Center

June 4 (UPI) — The Kennedy Center ordered its staff Thursday to remove President Donald Trump‘s name from the center by June 12.

A memo was sent out from the center’s general counsel that said they must remove all references from signs, brochures, websites, furniture and more, and that they must update email signatures and letterhead immediately.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the center’s board had overstepped its authority when it voted to add Trump’s name to the center. The memo was the first sign that the center plans to comply with the order.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” Cooper said.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, filed a lawsuit on Dec. 23 against Trump and others alleging that the move was illegal.

Trump claimed that naming the center after him was a surprise, but the name was added to the sign the next day.

Justice Department lawyers representing Trump later said the speed of the move showed it had been “prepared and/or purchased prior to the Board’s vote the day before,” The Washington Post reported.

Thursday’s memo also said officials were “considering their options and will provide further guidance shortly” on whether the center will close after July 5. The center was scheduled for two years of closure for a $257 million renovation.

In his decision, Cooper said the renovations are “sorely needed,” and his ruling doesn’t bar the board from closing “should it come to this decision anew after independently balancing its multiple obligations to the Center in a prudent fashion,” CBS News reported.

“By way of this opinion, the Court does not purport to dictate how the Center should be run, nor does it prescribe any particular plan for the institution — construction, closure or otherwise — moving forward,” he wrote. “It simply holds the Kennedy Center Board to certain minimum requirements imposed by law. Beyond that, the Court will let the parties play on.”

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday night that Alabama Republican leaders may redraw their congressional voting districts to oust a Black Democrat and elect a white Republican.

The court’s conservatives, who ruled for Louisiana Republicans in a redistricting dispute, extended that decision to Alabama. The three liberals dissented.

The decision clears the way for the governor and state lawmakers to redraw their congressional voting map with six districts that favor Republicans and one that favors a Democrat.

“Weeks ago, I warned that vacating the District Court’s injunction in these cases would ‘unleash chaos and … confuse voters,’ ” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “Yet just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the Court today doubles down on chaos. Because I choose to defend the rule of law and the right of all Alabamians to participate equally in democracy, I respectfully dissent.”

The justices granted an emergency appeal that was backed by the Trump administration and set aside the decision of a three-judge panel in Alabama.

The court in a brief opinion said the three judges should not have blocked Alabama’s new map.

“While federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, states are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests,” the court said.

Alabama’s emergency appeal went to Justice Clarence Thomas, who referred it to the full court.

Those three judges, two of them Trump appointees, ruled that Alabama’s state lawmakers discriminated against Black voters, who made up a near majority in the center of the state.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court agreed.

In a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices upheld the creation of a second district in the center of the state where Black voters had a near majority.

The result then was an Alabama state voting map that favored five Republicans and two Democrats for the House of Representatives.

But last month, in the wake of the Louisiana decision, Alabama’s lawmakers went back to court, arguing that the state may return to the voting map with only a single Black majority district.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Alabama’s Atty. Gen. Steven Marshall argued that the high court’s decision in favor of Louisiana “vindicates Alabama position on the lawfulness” of its earlier voting map. He said the state should not be penalized for “refusing to intentionally discriminate” to favor Black voters.

The court’s decision has cleared the way for Republican-led states in the South to flip congressional districts in Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida and now Alabama.

NEWARK, N.J. — New Jersey state police set up designated protest zones and vehicle checkpoints outside an immigration detention center in Newark on Friday, replacing federal immigration enforcement agents who have been clashing with protesters for days.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill said she sent in state police to bring order outside Delaney Hall as the demonstrations have intensified, with violence and arrests increasing as night falls.

“It has grown unsafe, and that’s completely unacceptable,” the Democratic governor said at a news conference announcing the new measures. “We need to take this opportunity to lower the temperature.”

As police erected protest barriers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who had formed a line in front of protesters moved inside the building’s perimeter fence.

New Jersey State Police Lt. Col. David Sierotowicz said ICE officers agreed to stand down with state police assuming responsibility.

Demonstrators had mixed reactions. Some staged a sit-in and refused to move into one of the new protest areas police set up using metal barriers and concrete blocks.

Rachel Cohen worried that demonstrators exercising their 1st Amendment rights were being silenced.

“It is not helpful to quell protest for the sake of a false peace,” she said. “There is no peace while we are torturing our neighbors on [the] government dime inside this facility.”

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, on social media, called the measures a “win for law and order” and noted that Sherrill had resisted sending state police for days.

The protests began a week earlier after immigrant advocates said detainees inside launched a hunger strike over poor living conditions at the 1,000-bed facility, which opened last May.

Demonstrators have been attempting to block people and vehicles from entering and exiting, linking their arms in a human chain and using trash cans, umbrellas and other items as makeshift shields and barricades.

ICE officers wearing helmets and tactical vests have used pepper spray and batons to try to disperse the protesters and clear the roadway for vehicles.

At least six demonstrators were arrested and accused of assaulting law enforcement officers Wednesday night, and more have been arrested on other nights, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche shared images online Friday of bloody wounds and bruises sustained by ICE officers.

“These riots are clearly not ‘peaceful protests’ as you can see from the photos of these horrific wounds,” he said. “Assault a federal officer, you’ll be held accountable.”

Another demonstrator, Lisa O’Dwyer, said she was fine with the designated protest areas.

“I like to get my point across and stay safe at the same time,” the Westfield resident said.

Eyesha Marable, pastor at Mt. Zion AME Church in Millburn, agreed, even while acknowledging that there were “different schools of thought” among protesters.

“There are people here who are angry. Their family members are inside. Their friends are inside. People have been taken off the streets, out of their communities,” she said.

“We have to keep the peace,” Marable said. “The goal is to get our people free, to get them liberated, and we cannot do that if we’re fighting out here.”

State Atty. Gen. Jennifer Davenport said it was important to “de-escalate” the situation as “violence, either against protesters or by protesters, is unacceptable.”

Sherrill said she did not want to give ICE a pretext to expand operations in the state, noting that federal immigration officers around the country have killed and injured protesters in recent months.

“We all need to do everything we can to cool things down now,” she said.

The governor and other Democratic officials tried to visit detainees Monday but were denied entry.

Democratic members of Congress from New York City, however, were able to tour Delaney Hall the day after that. They reported dire conditions, with detainees being fed small portions of often spoiled food and their varied medical needs going ignored.

Families and supporters of detainees also say their loved ones have also been subjected to pepper spray and physical force in retaliation for their hunger strike and the protests outside.

Marcelo and Shaffrey write for the Associated Press and reported from New York and Newark, respectively.

May 29 (UPI) — A federal judge on Friday said President Donald Trump‘s name must be removed from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts in a ruling that also blocked plans to shutter the facility for two years for renovations.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper for the District of Columbia handed down the decisions halting Trump’s plans to impose sweeping changes at the historic venue.

The Kennedy Center’s board of trustees voted in December to add Trump’s name to the building. The decision came less than a year after Trump dismissed the entire board and named new board members, who in turn elected him chairman.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” Cooper wrote.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, sued in response to the name change. Meanwhile, a coalition launched a separate lawsuit in March asking the court to stop the administration from shuttering the facility for two years and carrying out its quarter-billion-dollar reconstruction project.

Trump said the decision to close the facility came after a yearlong review in consultation with contractors, musical experts, arts institutions, and advisers and consultants. He had initially considered a partial project that would permit shows to continue, but decided the best option for the venue was a temporary closure.

