Jonathan Majors is ready to stage his comeback — by teaming up with the Daily Wire.
The actor is reportedly filming his first movie since being found guilty of assaulting and harassing a former girlfriend in 2023. According to Deadline, production on the untitled action movie from the Daily Wire and Bonfire Legend begins this week in South Carolina.
Written and directed by “Run Hide Fight” filmmaker Kyle Rankin, the movie is described as “in the vein of ’80s and ’90s action movies ‘Red Dawn’ and ‘Toy Soldiers,’ ” per the outlet. In addition to starring in the film, Majors will also serve as an executive producer, the entertainment outlet reported.
“You’re not going to BELIEVE what we’re doing,” right-wing pundit and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shaprio said in a Thursday post on X sharing the news. On Facebook he claimed, “This movie is going to be WILD.”
Majors was a Hollywood star on the rise when he was arrested on charges of assault, strangulation and harassment in March 2023. The “Creed III” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” actor was swiftly dropped from projects, his management company and his public relations team. Once poised to be the next central villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was also dropped by Marvel Studios following his conviction.
Majors avoided jail time and has since married fellow actor Meagan Good after a brief engagement.
In addition to Shapiro, who will be producing for the Daily Wire, Dallas Sonnier will be producing for Bonfire Legend. Neither company has shied away from courting disgraced Hollywood talent trying to revive their careers.
Among the Daily Wire and Bonfire Legends’ previous joint projects is “Terror on the Prairie,” the 2022 western starring Gina Carano. The “Mandalorian” actor was fired by Disney in 2021 for “her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities” that the company called “abhorrent and unacceptable.” (Carano filed a lawsuit against Disney alleging wrongful termination in 2024. The lawsuit was settled in August.)
Former Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is suing the city, claiming in a whistleblower lawsuit that Mayor Karen Bass “orchestrated a campaign of retaliation” to protect her own political future and paper over her failures during the most destructive fire in city history.
In the lawsuit, filed Monday in L.A. County Superior Court, Crowley and her attorneys allege Bass sought to shift blame for the way the city handled last year’s catastrophic Palisades fire to Crowley amid mounting criticism of the mayor’s decision to attend a ceremony in Ghana on Jan. 7, the day the fire erupted. Bass, the suit alleges, left L.A. despite knowing of the potential severe winds and fire danger.
“She sought to avoid accountability by shifting blame and lying — including falsely claiming that she was not aware of the nationally anticipated weather event, falsely claiming that the LAFD’s budget was not cut, and falsely claiming that LAFD’s resources would have supported an additional 1,000 firefighters to fight the blaze — claims contradicted by public records and Bass’ own prior statements,” the lawsuit alleges. “These false statements were not mistakes but part of a deliberate strategy to divert scrutiny from Bass’ decisions and to avoid accountability.”
The Palisades fire took off the morning of Jan. 7, 2025 amid fierce Santa Ana winds, killing 12 people and destroying thousands of homes amounting to billions of dollars in damage. While authorities allege a Florida man started the fire, saying it was actually a rekindling of a Jan. 1 fire, decisions by both LAFD brass and the mayor before, during and after Jan. 7 have come under scrutiny.
According to records obtained by The Times, shortly before releasing an after-action review report on the Palisades fire, the Los Angeles Fire Department issued a confidential memo detailing plans to protect Bass and others from “reputational harm.” The 13-page document is on LAFD letterhead and includes email addresses for department officials, representatives of Bass’ office, and public relations consultants hired to help shape messaging about the fire.
But as questions about the fire response swirled, instead of getting in lockstep with Bass, Crowley revealed to the public that “budget cuts had weakened the department’s readiness and jeopardized public and firefighter safety” and said her repeated warnings were ignored, the lawsuit says. It alleges Bass retaliated by ousting her as fire chief on Feb. 21, 2025.
Since the fire, the city has faced criticism for an inadequate deployment of firefighters, a chaotic evacuation of Pacific Palisades and a lack of water caused in part by a local reservoir being left empty for repairs. In December, The Times revealed that the city’s after-action report had been altered to deflect criticism of LAFD’s failure to predeploy engines and crews to the Palisades, among other shortcomings.
Crowley’s lawyers claim Bass’ view of her performance shifted with political opinion — starting with initial praise before reversing course and criticizing Crowley as the mayor came under fire for being out of the country during the blaze.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When Crowley was ousted, the mayor said it was because Crowley failed to inform her about the dangerous conditions that day or to predeploy hundreds of firefighters just in case. She also said Crowley rebuffed a request to prepare a report on the fires — a critical part of ongoing investigations into the cause of the fire and the city’s response.
But Crowley’s lawyers, Genie Harrison and Mia Munro, allege their client “repeatedly warned of the LAFD’s worsening resource and staffing crisis” prior to the fire and warned that aging infrastructure, surging emergency calls and shrinking staff left the city at risk.
