/18 07:56
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A lawyer for the maker of the video game Call of Duty argued Friday that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit brought by families of the victims of the Robb Elementary School attack in Uvalde, Texas, saying the contents of the war game are protected by the First Amendment.
The families sued Call of Duty maker Activision and Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, saying that the companies bear responsibility for promoting products used by the teen gunman.
Three sets of parents who lost children in the shooting were in the audience at the Los Angeles hearing.
Activision lawyer Bethany Kristovich told Superior Court Judge William Highberger that the “First Amendment bars their claims, period full stop.”
“The issues of gun violence are incredibly difficult,” Kristovich said. “The evidence in this case is not.”
She argued that the case has little chance of prevailing if it continues, because courts have repeatedly held that “creators of artistic works, whether they be books, music, movies, TV or video games, cannot be held legally liable for the acts of their audience.”
The lawsuit, one of many involving Uvalde families, was filed last year on the second anniversary of one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. Officers finally confronted and shot him after waiting more than an hour to enter the fourth-grade classroom.
Kimberly Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting, was among the parents who came from Texas to Southern California, where Activision is based, for the hearing.
“We traveled all this way, so we need answers,” Rubio said outside the courthouse. “It’s our hope that the case will move forward so we can get those answers.”
An attorney for the families argued during the hearing that Call of Duty exceeds its First Amendment protections by moving into marketing.
“The basis of our complaint is not the existence of Call of Duty,” Katie Mesner-Hage told the judge. “It is using Call of Duty as a platform to market weapons to minors.”
The plaintiffs’ lawyers showed contracts and correspondence between executives at Activison and gunmakers whose products, they said, are clearly and exactly depicted in the game despite brand names not appearing.
Mesner-Hage said the documents show that they actually prefer being unlabeled because “it helps shield them from the implication that they are marketing guns to minors,” while knowing that players will still identify and seek out the weapons.
Kristovich said there is no evidence that the kind of product placement and marketing the plaintiffs are talking about happened in any of the editions of the game the shooter played.
The families have also filed a lawsuit against Daniel Defense, which manufactured the AR-style rifle used in the May 24, 2022, shooting. Koskoff argued that a replica of the rifle clearly appears on a splash page for Call of Duty.
Josh Koskoff, the families’ Connecticut-based lead attorney, also represented families of nine Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims in a lawsuit against gunmaker Remington and got a $73 million lawsuit settlement.
He invoked Sandy Hook several times in his arguments, saying the shooters there and in Uvalde shared the same gaming obsession.
Koskoff said the Uvalde shooter experienced “the absorption and the loss of self in Call of Duty.”
He said that immersion was so deep that the shooter searched online for how to obtain an armored suit that he didn’t know only exists in the game.
Koskoff played a clip from Call of Duty Modern Warfare, the game the shooter played, with a first-person shooter gunning down opponents.
The shots echoed loudly in the courtroom, and several people in the audience slowly shook their heads.
“Call of Duty is in a class of its own,” Koskoff said.
Kristovich argued for Activision that the game, despite its vast numbers of players, can be tied to only a few of the many U.S. mass shootings.
“The game is incredibly common. It appears in a scene on ‘The Office,’” she said. She added that it is ridiculous to assert that “this is such a horrible scourge that your honor has to essentially ban it through this lawsuit.”
Highberger told the lawyers he was not leaning in either direction before the hearing. He gave no time frame for when he will rule, but a quick decision is not expected.
The judge did tell the plaintiffs’ lawyers that their description of Activision’s actions seemed like deliberate malfeasance, where their lawsuit alleges negligence. He said that was the biggest hurdle they needed to clear.
“Their conduct created a risk of exactly what happened,” Mesner-Hage told him. “And we represent the people who are exactly the foreseeable victims of that conduct.”
Meta’s attorneys will make arguments on a similar motion next month.
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Trump seeks Supreme Court order to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Legal Interview |
2025/09/15 07:54
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The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors.
The Republican administration turned to the high court after an appeals court refused to go along with ousting Cook, part of President Donald Trump’s effort to reshape the Fed’s seven-member governing board and strike a blow at its independence.
The White House campaign to unseat Cook marks an unprecedented bid to reshape the Fed board, which was designed to be largely independent from day-to-day politics. No president has fired a sitting Fed governor in the agency’s 112-year history.
Cook, who was appointed to the Fed’s board by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has said she won’t leave her post and won’t be “bullied” by Trump. One of her lawyers, Abbe Lowell, has said she “will continue to carry out her sworn duties as a Senate-confirmed Board Governor.”
Separately, Senate Republicans on Monday confirmed Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee to an open spot on the Fed’s board. Both Cook and Miran took part in Wednesday’s vote in which the Fed cut its key interest rate by a quarter-point.
The next opportunity for Cook to cast a vote will be at the meeting of the Fed’s interest rate setting committee, scheduled for Oct. 28-29.
Trump sought to fire Cook on Aug. 25, but a federal judge ruled last week that the removal probably was illegal and reinstated her to the Fed’s board. Trump has accused Cook of mortgage fraud because she appeared to claim two properties, in Michigan and Georgia, as “primary residences” in June and July 2021, before she joined the board. Such claims can lead to a lower mortgage rate and smaller down payment than if one of them was declared as a rental property or second home.
“Put simply, the President may reasonably determine that interest rates paid by the American people should not be set by a Governor who appears to have lied about facts material to the interest rates she secured for herself ? and refuses to explain the apparent misrepresentations,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in his Supreme Court filing.