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex officio member of the board who sued to have access about the details of renovations, said she believes Trump wants to shutter the Kennedy Center in response to dozens of individuals and cultural organizations who have canceled appearances there in response to Trump trying to rename the center after himself. Beatty said the documents she received about the renovations were “inadequate.”

She said “the documents prove that there is absolutely no basis to shutter this precious living memorial and beloved institution,” she said in a statement. “It certainly looks like President Trump is shutting down the center because he is embarrassed that ticket sales are down and artists are fleeing since his illegal renaming.”

Beatty’s lawyers said she was concerned Trump might use his hand-selected board to push through wholesale changes at the Kennedy Center to design a facility more to his liking. In October, Trump had the East Wing of the White House demolished to make room for a $250 million ballroom.

In a post on Truth Social in March, Trump shared renderings of what he expected the center to look like after the renovations. He said he’s not planning to rip out the facade.

A Washington Post analysis of the renderings show very few changes to the exterior of the building, including altered cornices, updated roof and some windows, painted columns, new signage and landscaping changes.

US President Donald Trump has announced he plans to withdraw his leadership from the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, after a federal judge ruled he could no longer have his name on the building.

On Friday, in a 580-word post, Trump blasted Judge Christopher Cooper as reckless. He also painted the performing arts centre as a dilapidated structure only he could restore.

“Unfortunately, Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of,” Trump wrote, referring to himself in third person.

But Trump’s interventions at the Kennedy Center, a national performing arts centre in Washington, DC, have been controversial from the start.

Construction on the building began in 1964, shortly after President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

That year, his successor, Lyndon B Johnson, signed into law an act of Congress that established the site as a “living memorial” to the slain leader.

But since starting his second term, Trump has sought to reshape Washington, DC, in his own image, undertaking construction projects and erecting banners with his photograph.

Within weeks of his inauguration, in February 2025, he fired Democratic members of the Kennedy Center’s bipartisan board and replaced them with his picks.

He also terminated the leadership of the centre’s longtime president, Deborah Rutter. The board quickly elected Trump as chair instead.

But some of the biggest backlash came in December, when the board went a step further and voted to rename the building “The Donald J Trump and the John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts”.

Within a day, construction crews were seen outside the arts centre, adding Trump’s name to the outside of the edifice.

Critics immediately denounced the effort as a violation of the 1964 law, not to mention a sign of disrespect towards the late Kennedy.

Amid public pressure and a string of cancellations from performers, Trump announced in February he would shutter the arts centre for two years, starting in July. He cited renovations as his rationale for the sudden closure.

US Representative Joyce Beatty, a Kennedy Center trustee, sued to stop the closure from happening. She also sought the removal of Trump’s name.

Inside the court’s ruling

In Friday’s ruling, Judge Cooper — an appointee of former President Barack Obama — sided with Beatty’s requests.

He ordered that Trump’s name must be removed from the theatre’s facade, as well as any other signage or official materials, within 14 days, citing the 1964 law.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” Cooper wrote.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

Cooper also overturned the Trump-led board’s decision to strip trustees like Beatty of the right to vote on Kennedy Center matters. Beatty is one of several bipartisan trustees who have a seat on the board by virtue of an act of Congress.

“If trustees presumptively possess the right to vote, what, if anything, authorizes the Board to unilaterally strip certain trustees of voting rights?” Cooper asked in his decision, striking down the Trump-era policy.

“Absent Congressional authorization, the Board may not deprive a duly-appointed Kennedy Center trustee of her right to vote on Board matters on which all other trustees are entitled to vote.”

In the last part of his 94-page decision, Cooper turned his attention to the Kennedy Center’s imminent closure.

He pointed to statements and plans from Trump administration officials touting the use of the performing arts facility before the July closure date, saying they undermined the assertion that the building was somehow hazardous.

“Former Kennedy Center President [Richard] Grenell emphasized that the Center would be one of the ‘premiere spots’ for America’s 250th celebration — quite a concerning idea if the Center is as dangerous as the Defendants now represent,” Cooper wrote, alluding to events scheduled for the coming weeks.

He later added, “Up until February 1, the Center was planning to proceed apace with some form of phased construction and cited no safety concerns about that plan.”

While closing the Kennedy Center is within the board’s powers, Cooper concluded that the board had likely violated its duty to administer the centre “as a prudent person would” under the law.

He therefore issued a temporary injunction against the centre’s closure. “The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one,” he wrote.

Reactions to the ruling

The ruling prompted an incensed rebuttal from Trump on his Truth Social platform. The president pledged to transfer oversight of the facility to Congress, under whose mandate the centre already operates.

“We are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it,” Trump wrote.

He also blasted Cooper as a partisan actor who had treated him “unfairly”, echoing similar criticisms he had levied against other judges.

“Judge Cooper should be ashamed of himself! I cannot be involved with a situation where danger to the Public is allowed to flourish in plain and open sight,” Trump said.

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’”

Beatty, meanwhile, applauded the ruling as a victory against unchecked power, unfettered by the law.

“The Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump,” she wrote.

“He has desecrated this sacred memorial for his own vanity. I am proud to have fought for the rule of law and to protect this sacred institution.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Friday that President Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center and blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington, D.C., ruled that the Kennedy Center board’s March 16 vote to close the facility was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained” with no regard for its legal obligations.

“The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one,” he wrote.

Cooper also concluded that the board “overstepped its statutory bounds” by unilaterally adding Trump’s name to the center. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it, he said.

Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, said Friday the institution is “confident that on appeal the court will uphold the Board’s will to recognize President Trump’s historic contributions to our nation’s cultural center.” She said the decision would be reviewed “carefully.”

“Though the reality remains — the Center requires an urgent and significant restoration – a truth that even the plaintiff acknowledges,” Daravi said. “With $257 million secured by President Trump and approved by Congress, the resources are in place and we remain committed to pursuing every lawful avenue to ensure the Trump Kennedy Center is restored as a national cultural landmark for all Americans to enjoy.”

Cooper held hearings in late April for parallel lawsuits challenging the project. One was filed by a group of cultural and historic preservation organizations. The other was brought Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board. He ruled in favor of Beatty’s request but rejected the other challenge.

Justice Department attorneys said renovation plans for the building are limited in scope and well within the board’s authority to make without needing outside approvals.

The plaintiffs worry the president and his board allies will flout preservation rules designed to maintain the building’s historic fabric. In earlier statements in court hearings, attorneys for Beatty and the preservation groups raised doubts about the limited scope of the project, pointing to Trump’s statements that he would “fully expose” the building’s steel skeleton. Beatty has said she was “very fearful that we’ll see what happened with the East Wing and what happened with the Rose Garden” if the center is closed and the renovations allowed unsupervised, referring to major changes the president has made at the White House.

Trump, a Republican, has taken a keen interest in the Kennedy Center’s operations since he returned to White House last year. He installed a handpicked board that named him chairman. His name was added to the facade of a building that is considered a living monument to President John F. Kennedy.

The Kennedy Center has kept up performances ahead of the closure, though at a much slower pace than in previous years. Trump attended the premiere of the musical “Chicago” in March and other shows, including “Moulin Rouge” are slated for June.

Bill Maher, the comedian who has had an up and down relationship with Trump, is expected to be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on June 28, an event that was anticipated to be one of the final big moments at the Kennedy Center before the closure.

Cooper was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Obama.

Kunzelman and Sloan write for the Associated Press.

NEWARK, N.J. — Protesters clashed with armed federal immigration officers in front of a New Jersey detention center where advocates have demonstrated for days while asserting that people detained there are staging a hunger strike over poor living conditions.