“An analysis of the 90th percentile of all incidents indicates that the overall response time of LAFD resources has increased from 6:51 (minutes) in 2018 to 7:53 in 2022. This dramatic increase is nearly double the time by national standards for first-arriving units,” the lawsuit says.
Three days after the fire, Crowley told a local TV news station that her department was “screaming to be properly funded,” which prompted Bass to summon Crowley to her office, according to the lawsuit.
“I don’t know why you had to do that; normally we are on the same page, and I don’t know why you had to say stuff to the media,” Bass told Crowley, according to the lawsuit. Bass allegedly told Crowley she wasn’t firing her then because “right now I can’t do that.”
Before Crowley was ousted, the city’s top financial analyst pushed back on her budget-cutting narrative, saying that spending on the Fire Department actually went up during that budget year — in large part because of a package of firefighter raises. Those increases added an estimated $53 million to the department’s budget.
Regardless, the day after Crowley and Bass met in her office, the lawsuit alleges, retired LAFD Chief Deputy Ronnie Villanueva began working at the Emergency Operations Center, donning a mayor’s office badge. On Feb. 3, 2025, more than two weeks before Crowley was removed from her position, Villanueva wrote a report to the Board of Fire Commissioners identifying himself as the interim fire chief — a position he held until the appointment of Fire Chief Jaime Moore last fall.
The lawsuit alleges that Bass and others in her administration defamed Crowley, retaliated against her in violation of California’s labor code and violated Crowley’s 1st Amendment rights. Crowley is seeking unspecified damages.
Bass repeatedly has denied she was involved in any effort to water down the after-action report, which was meant to spell out mistakes in the Palisades fire response and suggest measures to avoid repeating them. But two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office said that after receiving an early draft of the report, the mayor told Villanueva it could expose the city to legal liabilities.
Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public, the sources told The Times this month. The mayor has said The Times’ story based on the sources’ accounts was “completely fabricated.”
Crowley and her lawyers allege the LAFD “did not have sufficient operating emergency vehicles to safely and effectively pre-deploy 1,000 (or anywhere near 1,000) additional firefighters on January 7.” The department did not have the money or personnel “to repair and maintain emergency fire engines, fire trucks, and ambulances,” the suit alleges.
“This case is about accountability,” said Harrison, Crowley’s attorney. “Public servants should not face punishment or be silenced for telling the truth about public or firefighter safety and on matters of public importance.”
Times staff writers Alene Tcheckmedyian, David Zahniser and Paul Pringle contributed to this report. Pringle is a former Times staff writer.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday the U.S. Postal Service is shielded from being sued even if its employees intentionally fail to deliver the mail.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said Congress in 1946 had barred lawsuits “arising out of the loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission of letters or postal matter,” and that includes mail that is stolen or misdirected by postal employees.
Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said the law broadly bars complaints involving lost or missing mail.
“A ‘miscarriage of mail’ includes failure of the mail to arrive at its intended destination, regardless of the carrier’s intent or where the mail goes instead,” he said.
The ruliing is a setback but not a final defeat for Lebene Konan, a Texas real estate agent who is Black. She had sued contending white postal carriers refused to deliver her mail to two houses where she rented rooms.
She did not live at either property but said she stayed there “from time to time.”
She first complained to the post office in Euless, Texas, after she learned the mail carrier had changed the listed owner on a central postal box from Konan’s name to a tenant’s name.
After two years of frustration, she sued the United States in 2022 alleging the Postal Service had intentionally and wrongly withheld her mail. She sought damages for emotional distress, a loss of rental income and for racial discrimination.
Her claim of racial bias was dismissed by a federal judge and a U.S. appeals court and did not figure in the Supreme Court’s decision.
However, the 5th Circuit Court ruled she could go forward with her suit alleging she was a victim of intentional misconduct on the part of postal employees.
The Biden and Trump administrations urged the court to hear the case and to reject lawsuits against the Postal Service based on claims of intentional wrongdoing.
They said the 5th Circuit’s ruling could “open the floodgates of litigation.” They noted the Postal Service delivers about 113 billion pieces of mail per year and receives about 335,000 complaints over lost mail and other matters.
“We hold that the postal exception covers suits against the United States for the intentional nondelivery of mail,” Thomas said. “We do not decide whether all of Konan’s claims are barred.”
Joining Thomas to limit lawsuits against the Postal Service were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the law refers to a “loss” or “miscarriage” of the mail, which suggests negligence.
“Today, the court holds that one exception — the postal exception — prevents individuals from recovering for injuries based on a postal employee’s intentional misconduct, including when an employee maliciously withholds their mail,” Sotomayor wrote.
Joining her were Justices Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
At a recent meeting of California’s high school sports governing board, two seniors from Arroyo Grande High School spoke out against a transgender peer competing on their track and field team and allegedly “watching” them in the girls’ locker room.
