Supreme Court justices and donors mingle at campus visits. These documents show the ethical dilemmas
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas headlined a 2017 program at McLennan Community College in Texas, his hosts had more than a speech in mind. Working with the prominent conservative lawyer Ken Starr, school officials crafted a guest list for a dinner at the home of a wealthy Texas businessman, hoping an audience with Thomas would be a reward for school patrons -– and an inducement to prospective donors.
Before Justice Elena Kagan visited the University of Colorado’s law school in 2019, one official in Boulder suggested a “larger donor to staff ratio” for a dinner with her. After Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmed she would attend a 2017 question-and-answer session at Clemson University and a private luncheon, officials there made sure to invite $1 million-plus donors to the South Carolina college.
The Associated Press obtained tens of thousands of pages of emails and other documents that reveal the extent to which public colleges and universities have seen visits by justices as opportunities to generate donations -– regularly putting justices in the room with influential donors, including some whose industries have had interests before the court.
The documents also reveal that justices spanning the court’s ideological divide have lent the prestige of their positions to partisan activity, headlining speaking events with prominent politicians, or advanced their own personal interests, such as sales of their books, through college visits.
The conduct would likely be prohibited if done by lower court federal judges. But the Supreme Court’s definition of banned fundraising is so narrow -– simply an event that raises more than it costs or where guests are asked for donations -– that it does not account for soliciting contributors later while reminding them of the special access they were afforded.
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Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten released from prison a half-century after grisly killings
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, a former homecoming princess who at 19 helped carry out the shocking killings of a wealthy Los Angeles couple at the direction of the violent and manipulative cult leader, walked out of a California prison Tuesday after serving more than 50 years of a life sentence.
Van Houten, now 73, “was released to parole supervision,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.
She left the California Institution for Women in Corona, east of Los Angeles, in the early morning hours and was driven to transitional housing, her attorney Nancy Tetreault said.
“She’s still trying to get used to the idea that this real,” Tetreault told The Associated Press.
Days earlier Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would not fight a state appeals court ruling that Van Houten should be granted parole. He said it was unlikely the state Supreme Court would consider an appeal.
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NATO chief says no timetable set for Ukraine's membership; Zelenskyy calls that ‘absurd’
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — NATO leaders said Tuesday that they would allow Ukraine to join the alliance “when allies agree and conditions are met” — a pronouncement that came just hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted the organization’s failure to set a timetable for his country as “absurd.”
Instead, alliance leaders decided to remove obstacles on Ukraine’s membership path so that it can join more quickly once the war with Russia is over.
“We reaffirmed Ukraine will become a member of NATO and agreed to remove the requirement for a membership action plan,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, referring to a key step in the process that involves advice and assistance for countries seeking to join.
“This will change Ukraine’s membership path from a two-step path to a one-step path,” Stoltenberg said.
Although many NATO members have funneled arms and ammunition to Zelenskyy’s forces, there is no consensus among the 31 allies for admitting Ukraine into NATO’s ranks.
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Larry Nassar was stabbed in prison cell, attack not seen by surveillance cameras, AP source says
Investigators probing disgraced former sports doctor Larry Nassar’s stabbing Sunday at a federal penitentiary in Florida are lacking a key piece of evidence: video of the assault.
Nassar was attacked inside his cell, a blind spot for prison surveillance cameras that only record common areas and corridors, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. In federal prison parlance, because of the lack of video, it is known as an "unwitnessed event."
It's the second time Nassar, the former U.S. women’s gymnastics team doctor, has been assaulted in federal custody while he's serving decades in prison for sexually abusing athletes and possessing explicit images of children.
The attack, which left Nassar hospitalized in stable condition with injuries including a collapsed lung, underscored persistent problems at the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Despite the Biden administration's vow to fix the broken prison system — with new leadership and an emphasis on turning prisoners into “good neighbors” — the agency has continued to struggle with violence, understaffing, abuse and misconduct.
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Trump can be held liable in writer’s defamation lawsuit after Justice Department reverses course
NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department on Tuesday said that Donald Trump can be held personally liable for remarks he made about a woman who accused him of rape — a reversal of its position that Trump was protected because he was president when he made the remarks.
In a letter filed with the judge presiding over a defamation lawsuit that columnist E. Jean Carroll brought in Manhattan federal court in 2020, the department says it no longer has “a sufficient basis” to conclude that Trump was motivated in his statements about Carroll’s claims by more than an insignificant desire to serve the United States.
Previously, the department had agreed with Trump's attorneys that he was protected from the lawsuit by the Westfall Act, which provides federal employees absolute immunity from lawsuits brought over conduct occurring within the scope of their employment.
In May, a jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages after concluding that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 at a midtown Manhattan Bergdorf Goodman store and then defamed her last fall with comments he made about her and her claims. While the jury concluded Trump sexually abused Carroll, it rejected her rape claim.
The trial resulted from a lawsuit Carroll brought last November after New York state temporarily allowed victims of sexual abuse to make civil claims for attacks that occurred even decades earlier.
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Vermont hit by 2nd day of floods as muddy water reaches the tops of parking meters in capital city
ANDOVER, Vt. (AP) — A storm that dumped up to two months of rain in two days in Vermont and other parts of the Northeast brought more flooding Tuesday to communities that included the state capital, where officials said that river levels at a dam just upstream appeared to be stable.