Groups of demonstrators, many wearing gas masks and other face coverings, linked arms in a human chain in front of Delaney Hall in Newark on Wednesday night, videos and photos posted on social media show.

Some used trash cans, old mattresses, umbrellas and other materials as makeshift shields and barricades as they confronted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Others attempted to block people and vehicles from entering and exiting the building or threw orange traffic cones and other objects in the direction of the ICE officers lined at the entry gate.

The group chanted, “You will hang!” and, “Every cop, every fed, shoot yourself in the head,” and other taunts at the officers, many of whom wore helmets and tactical vests.

The ICE officers used pepper spray to try to disperse the protesters, according to videos posted to social media. Some used their batons to beat and push back protesters as the officers attempted to clear the roadway for vehicles.

At least one truck driver got out of his vehicle to vent his frustration when some protesters tried to block vehicles driving on the road in front of the detention center. People detained inside could at times be seen waving to protesters from Delaney Hall’s windows.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said about six demonstrators were arrested for assaulting law enforcement officers.

“Assaulting and obstructing ICE law enforcement is a crime and felony,” the agency said in a statement. “Anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

On Thursday, demonstrators again returned to Delaney Hall.

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill also said state health department officials were “denied full access” to the facility for a health inspection. The Democrat said the officials were only allowed to inspect a limited part of the facility as she called on ICE to “de-escalate” the situation.

“As I’ve said repeatedly, refusing to provide full access raises serious questions about what ICE is trying to hide from public view,” Sherrill said in a statement that also repeated her calls to shut down the facility outright.

Earlier Wednesday, Democratic members of Congress from New York City toured the facility as part of an oversight visit. A private prison company runs the detention center, which sits along an industrial stretch of Newark Bay.

Reps. Jerry Nadler, Daniel Goldman and Adriano Espaillat, who all represent Manhattan, described dire conditions where people held in the facility are fed small portions of often spoiled food and their varied medical needs are ignored.

Homeland Security spokespersons have denied any hunger strike, abuse or poor conditions inside the center and dismissed criticism from opponents as political posturing.

INTERLOCHEN, Mich. — A Michigan summer arts camp and boarding school where Jeffrey Epstein has been accused of meeting at least two of his victims will tear down a lodge that once bore his name.

The Interlochen Center for the Arts said this week that its board of trustees has approved a plan to demolish the Green Lake Lodge, which had been known as Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge until the school cut ties and scrubbed references to the late millionaire sex offender after his first conviction in 2008.

Epstein attended the Interlochen Arts Camp in 1967 as a teenager, and donated more than $400,000 to the school between 1990 to 2003, including $200,000 for the construction of the lodge.

“The lodge has, over time, come to carry associations that are not reflective of who we are as an institution or the values we strive to uphold,” Interlochen said in a statement. “After careful consideration, the Board determined that removing this structure in a safe and timely manner is the right step for Interlochen at this time.”

A world-renowned destination for young artists, actors and musicians, Interlochen’s alumni include Grammy winners Chappell Roan and Norah Jones and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

At least two of Epstein’s accusers have said they met him at Interlochen in the 1990s.

The school said it was aware of news reports about the women’s claims and said it has invited them to speak with an independent investigator as part of an external investigation into reports of historical misconduct at Interlochen.

A pair of internal reviews, most recently after Epstein’s sex trafficking arrest in 2019, found no reports of misconduct at Interlochen involving Epstein in its records, the school said.

Epstein visited Interlochen periodically, often with his confidante and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and stayed in the lodge now marked for demolition.

According to correspondence included in the Justice Department’s recent release of Epstein-related records, he directed that tuition for at least one student be paid out of his donations and once flew violinist Itzhak Perlman to the school on his private jet.

Epstein killed himself in a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019, a month after being indicted on federal sex trafficking charges. In 2008 and 2009, he served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking for helping to recruit some of Epstein’s underage victims, and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

WASHINGTON — A Justice Department indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center is part of a “top-down” campaign of retribution against President Trump’s perceived political enemies and constitutes a vindictive prosecution that must be dismissed, lawyers for the nonprofit argued Tuesday in urging a judge to toss out the case.

The Alabama-based nonprofit was indicted in April on fraud and money laundering charges that accuse it of misleading donors by paying informants inside white supremacist and other extremist organizations to obtain inside information about their activities.

Lawyers for the SPLC already argued that law enforcement agencies have long known that the nonprofit paid informants to report on the movements of hate groups. They also said acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche made a false statement at a news conference and in interviews when he said the organization had not shared with law enforcement information it learned from informants. Blanche later appeared to walk back that claim in a television interview, saying it was true that the SPLC “selectively” shared information with law enforcement over the years.

The attorneys for the center expanded on those arguments Tuesday, saying in a motion to dismiss the case that the prosecution was the “culmination of a top-down, retributive campaign” in which Trump pushed the Justice Department “to go after those individuals and groups he deemed his political enemies, including the SPLC.”

Defense says indictment fits broader retaliation campaign

The motion was filed against the backdrop of other politically charged prosecutions that have raised concerns that the Justice Department is operating as a weapon to target Trump’s opponents. It aims to draw a parallel between the SPLC indictment and the human smuggling prosecution of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, which was dismissed Friday on similar vindictive prosecution grounds by a judge who called the case an “abuse of prosecuting power.”

The SPLC has said its now-defunct program of paying informants to infiltrate hate groups was developed to glean key insights into their activities so that potential victims could be protected. An earlier federal investigation into the practice was closed without charges, but the motion paints the current Justice Department as pursuing the case with renewed — and rushed — vigor.

The department decided to pursue the indictment without interviewing any current SPLC employees and did not seek any documents from the group until after it told defense lawyers that criminal charges were coming, the defense motion states. During a meeting requested by defense lawyers who hoped to avert to indictment, Justice Department officials informed them that the decision already had been made to pursue charges, according to the motion.

“These procedural irregularities show that the charges against the SPLC were a foregone conclusion based on prosecutorial vindictiveness — driven by the White House and FBI leadership’s retribution campaign — rather than the result of a good faith examination of the evidence,” the motion states, saying the indictment was “premised on conclusory accusations but devoid of provable facts or a proper statement of the law.”

The motion also cites whistleblower accounts that accused top Justice Department officials of rushing forward with an indictment despite internal concerns about the merits of the case and the strength of the evidence.

“For weeks, we have been arguing against these false allegations levied against the SPLC — an organization that for 55 years has stood as a beacon of hope fighting white supremacy and various forms of injustice to create a multiracial democracy where we can all live and thrive,” Bryan Fair, the interim president and chief executive officer of SPLC, said in a statement. “The government can’t prosecute the SPLC as payback for its protected speech — it violates basic constitutional rights.”

The administration has painted SPLC as partisan

Founded in 1971 as a civil rights organization, the SPLC over the decades has used litigation to fight white supremacist groups. It also tracks the activities and locations of domestic extremists. But its work has made it a popular target among Republicans who see it as overly leftist and partisan.

The center, for instance, received fresh attention last year after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk because the SPLC had included a section on the group that Kirk founded and led, Turning Point USA, in a report titled “The Year in Hate and Extremism 2024.”

FBI Director Kash Patel announced in October that the bureau would be severing its relationship with the SPLC, saying it had turned into a “partisan smear machine,” and he accused it of defaming “mainstream Americans” with its “hate map” that documents alleged antigovernment and hate groups inside the United States.

The defense motion says “animus” from senior levels of the administration helped shape the indictment.