But Cook has denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime. According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, Cook did specify that her Atlanta condo would be a “vacation home,” according to a loan estimate she obtained in May 2021. And in a form seeking a security clearance, she described it as a “2nd home.” Both documents appear to undercut the Trump administration’s claims of fraud.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the administration had not satisfied a legal requirement that Fed governors can only be fired “for cause,” which she said was limited to misconduct while in office. Cook did not join the Fed’s board until 2022.
Cobb also held that Trump’s firing would have deprived Cook of her due process, or legal right, to contest the firing.
By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the federal appeals court in Washington rejected the administration’s request to let Cook’s firing proceed.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that even if the conduct occurred before her time as governor, her alleged action “indisputably calls into question Cook’s trustworthiness and whether she can be a responsible steward of the interest rates and economy.”
Trump has previously won orders from the court’s conservative majority to fire the presidentially appointed leaders of other independent federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Trade Commission, even as legal fights continue.
Those firings have been at will, with no cause given. The Supreme Court has distinguished the Federal Reserve from those other agencies, strongly suggesting that Trump can’t act against Fed governors without cause.
In its new filing to the Supreme Court, the administration is asking Chief Justice John Roberts for a temporary order that would effectively remove Cook from the board and a more lasting order from the whole court that would be in place while her legal case continues. |
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‘Ketamine Queen’ pleads guilty to selling fatal dose to Matthew Perry
Legal Interview |
2025/09/01 12:53
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A woman branded as the “Ketamine Queen” pleaded guilty Wednesday to selling Matthew Perry the drug that killed him, becoming the fifth and final defendant charged in Perry’s overdose death to admit guilt.
Jasveen Sangha pleaded guilty to five federal charges, including providing the ketamine that led to Perry’s death. Her trial had been planned to start later this month.
Perry’s mother, Suzanne Perry, and his stepfather, “Dateline” reporter Keith Morrison, sat in the audience. It was their first time attending court proceedings since the announcement of the indictments one year ago.
Wearing tan jail garb, Sangha stood in court Wednesday next to her attorney Mark Geragos as she repeated “guilty” five times when U.S. District Court Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett asked for her pleas.
Before that, she answered “yes, your honor” to dozens of procedural questions, hedging slightly when the judge asked if she knew the drugs she was giving to co-defendant and middleman Erik Fleming were going to Perry.
“There was no way I could tell 100%,” she said. She later added, to a similar question on vials of ketamine she gave to Fleming, that “I didn’t know if all of them or some of them” were bound for Perry. The comments didn’t affect her plea agreement.
Prosecutors had cast Sangha, a 42-year-old citizen of the U.S. and the U.K., as a prolific drug dealer who was known to her customers as the “Ketamine Queen,” using the term often in press releases and court documents.
Making good on a deal she signed on Aug. 18, Sangha pleaded guilty to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
“She feels horrible about all of this. Nobody wants to be in the chain of causation for lack of a better term,” Geragos said outside the federal courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. “She feels horrible and she’s felt horrible since day one.”
Sangha admitted to selling drugs directly to 33-year-old Cody McLaury, who died from an overdose in 2019. McLaury had no connection to Perry.
Prosecutors agreed to drop three other counts.
Geragos, whose other clients have included Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and the Menendez brothers, told the judge that the deal was reached “after a robust back-and-forth with the government.”
The final plea deal came a year after federal prosecutors announced the indictments in Perry’s Oct. 28, 2023 death after a sweeping investigation.
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US deportation flights hit record highs as carriers try to hide the planes
Legal Interview |
2025/08/27 12:54
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Immigration advocates gather like clockwork outside Seattle’s King County International Airport to witness deportation flights and spread word of where they are going and how many people are aboard. Until recently, they could keep track of the flights using publicly accessible websites.
But the monitors and others say airlines are now using dummy call signs for deportation flights and are blocking the planes’ tail numbers from tracking websites, even as the number of deportation flights hits record highs under President Donald Trump. The changes forced them to find other ways to follow the flights, including by sharing information with other groups and using data from an open-source exchange that tracks aircraft transmissions.
Their work helps people locate loved ones who are deported in the absence of information from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which rarely discloses flights. News organizations have used such flight tracking in reporting.
Tom Cartwright, a retired J.P. Morgan financial officer turned immigration advocate, tracked 1,214 deportation-related flights in July — the highest level since he started watching in January 2020. About 80% are operated by three airlines: GlobalX, Eastern Air Express and Avelo Airlines. They carry immigrants to other airports to be transferred to overseas flights or take them across the border, mostly to Central American countries and Mexico.
Cartwright tracked 5,962 flights from the start of Trump’s second term through July, a 41% increase from 1,721 over the same period in 2024. Those figures including information from major deportation airports but not smaller ones like King County International Airport, also known as Boeing Field. Cartwright’s figures include 68 military deportation flights since January — 18 in July alone. Most have gone to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
The work became so demanding that Cartwright, 71, and his group, Witness at the Border, turned over the job this month to Human Rights First, which dubbed its project “ICE Flight Monitor.”
“His work brings essential transparency to U.S. government actions impacting thousands of lives and stands as a powerful example of citizen-driven accountability in defense of human rights and democracy,” Uzrz Zeya, Human Rights First’s chief executive officer, said.
The airlines did not respond to multiple email requests for comment. ICE is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which would not confirm any security measures it has taken.
La Resistencia, a Seattle-area nonprofit immigration rights group, has monitored 59 flights at Boeing Field and five at the Yakima airport in 2025, surpassing its 2024 total of 42.
Not all are deportation flights. Many are headed to or from immigration detention centers or to airports near the border. La Resistencia counted 1,023 immigrants brought in to go to the ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, and 2,279 flown out, often to states on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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