Muddy brown water from the Winooski River flowed Tuesday through the capital of Montpelier, obscuring vehicles and all but the tops of parking meters along picturesque streets lined with brick storefronts whose basements and lower floors were flooded. Some residents of the city of 8,000 slogged their way through the waist-high water; others canoed and kayaked along main streets to survey the scene. Shopkeepers took stock of damaged or lost goods.
Montpelier Town Manager Bill Fraser said the dam remains a lingering concern but that the city was shifting to a recovery mode, with water receding and public works employees expected Wednesday morning to start removing mud and debris from downtown streets. Building inspections will start as businesses begin cleaning up their properties.
“The dam did not spill over. The water in the dam is still up there but it stabilized. We are feeling like the water going over the spillway of the dam is not an imminent threat,” Fraser said. “It looks like it won’t breach. That is good. That is one less thing we have to have on our front burner.”
There were other signs of hope as Vermont rivers crested and flood waters receded, allowing officials to begin assessing the damage and the scope of the clean-up ahead. The flooding has already caused tens of millions of dollars in damage throughout the state.
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Jury decides 2014 document found in Aretha Franklin's couch is a valid will
PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A document handwritten by singer Aretha Franklin and found in her couch after her 2018 death is a valid Michigan will, a jury said Tuesday, a critical turn in a dispute that has turned her sons against each other.
It’s a victory for Kecalf Franklin and Edward Franklin whose lawyers had argued that papers dated 2014 should override a 2010 will that was discovered around the same time in a locked cabinet at the Queen of Soul’s home in suburban Detroit.
The jury deliberated less than an hour after a brief trial that started Monday. After the verdict was read, Aretha Franklin's grandchildren stepped forward from the first row to hug Kecalf and Edward.
“I'm very, very happy. I just wanted my mother's wishes to be adhered to,” Kecalf Franklin said. “We just want to exhale right now. It's been a long five years for my family, my children.”
Aretha Franklin was a global star for decades, known especially for hits like “Think,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Respect.” She did not leave behind a formal, typewritten will when she died five years ago at age 76.
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A fire destroyed millions of veterans' records. 50 years later, families are still seeking answers
The apocalyptic scene is still burned into Mike Buttery’s memory 50 years later: Black smoke billowing from the top floor of the Military Personnel Records Center; bits of paper wafting through the air as dozens of firefighters tried desperately to stem the inferno.
“They’d hit it (the paper) with the water, and the water would knock it back up in the air, and then it would float around some more out there,” Buttery, then a janitor at the center, recalls of the wind-whipped paper swirling around the massive six-story building outside Saint Louis.
As he watched from a safe remove, Buttery could only think of the millions of veterans — like himself — whose records were being consumed and “how in the world would they get their benefits.”
“It immediately went through my mind that those people were losing whatever history there was of their service,” Buttery, who served with the Army in northern Vietnam, said during a recent interview from his home in a rural area southwest of the city.
The July 12, 1973, fire in Overland, Missouri, consumed an estimated 16 to 18 million personnel files, the vast majority covering the period just before World War I through 1963. It’s believed to be the largest loss of records in one catastrophe in U.S. history.
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Humans' impact on the earth began a new epoch in the 1950s called the Anthropocene, scientists say
From climate change to species loss and pollution, humans have etched their impact on the Earth with such strength and permanence since the middle of the 20th century that a special team of scientists says a new geologic epoch began then.
Called the Anthropocene — and derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new” — this epoch started sometime between 1950 and 1954, according to the scientists. While there is evidence worldwide that captures the impact of burning fossil fuels, detonating nuclear weapons and dumping fertilizers and plastics on land and in waterways, the scientists are proposing a small but deep lake outside of Toronto, Canada — Crawford Lake — to place a historic marker.
“It’s quite clear that the scale of change has intensified unbelievably and that has to be human impact,” said University of Leicester geologist Colin Waters, who chaired the Anthropocene Working Group.
This puts the power of humans in a somewhat similar class with the meteorite that crashed into Earth 66 million years ago, killing off dinosaurs and starting the Cenozoic Era, or what is conversationally known as the age of mammals. But not quite. While that meteorite started a whole new era, the working group is proposing that humans only started a new epoch, which is a much smaller geologic time period.
The group aims to determine a specific start date of the Anthropocene by measuring plutonium levels at the bottom of Crawford Lake.
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Microsoft can move ahead with record $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, judge rules
A federal judge has handed Microsoft a major victory by declining to block its looming $69 billion takeover of video game company Activision Blizzard. Regulators sought to ax the deal saying it will hurt competition.
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said in a ruling that the merger deserved scrutiny, noting it could be the largest in the history of the tech industry. But federal regulators were unable to show how it would cause serious harm and wouldn't likely prevail if they took it to a full trial, she wrote.
The Federal Trade Commission, which enforces antitrust laws, “has not raised serious questions regarding whether the proposed merger is likely to substantially lessen competition” between video game consoles or in the growing markets for monthly game subscriptions or cloud-based gaming, Corley said.
A ruling favorable to Microsoft was not a surprise after the company's lawyers had the upper hand in a 5-day San Francisco court hearing that ended late last month. The proceeding showcased testimony by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and longtime Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who both pledged to keep Activision’s blockbuster game Call of Duty available to people who play it on consoles — particularly Sony's PlayStation — that compete with Microsoft’s Xbox.
“Our merger will benefit consumers and workers. It will enable competition rather than allow entrenched market leaders to continue to dominate our rapidly growing industry,” Kotick said in a written statement after Tuesday's ruling.
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