It cites, among other comments, a statement from Trump deriding the SPLC as “a total scam run by the Democrats,” as well as a news media interview in which Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official, said the indictment was “personal” to her because she had “a lot of journalist friends … and groups that I’ve represented who have been targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

In the trunk of his battered 10-year-old Ford sedan, Larry Gross stores half a dozen scarred yellow folding chairs. The chairs, strewn among volleyballs, softball equipment and long-discarded papers, are essential equipment for a man who spends much of his life arranging and attending meetings.

Gross is a professional organizer, a man whose career is measured in meetings. He sets up his chairs everywhere in the tiny city of West Hollywood, in the dingy church office where he works, in the clean, well-lighted offices of City Hall, in cramped apartment common rooms and in sparsely furnished election headquarters.

What he accomplishes at those meetings often has immediate impact on the fortunes of the 16-month-old city. With the aid of a small band of young leftist activists and a loyal army of elderly Jewish tenants, Gross has built a potent grass-roots version of a political machine and become the city’s most commanding power broker.

Formidable Power Bloc

In the process, his Coalition for Economic Survival has transformed itself from a Los Angeles-based fringe pressure group with limited successes in rent control and street demonstrations into West Hollywood’s most formidable power bloc. No other organized group in the city wields as much influence or inflames as much controversy.

The coalition and its supporters have elected two of the city’s five council members–both of whom face reelection on April 8–and are priming for a third. Some of its volunteer members have wangled key appointments to the city’s commissions. Others have been hired in policy-making posts in the city’s fledgling bureaucracy.

“West Hollywood is (the coalition’s) oil gusher,” said Ron Stone, who led the city’s incorporation movement. “They’ve dug holes all over Los Angeles, but they never struck deep until they came to West Hollywood. They worked hard here and they deserve the rewards.”

The coalition’s primacy has alienated many of those who are accustomed to holding power. Landlords are roused to fury by the mere mention of Larry Gross’ name. Businessmen worry that the coalition’s continuing dominance will cost them profits. Rival politicians are jealous of the group’s clout. Even some council members seethe privately at the coalition’s refusal to compromise on minor political issues.

“CES is run by a very small group of people,” said Tony Melia, an insurance man who chairs a faction of moderate businessmen challenging the coalition for political supremacy in the April election. “They are a mystery to us all.”

Grist for Criticism

Nearly every move that the 34-year-old Gross makes as director of his coalition becomes instant grist for criticism: Passing folded notes to Mayor John Heilman and Councilwoman Helen Albert (both coalition members), Gross is accused of controlling their votes. Taping a flag over his office desk, he is branded a Communist (Gross described the flag, which has been taken down, as a United Farm Workers banner; his enemies say it was a hammer and sickle). Shaving his wispy beard and wearing suits instead of flannel shirts, he is said to be cleaning up his act for public consumption.

“People set me up as the enemy all the time,” Gross said. “They do it out of fear and envy. They really don’t have the foggiest notion of what CES is all about.”

Gross’ Hold on Coalition

Their obsession with Gross is hardly unwarranted. About 13 years after he founded the coalition with a group of peace activists and leftist leaders, Gross is the only original member left. Organizers and volunteers have come and gone, leaving because of “activist burnout,” because they needed a better-paying job or because of personal or philosophical conflicts. But Gross remains.

Although ostensibly a democratic organization, the coalition has remained securely in Gross’ control. His partisans say he is central to CES because of his natural leadership abilities; former members and enemies attribute his endurance to Machiavellian political cunning. But in the end, many who have watched Gross say he remains in control of the coalition because he simply is the coalition.

“Our success all trickles down from Larry,” said Jacqueline Balogh, the coalition’s membership director. “Without him, CES wouldn’t exist.”

Gross is a lean, fox-faced man who has a closet athlete’s fascination with competitive sports and a weakness for interrupting his organizing activities to attend Dodger and Laker home games.

He tries to keep his private life shielded from public scrutiny. “I don’t like the focus on me,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s the organization and what it has accomplished that’s important.”

Friends and former acquaintances say Gross lives in a sparsely furnished rented duplex in Echo Park. Five years ago, he made barely $500 a month at his job. These days, he makes more, but declines to reveal a figure. He still drives his decade-old Ford despite its growing list of automotive maladies.

His voice bears traces of a Queens accent that becomes thicker when he excitedly addresses crowds. “The landlords are trying to say rent control is not an issue in dis campaign!” he roared to an enthusiastic hall filled with senior citizens early this month. “The reason is dey don’t stand for strong rent control!”

Odd Man Out

The accent is one of the few facets of Gross’ activist life style that he has not polished. His is a career that began at Forest Hills High School in New York, where Gross found himself odd man out among fellow students in the late 1960s. “I was the only radical on campus,” he said.

He is the son of divorced parents. His father, a trade school teacher, lives in Miami; his mother, a volunteer with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, lives in Los Angeles, not far from West Hollywood. Both were influences on his burgeoning activism, his father as an active union member, his mother as a Holocaust survivor.

“What she went through outraged me whenever I thought about it,” Gross said.

Often joining older college students in peace marches at Central Park and other anti-Vietnam War activities, Gross graduated from high school with few prospects. He took a job as a clothing store salesman, but in 1972, came to Los Angeles to visit his mother, who had moved here.

Extending his stay by taking political science classes at Los Angeles City College, he became active in local efforts to drum up support for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. Drifting between activist groups, Gross in 1973 became involved in new union of peace and civil rights organizations which was protesting Nixon’s cuts in social service budgets.

The umbrella group became the Coalition for Economic Survival. “They had a little flat on Vermont Avenue with a small file cabinet in the back,” said Rosa Factor, an early coalition volunteer. “It was real small-scale. Larry was a lot different in those days. His hair was long and frizzy, hippie-style.”

Strong Points

The group’s forte was picket line protest and street theater. Demonstrating against high milk prices in 1974, coalition organizers toured inner-city shopping centers, urging a boycott. Gross and his fellow activists spoke from the back of a pickup truck, where they mounted a purple papier-mache cow named “C. Brunel Cow” after then-state Agriculture Secretary C. Brunel Christensen. At a later demonstration, protesting a Pico-Union expansion of a Pep Boys warehouse complex, Gross and his followers marched to the chant: “Manny, Moe and Jack! We want our buildings back!”

At first preoccupied with consumer issues such as rising bus fares and utility costs, the coalition managed to win favorable coverage in newspaper and television reports. They had little influence, however, on the commissions which made the decisions.

Skyrocketing rents that accompanied Los Angeles’ real estate speculation fever in the late 1970s gave the coalition a ready-made issue. “We cut our teeth on rent control,” said Norman Chramoff, a former coalition member who now works in West Hollywood’s rent control administration. “That’s when CES membership grew and grew.”

The new members were senior citizens, outraged that their rents were doubling and tripling, often in the span of a year. After learning to live on fixed incomes, many elderly tenants became afraid that they would be evicted from apartments where they had lived for years.

Remembering the horrors of the Depression, many seniors feared a return to poverty. “Anybody who lived through the Depression can’t imagine how scared we were,” said Martha Newman, a woman in her 60s who is an ardent coalition supporter. “CES saved us from that.”

Limited Victories

The coalition promised relief from the surging apartment rental rates. In a series of political confrontations with landlords, the coalition won limited victories. Although it did not get the strong rent protections it wanted, the coalition did help push a moderate rent control law (4% annual rent increase) through the Los Angeles City Council. In Los Angeles County, the coalition pressured supervisors, but was only able to help pass an even weaker rent law in 1979 (7% annual increase).

In November, 1983, a coalition-sponsored referendum failed to persuade county voters to adopt a tougher rent control law. Because of overwhelming support among senior renters, the referendum did well in West Hollywood–passing there by a 5-1 ratio–but it was not enough to keep rent control alive. That vote, which led to the expiration of county rent control in 1985, set the stage for West Hollywood’s incorporation battle.

By that time, the coalition had made deep inroads into the city’s elderly community (estimated at 40% of the area’s population). Those inroads proved crucial in the 1984 incorporation election.

Gross estimates that 2,000 of the coalition’s 5,000 members are in West Hollywood. Political observers of all stripes in West Hollywood agree that in an election year campaign, the coalition can command upwards of 2,000 votes–a significant block among West Hollywood’s 19,000 registered voters.

“West Hollywood is sort of our flagship,” Gross said. “We have a tremendous opportunity here.”

The city’s elderly tenants also provide the coalition with much of its financial support. At coalition meetings, organizers pass around empty fried chicken buckets, which are often returned brimming with cash and checks.

Several allegations of discrepancies in the coalition’s finances were reported to county officials last year. But Candace Beason, a prosecutor in the county district attorney’s investigative division, said her department has declined to investigate them. “They were relatively minor complaints,” she said last week. “The case is closed.”

Since its incorporation victory in November, 1984–in which two coalition members, Heilman and Albert, were elected to the council and the coalition aided the election victories of council members Alan Viterbi and Valerie Terrigno–the coalition has worked to consolidate its power.

New Headquarters

Late last year, the group moved its headquarters from a cluttered office on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles to a cluttered office in the Crescent Heights Methodist Church in West Hollywood. Working at night, amid old metal desks and boxes sagging with files, coalition organizers quickly felt at home in the new city.

But, as with nearly everything they do, coalition organizers found themselves under attack, this time just for moving into West Hollywood. Landlords, Republicans and businessmen tried to pressure church leaders and city officials to evict them but the CES has stayed put.

The coalition–and Gross, in particular–are under constant fire. During the 1984 incorporation election, he was branded a Communist by Jewish Defense League activist Irv Rubin. Rubin claimed then–and maintains today–that he has “inside information” proving that Gross visited Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro.

Gross labels the charges “the ravings of the far right.” Despite continued whisperings about “hidden agendas,” landlords and other political enemies of the coalition have never proved their claims.

But at least half a dozen former coalition members say they were invited by some coalition organizers to attend Marxist study meetings and similar functions. One former member, Mark Siegel, who is now chief deputy to Los Angeles Councilman Joel Wachs, said that he was asked several times to join a Marxist study group. He declined.

“The thing is, (CES) was such a loose group,” Siegel said. “There were all kinds of philosophies floating around there. We certainly weren’t being directed from Moscow.”

Both Gross and Heilman also admit that some members have been philosophical Marxists. “But we have Republicans among our steering committee people, too,” Gross said. “We even have one person who sells Amway products. Should we throw them out for that? I don’t think it really matters.”

‘I’m Scared’

“Of course it matters,” argues Tony Melia, who heads West Hollywood for Good Government, the group opposing the coalition in the April elections. “We want officials who choose for us, without any hidden agendas. If the rumors I hear are true, then I’m scared.”

Gross and his followers have also been portrayed as dogmatic and unwilling to take part in the compromises that are the basic components of small-town politics. “That is my one real gripe with them,” said Councilman Stephen Schulte. “There’s no middle ground to them.”

To that criticism, Heilman responds: “I don’t call that being dogmatic,” he said. “We stand for certain principles. Why should we deviate from them?”

Arguments over covert Marxism and political rigidity, however, mask the nature of the real power struggle in West Hollywood. Perceived as the most influential organization in the city, the coalition’s apparent clout is envied by groups that have had less sway with the City Council.

“At least until this election is over, they (the coalition) have the appearance of the most-organized political entity in town,” Schulte said. “One doesn’t confront them lightly.”

Those who do can expect to become enemies. When Melia unveiled his Good Government group earlier this year, he portrayed it as a rival of the coalition for political clout in West Hollywood. Gross immediately branded the group as a “front for the landlords.”

While it is indeed probable that the landlords would prefer victories by Good Government candidates in the April election, Gross immediately set into motion “an us-versus-them situation,” according to community activist Bob Conrich.

Black and White

“They have no gray areas,” Conrich said. “Larry’s convincing his elderly constituency that the landlords are waiting behind every corner to gouge them. It’s an effective political tactic, but it’s dishonest and it sets this city up for the same situation in every election. Larry will set someone up as a tool of the landlords and then try to knock them down.”

Such was the case earlier this month, when coalition organizers filled a hall at Plummer Park with senior citizens and raised the threat that the city’s rent control ordinance was in danger. “This election is going to be a big battle,” Gross said. “They have the money. They had it last time. But we have the people.”

It has been harder for the coalition to bring out their people when the heat of an election has cooled. During last year’s rent control battle, landlords far outnumbered tenants at public hearings on the proposed law.

Still, in rent control votes and in pressing for an affordable housing policy with the city’s interim growth ordinance, the coalition lived up to its reputation. On other votes, though, without obvious backing of its elderly constituents, the coalition has found itself sometimes limited in its influence over council decisions.

That became embarrassingly obvious to coalition organizers when the council refused to exact concessions from the Pacific Design Center in return for a planned major expansion. Heilman and Albert, backed by coalition lobbyists, pushed for fees that would have paid for a day-care center and provided seed money for a community development corporation. But in the end, the two council members gave up their fight.

Close Votes

The coalition has even had trouble getting some of its members appointed to city commissions. In close votes in recent months, the coalition’s candidates for posts on the city’s Transportation and Human Services commissions were defeated and the coalition even was unable to prevent landlord leader Grafton Tanquary from winning a spot on the Affordable Housing Task Force.

Schulte, Melia and a number of other political observers say such defeats indicate a lessening of the coalition’s clout. “I don’t think they loom as high on the horizon as they did six months ago,” Schulte said. “They haven’t kept up the pressure.”

But Gross and other coalition members say those defeats were minor ones, offset by gains achieved in a less obvious area–political organizing among the city’s 89% tenant population. The coalition is trying to win more allies among the apartment dwellers for future elections.

In recent months, Gross and his fellow organizers have shown up weekly at apartment buildings scattered throughout West Hollywood for “house meetings,” small receptions where they explain the new rent control law to tenants and answer questions about other concerns.

Last month, Gross showed up at one building to explain the details of the city’s new rent law to six tenants. As a radio faintly played “The Poet and Peasant Overture,” Gross set up his folding chairs and waited for his small audience to arrive.

The meeting lasted just over an hour. The conversation did not get beyond the level of after-dinner chat. But in the eyes of many West Hollywood political observers, the coalition’s dependence on such seemingly insignificant meetings may provide the key to its future influence.

“They do the groundwork that no one else in West Hollywood is willing to do,” said Councilman Viterbi. “They’re out there all the time, making new contacts, renewing old ones. No one else in this city has the patience or the manpower to do that. As long as they keep it up, they’ll be a force to reckon with.”

Comments on the Coalition

Incorporation leader Ron Stone: “West Hollywood is (CES’) oil gusher.”

Rival coalition leader Tony Melia: “CES is run by a very small group of people. They are a mystery to us all.”

Councilman Stephen Schulte: “At least until this election is over, they (CES) have the appearance of the most-organized political entity in town. One doesn’t confront them lightly.”

Councilman Alan Viterbi: “They do the groundwork that no one else in West Hollywood is willing to do.”

May 22 (Asia Today) — LS Electric Chairman Koo Ja-kyun called for stronger quality and delivery competitiveness as the South Korean company seeks to expand in the North American data center power infrastructure market.

Koo recently visited LS Electric’s Cheongju plant, a key production base for power equipment used in North American data centers, the company said Friday.

During the visit, Koo inspected switchgear production lines, the smart factory system and high-voltage circuit breaker lines.

“The U.S.-centered data center market does not allow even the slightest error in next-generation power grid fields such as direct current distribution,” Koo said. “Top-level high-end quality and flawless delivery capability are essential.”

He said the company should go beyond merely meeting customer standards.

“We must secure competitiveness strong enough to overwhelm global partners based on our smart manufacturing capabilities,” Koo said.

Industry officials say the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers has pushed the power infrastructure market into a “power supercycle,” driving demand for high-end power solutions such as high-voltage distribution equipment and circuit breakers.

Koo also called for early investment and technological innovation.

“The global power market is facing a major transition,” he said. “If we remain complacent, we will fall behind. Bold innovation that breaks through limits is necessary.”

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260522010006606

MINNEAPOLIS — A judge on Thursday handed down an extraordinary prison sentence — nearly 42 years — to the former leader of a Minnesota nonprofit who was convicted in a staggering $250-million fraud case that helped ignite an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.

Aimee Bock ran Feeding Our Future, which had claimed it helped provide millions of meals to children in need during the pandemic. The U.S. Justice Department, however, said she was atop the “single largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country.”

“I understand I failed. I failed the public, my family, everyone,” Bock said in federal court.

President Trump used the fraud cases against Bock and many others to initially justify a massive surge of federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last winter, leading to a pushback by residents and the deaths of two people.

“Feeding Our Future operated like a cash pipeline, open to anyone willing to submit fraudulent claims and pay kickbacks,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

Bock had long proclaimed her innocence but was convicted last year of conspiracy, fraud and bribery.

“This case has changed our state forever,” Joe Thompson, formerly the lead prosecutor in the case, said outside the courtroom. “Aimee Bock did everything she could to earn this long sentence.”

The nonprofit sat atop a fraud network that included a web of partner organizations, phony distribution sites, kickbacks and fake lists of children supposedly being fed, prosecutors say. Dozens of people, many from the state’s large Somali community, have been convicted in a series of overlapping food fraud cases that have spent years in the courts.

Bock and co-conspirators enriched themselves with international travel, real estate purchases, luxury vehicles and other lavish spending, the government said.

Bock’s lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, argued for no more than three years in prison, saying she had provided key information to investigators. He argued that Bock had been unfairly painted as the mastermind and insisted that two co-defendants were responsible for running the scams.

Meanwhile, authorities this week filed additional charges against others in a sprawling investigation into federal social service spending in Minnesota.

The targets include Fahima Mahamud, who was CEO of Future Leaders Early Learning Center, a childcare center in Minneapolis. Over three years, Mahamud’s organization was reimbursed approximately $4.6 million for services on behalf of people who didn’t make a required copayment, prosecutors allege.

A message seeking comment from her lawyer was not immediately returned Thursday. Mahamud was charged separately in February with fraud related to meals. She has pleaded not guilty.

Two other people were charged with conspiring to get $975,000 in Medicaid subsidies for housing services that were not provided. They’re expected to plead guilty in June, according to a court filing.

Two additional people were accused of receiving $21.1 million by billing Medicaid for autism therapy that was either unnecessary or not provided. Investigators said the two paid families as much as $1,500 per child per month to add their names to the program and get reimbursement.

Trump, who has long derided Somalis, last year blasted the state as “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity.” He also criticized the leadership of Gov. Tim Walz, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee in the 2024 election.

“Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from,” Trump wrote on social media.

Bock is white and the U.S. Attorney’s Office says the overwhelming majority of defendants in the cases are of Somali descent. Most are U.S. citizens.

The immigration surge led to repeated protests and confrontations between residents and federal officers and resulted in the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Sullivan writes for the Associated Press.

NEW YORK — A federal immigration court in Lower Manhattan has come to represent the Trump administration’s deportation campaign in New York City, with agents carrying out chaotic and sometimes violent arrests in the hallway as migrants leave hearings.

Now the court is serving as a front in a different kind of battle: one of the city’s most closely watched congressional races.

In the Democratic primary between incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander — for a district so solidly blue that the June primary is considered its deciding election — both candidates have made the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants at 26 Federal Plaza a feature of their campaigns, but with decidedly different approaches.

Goldman — an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune and former prosecutor who was lead counsel for President Trump’s first impeachment — has approached the topic with a lawyerly bent that leverages the power of his office.

He sued the administration to open immigration detention centers to members of Congress, conducts oversight visits and turned his office across the street into what he’s called a triage center that connects immigrants with advocacy groups and legal services that has, his campaign said, helped more than 30 people get released from federal custody.

After a recent visit, Goldman credited his oversight work as a reason conditions at a holding facility inside the building have improved.

“What you see from our multipronged approach is the way that I push back, which is not performative, but it is substantive,” he told the Associated Press outside 26 Federal Plaza after he toured the detention center that is closed to the public.

Meanwhile, Lander — a progressive city government stalwart who is running with the support of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — has acted as protester and court observer, watching hearings and attempting to accompany immigrants out of the building past masked federal agents.

His efforts have gotten him arrested twice, with the most recent case headed to a trial scheduled to take place just before the primary.

“I would characterize his oversight function as strongly worded letters,” Lander told AP when asked about Goldman’s approach. “And my oversight function is: Show up with hundreds of your neighbors and bear witness and accompany people and demand access and stay until they give it to you or they arrest you.”

Lander’s first arrest happened last year when he linked arms with a person authorities were attempting to detain in the hallway outside the court. Lander was running for mayor at the time, and the arrest gave his campaign a jolt of excitement at a time when Mamdani and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were considered the front-runners in the race.

A few months later, after losing the mayoral primary but not long before launching his congressional campaign, Lander was arrested again during a large protest at the building and hit with a misdemeanor obstruction charge.

But instead of accepting a deal that would have made the case go away in six months, Lander instead opted to go to trial. He said the case would extract information about the federal government’s immigration enforcement efforts at the building during a tense period that predates Goldman’s oversight visits.

Goldman dismissed Lander’s efforts as performative.

“I don’t understand why someone would reject a dismissal of a case so that he can have a public trial, ostensibly to ask for information that I could provide him whenever he wanted because I have the answers from doing my oversight,” he said.

This week, Lander returned to 26 Federal Plaza to sit in on hearings. But just before entering the building, his team got word that federal agents were lingering outside an immigration hearing at a different federal courtroom in a building across the street. He raced over and eventually found the agents, who were wearing masks and milling around in the court’s waiting room.

“The challenge is trying to figure out who they’re going to arrest,” Lander said, popping out of the hearing, where he sat in a back row and took notes. After a while, the agents walked away from the hearing room, down a hallway and exited the floor. It was not clear why they left.

“Maybe we have different styles,” Lander said of his opponent after the agents departed. He later went back across the street and filmed a campaign video in front of 26 Federal Plaza.

Izaguirre writes for the Associated Press.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Environmental groups say that the timing of the expected closure of an immigration detention center in the middle of the Florida Everglades, likely in the next month or two, is no accident because it will come as their lawsuit challenging its existence returns to a federal judge who had previously ordered it shut down.

A federal appellate court decided last month to keep open the detention center nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” for the time being, blocking a lower court decision ordering it to wind down operations. But the case was sent back to the lower court judge who now gets jurisdiction over the lawsuit as the litigation over the facility’s fate continues.

“Knowing that the same district judge who previously enjoined the operation would soon reassume oversight — the defendants are now effectively waving the white flag,” said Paul Schwiep, an attorney for the environmental groups that had sued, saying the facility’s construction hadn’t undergone a required environmental review.

When asked about the future of the state-run facility and its costs on Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that he hadn’t gotten any “official word” that federal authorities are going to stop sending detainees to the center.

But vendors who supply and help run the facility have been told that the closure could be as soon as next month, according to reports Tuesday by the New York Times and CBS News Miami. The Florida Department of Emergency Management, which operates the detention center, didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry on Wednesday. The Republican governor’s press secretary, Molly Best, referred questions about the facility to the state emergency management agency.

“We didn’t build any permanent facilities down there because we knew it was going to be temporary,” DeSantis said Wednesday at a news conference in Titusville, Fla.

DeSantis’ administration opened the facility in July to support the immigration crackdown by the administration of President Trump, who visited the detention center last summer. An attorney for two detainees has accused guards of severely beating and pepper-spraying detainees. Other detainees have said worms turn up in the food, toilets don’t flush and mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.

“This monument to cruelty, waste and environmental and tribal lands abuse should have never been built,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, said Tuesday.

Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity sued state and federal officials a short time after the facility opened, claiming the remote airstrip site in the Everglades wasn’t given a proper environmental review required by federal law before it was converted into an immigration detention center. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams in Miami agreed and ordered in August that the facility must wind down operations within two months.

The appellate court blocked the order, saying the Florida-run facility wasn’t under federal control and didn’t need to comply with federal law requiring an environmental impact review.

But the appellate court made clear that once Florida got federal reimbursement for the facility, it would have to comply with the federal environmental law, Schwiep said.

DeSantis said Tuesday that the state expected to be reimbursed by the federal government for $608 million, which has already been approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“There’s no negotiations on that,” he said.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.

A NEW festival style experience is coming to Center Parcs this summer.

The Sherwood Forest retreat has revealed plans for its Forest Summer Social.

Starting this month, the Woodland Garden will be transformed into a huge attraction, with an outdoor cinema in the centre.

This will show everything from films like Mamma Mia and Frozen to live sports such as the World Cup and F1.

Guests will be able to prebook deckhairs and popcorn, or can turn up with their own blankets.

Also in the Woodland Garden will be activities such as the Forest Craft Room for arty activities, as well as the Family Nature Quest.

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Light up the Forest will let guests use bicycle power to light up the woodlands too.

The Summer Social Kitchen will be serving street food while drinks will be on offer at the Aspall Bar.

All of the experiences are included in the stay excluding the Forest Craft Room and any food and drink.

The new experience will run from May 25 to August 31.

Other new activities at Sherwood Forest include the Treetop Glider, a wires ride that launched earlier this week, and new padel tennis courts.

It is also the only park to have The Dozing Duck, a lounge area with breakfast and lunch as well as a playground, shuffleboard and crazy pool.

Kids will also love the VOYA Teen Glow Facial, the first spa treatment in the UK designed for younger skin.

And guests can buy exclusive Joules x Center Parcs merchandise at Sherwood Forest, with bags, t shirs and hats.

New premium lodges opened across Sherwood Forest too – here’s what they look like.

Tempted? Here’s how to get a more affordable Center Parcs holiday.

“Curly” Williams returned to his old high school campus last week for the first time in 76 years, but did so under his given name — the same name emblazoned on North Hollywood High’s newest attraction: the John Williams Performing Arts Center.

Williams, 94, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony last Wednesday, which commenced with the composer’s rousing “Raiders March” played by the school’s marching band and accompanied by its blue-clad cheerleaders.

“I think you played that better than we could have,” Williams said, speaking from a wheelchair under the sign of his namesake venue in front of other accomplished alumni and friends, including producer Kathleen Kennedy. “That’s a hard piece.”

The ambitious construction project, initiated in 2015 and designed by CO Architects occupies 35,000 square feet and seats 800. Michael Stebbins, project manager for the BroadStage in Santa Monica, served as project manager. The center is equipped with state-of-the-art amenities to host student performances and school assemblies, but also to train the next generation of theater technicians. Besides an enormous stage, blue velvet curtains, a mixing console and safe catwalks, the building also features new classrooms and rehearsal spaces.

Students, faculty and guests stand for the national anthem before a concert inside the new John Williams Performing Arts Center, named for one of North Hollywood High’s most famous alumni.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A 75-foot hand-painted mural in the lobby, still in the works by artist Ian Robertson-Salt, is inspired by Williams’ formidable filmography, which serves “as a daily reminder to every student who walks these halls that greatness can begin right here,” remarked Andrés Chait, acting superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District.

Due to health complications, Williams has made few public appearances in the last two years. He last conducted a concert in February 2024 — and he has also consistently turned down requests to name buildings after him, including at his beloved Tanglewood in Massachusetts, although the Hollywood Bowl did recently name its stage for Williams. It’s a testament to his affection for his time at North Hollywood High, and his regard for the next generation of students, that he not only blessed this dedication but showed up and spoke to a gathered crowd of hundreds.

“I’m sort of silly happy to be here,” he said, calling the dedication “a singular honor in my life.”

Other showbiz alumni on hand included “Beauty and the Beast” producer Don Hahn (class of ’73), “Independence Day” writer-producer Dean Devlin (’80), and Rob Friedman (’81), CEO of Ascendant Entertainment. Partly due to its proximity to the entertainment industry, North Hollywood High has produced a host of famous artists over the decades, including the late Michael Tilson Thomas, who attended in the early 1960s.

John Williams smiles while applauding a performance by the North Hollywood High School band at the dedication ceremony of the John Williams Performing Arts Center on campus.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“At some point you have to stop calling that a coincidence,” said Kennedy, a longtime collaborator of Williams who gave brief remarks before handing him the microphone. “Something happened here, and something can happen again.”

Williams moved to North Hollywood with his family in 1947, having grown up in Queens. He transferred to North Hollywood High as a 15-year-old sophomore, and joined the band and orchestra as a jazz-loving trombonist. His classmates included Susan Sontag (“I remember her teaching a class in civics, when the teacher would sit down and listen to her,” he told me in 2023) and many future actors, including Barbara Ruick, who played Carrie Pipperidge in “Carousel.” But his best friends were all music-inclined guys whose dads, like his, were famous musicians.

A poster board featured yearbook photos of John Williams, left, performing with the North Hollywood High School Band, class of 1950, in the lobby of the new John Williams Performing Arts Center on the North Hollywood High School campus.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Williams embraced the nickname “Curly,” given to him by a fellow student in response to his curly red hair, and quickly created his own jazz band with classmates. Ruick sang with them at school events and dances, and they became the house band at a new teens-only venue in Van Nuys called the Dri-Nite Club. Broadcast on local radio, they caught the attention of Time magazine, which ran a story on “Curly’s” band in October 1949.

A newspaper story about John Williams’ high school band from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s archives.

(Los Angeles Unified School District)

Williams has said he fondly remembers his civics and French classes at North Hollywood High, but his time and passion were almost exclusively devoted to music. He rigorously practiced the piano at home, studying with a local concert pianist and MGM arranger named Robert Van Eps; on Wednesday nights he played in jam sessions with his father (Johnny Sr., a drummer) and the Columbia Pictures orchestra. He bopped around clubs in L.A. listening to jazz greats like Oscar Peterson (whose style influenced Williams’ recent piano concerto), and started making a name of his own as a wunderkind performer and arranger.

Long before he scored “Star Wars” or “Harry Potter,” Williams did his earliest arranging and orchestrating for theater productions at North Hollywood High. The impact of his time at North Hollywood High cannot be overstated.

John Williams featured with members of the class of 1950 in the North Hollywood High School Yearbook.

(Los Angeles Unified School District)

During his remarks about the performing arts center on Wednesday, Williams said he felt particularly overwhelmed because the school was “formative in my thinking and my professional work … This is a great, magical place, North Hollywood.”

Williams eventually married Ruick, his high school sweetheart and mother of his three children. Ruick was instrumental in making many of Williams’ earliest career connections. She died from a brain aneurysm in 1974, at the age of 41, just one year before Williams’ career catapulted with “Jaws.” The couple’s youngest son, Joseph, lead singer of Toto, stood proudly behind Williams during the theater’s dedication.

The John Williams Performing Arts Center (JWPAC) is the crescendo of a $319.5 million modernization project at North Hollywood High, which also includes modern classrooms and athletic facilities. It’s a reflection of the diverse public school’s commitment to the arts; students here can play in the orchestra, marching band or modern band, and study drama or modern dance.

“As I think about what else I might say to all of you younger people, students here,” Williams said at his homecoming Wednesday, “two words about this beautiful building: simply use it. Make sure you all use the place.”

Tim Greiving is the author of “John Williams: A Composer’s Life.”

April 24 (UPI) — Maine Gov. Janet Mills on Friday vetoed a bill that would have paused artificial intelligence data center construction in the state for 18 months.

Mills said she decided to veto it because it would have potentially harmed a permitted and in progress data center expected to create hundreds of jobs, both for construction and once the center opens.

The project, a $550 million data center in Jay, Maine, is a multi-year effort to redevelop the former Androscoggin Mill, which was damaged in a 2020 boiler explosion and then closed in 2023, took with it hundreds of jobs and 22% of the town’s tax revenue.

The bill would have been the first in the country restricting or slowing the spread of large-scale data centers required for power-hungry AI systems, which have driven up the cost of both electricity and water for residents living near them, NBC News and Politico reported.

“A moratorium is appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and electricity rates,” Mills said in a press release.

“But the final version of this bill fails to allow for a specific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local support from its host community and region,” she said.

There are more than 5,000 data centers in the United States — more than any country in the world — and that number has grown significantly in the last four years as artificial intelligence has become a focus the tech industry.

While many state and local leaders have started to respond to concerns among residents about the huge amounts of electricity needed to power AI data centers and the huge amounts of water needed to keep them cool, as have some members of Congress.

As states have contemplated increased regulation and scrutiny from tech and AI companies, President Donald Trump at the same time has worked to keep the cuffs of tech companies because they “must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation,” he said in December.

“Excessive state regulation thwarts this imperative,” Trump said in an executive order meant to prevent states from creating new regulations.

Mills said she worked with Maine’s legislature to carve out an exemption for the data center in Jay but was unsuccessful, so she vetoed the law.

The development in Jay, she said, is under contract and permitted, and is expected to create 800 construction jobs, more than 100 high-paying permanent jobs and “substantial tax revenue” for the Town of Jay.

In a letter informing the legislature that she planned to veto the bill, Mills said she plans to issue an executive order to establish a council to study the impacts — real and potential — of data centers in Maine.

“I believe it necessary and important to examine and plan for the potential impacts of large-scale data centers in Maine, as the use of artificial intelligence becomes more widespread,” Mills said.

“Given the serious conversations about data centers here and around the country, I believe this work should commence without delay,” she told legislators.

Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.

Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.

Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.

Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.

At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.

Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.

Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,

Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.

The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.

Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.

April 22 (UPI) — Federal prosecutors Tuesday evening announced an 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, accusing the non-profit of defrauding donors by using their money to pay informants within hate groups they were monitoring.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the indictment from a Montgomery, Ala., grand jury during a press conference, alleging that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC paid more than $3 million to informants in hate groups the organization had vowed to dismantle.

“As the indictment described, the SPLC was not dismantling these groups, but it was instead manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred,” he said, alongside FBI Director Kash Patel.

The indictment, which was returned by an Alabama grand jury just minutes before the press conference, details payments to informants in groups such as the neo-Nazi National Alliance and the Ku Klux Klan, but does not detail extensive evidence that the money was “used to fund the leaders and organizers of racist groups.”

Federal prosecutors allege that the SPLC obtained money via donations by making “‘materially false representations and omissions about” what the money would be used for and utilized bank accounts linked to “fictitious entities” to covertly pay their field sources.

One SPLC informant is described in the court document as a member of the online leadership chat group behind the 2017 Unite The Right protest in Charlottesville, Va., where one person was killed when a car rammed counterprotesters.

This informant was paid more than $270,000 between 2015 and 2023, according to the indictment, which alleges that they attended the Unite the Right event “at the direction of the SPLC,” made “racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.

Another SPLC informant described by federal prosecutors as being affiliated with the neo-Nazi National Alliance organization stole 25 boxes of documents from the headquarters of a violent extremist group, copied the materials for the SPLC and returned the originals. The court document alleges that the SPLC paid the informant more than $1 million between 2014 and 2023.

Blanche told reporters during the press conference that the informants were paid via pre-paid cards with funds from donors that were moved from bank accounts that the SPLC created for five fictitious organizations in order to shield the source of the funds.

“They attempted to hide their criminal activity from our financial banking network,” Patel said.

“They set up shell companies and entities around America so that the financial system that we rely on as everyday Americans were deceived into believing that money is not coming from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the perpetration of this scheme and fraud but rather fictitious entities they stood up to perpetuate this ongoing fraud.”

The indictment charges the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Ahead of the press conference, SPLC CEO Bryan Fair announced in a video statement that the organization and its employees were the target of a federal investigation focused on its use of informants, though they had yet to know all the details.

He defended the SPLC’s use of informants as necessary to protect themselves and the public after decades of being “engaged in unprecedented litigation to dismantle the Klan and other hate groups.”

Information the SPLC gained from the informants was frequently shared with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI, he said, adding that they did not broadly share their use of informants to protect their identities.

“While we no longer work with paid informants, we continue to take their safety seriously. These individuals risked their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of our nation’s most radical and violent extremist groups,” he said, vowing to fight the allegations.

“We will not be intimidated into silence or contrition, and we will not abandon our mission or the communities we serve.”

The SPLC has long faced criticism from some Republicans and conservatives, who say the prominent anti-hate nonprofit has drifted from its mission of fighting extremism and White supremacy by labeling several right-wing organizations as hate groups.

In October, Patel announced that the FBI severed ties with the SPLC, accusing it of having “long abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.”

Democrats, SPLC supporters and critics of the Trump administration lambasted the indictment as politically motivated, with the American Civil Liberties Union calling it “another example of the Trump administration’s extreme attempts to silence its critics.”

“Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. This administration is using the full weight of federal prosecution to target an organization whose mission is rooting out violent extremism,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said online.

“This is part and parcel of Trump’s assault on free speech, on nonprofits and on anyone who dares to disagree with him.”

House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the indictment “baseless and illegitimate.”

“These partisan hacks who continue to weaponize the criminal justice system against perceived opponents will never intimidate us,” he said.