One of the Central Coast students said she is “more comfortable” changing in her car now. The other cited a Bible verse about God creating men and women separately, and accused the California Interscholastic Federation of subjecting girls to “exploitative and intrusive behavior that is disguised through transgender ideology.”
“Our privacy is being compromised and our sports are being taken over,” she said.
During the same meeting, Trevor Norcross, the father of 17-year-old transgender junior Lily Norcross, offered a starkly different perspective.
“Bathrooms and locker rooms are the most dangerous place for trans students, and when they are at their most vulnerable,” he said. “Our daughter goes to extreme lengths to avoid them. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t.”
Lily Norcross with her parents, Trevor and Hilary Norcross.
(Owen Main / For The Times)
Norcross said Lily’s teammates had for months been misrepresenting a single moment from the year prior, when Lily had to use the restroom after a full day of avoiding it, chose to use the one in the locker room because it is monitored by an adult and safer for her than others, and briefly stopped to chat with a friend on her way out.
“There’s always more to the story,” he said.
The conflicting testimony reflected an increasingly charged debate over transgender athletes participating in youth sports nationwide. Churches, anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, cisgender athletes and their conservative families are organizing to topple trans-inclusive policies, while liberal state officials, queer advocacy groups, transgender kids and their families are trying to preserve policies that allow transgender kids to compete.
The battle has been particularly pitched in California, which has some of the nation’s most progressive statewide athletic policies and liberal leaders willing to defend them — including from the Trump administration, which has attacked transgender rights and is suing the California Department of Education and the CIF, alleging their trans-inclusive sports policies violate the civil rights of cisgender athletes.
Along with a pending U.S. Supreme Court decision on the legality of policies banning transgender athletes from competing in states such as Idaho and West Virginia, the Trump administration’s lawsuit against California could have sweeping implications for transgender athletes — with a state loss potentially contributing to their being sidelined not just in conservative states, but nationwide.
For the handful of transgender California teens caught in the middle of the fight, it has all been deeply unnerving — if strangely motivating.
“I have to keep doing it, because if I stop doing sports, they won,” Lily Norcross said. “They got what they wanted.”
A coordinated effort
The movement to overturn California’s trans-inclusive policies is being coordinated at the local, state and national levels, and has gained serious momentum since several of its leaders joined the Trump administration.
At the local level, cisgender athletes, their families and other conservative and religious allies have expressed anger over transgender athletes using girls’ facilities and resentment over their allegedly stealing victories and the spotlight from cisgender girls.
In 2024, two girls at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside filed a lawsuit challenging the participation of their transgender track and field teammate Abigail Jones, arguing her participation limited their own in violation of Title IX protections for female athletes. A judge found insufficient evidence of that, and recently dismissed the case.
Last year, Jurupa Valley High School track star AB Hernandez won several medals at the CIF State Track and Field Championships despite President Trump personally demanding she be barred from competing. Critics argued Hernandez’s wins were unfair, despite CIF having changed its rules so that her cisgender competitors received the medals they would have received had she not competed.
AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
The challenges to Abigail, AB and Lily competing have all been driven in part by a network of conservative organizations working across California and beyond to oust transgender girls from sports, including by coordinating with evangelical churches, pushing social media campaigns, lining up speakers for school board meetings and working with cisgender athletes to hone their messages of opposition.
Shannon Kessler, a former PTA president and church leader who is now running for state Assembly, has worked within the wider network. In March 2025, Kessler founded the group Save Girls’ Sports Central Coast, and the next month distributed fliers at Harvest Church in Arroyo Grande that called on parishioners to challenge Lily’s participation on the track and field team.
Kessler said the two seniors on Lily’s team, who did not respond to a request for comment, had initially asked if she would “speak on their behalf,” so she did, but she has since let the girls “take the lead.”
“They took the initiative to speak and wrote their own speeches,” Kessler said, of their remarks at the recent CIF meeting.
Norcross said the effort to sideline his daughter has clearly been coordinated by outsiders from the start. He blames Kessler, Harvest Church and the state’s wider network of conservative activists for stirring up baseless fears about transgender athletes, exposing his family to danger and leaving them no choice but to defend themselves publicly.
“It’s not a fair position to be in,” he said.
Tied up in court
Within months of Trump issuing his February 2025 executive order calling for transgender athletes to be barred from competition nationwide, two leaders within the California conservative network turned Trump administration officials — Harmeet Dhillon, who is now assistant attorney general for civil rights, and former state Assemblyman Bill Essayli, who is now in charge of the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles — quickly moved to bring the state to heel.
They launched an investigation into California’s trans-inclusive sports policies, ordered its school districts to comply with Trump’s order in defiance of state law, and then sued the Department of Education and the CIF when they refused — alleging the state’s policies illegally discriminate against cisgender girls under Title IX by ignoring “undeniable biological differences between boys and girls, in favor of an amorphous ‘gender identity.’”
Neither Dhillon nor the Justice Department responded to a request for comment. Essayli’s office declined to comment.
Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon arrives for a news conference at the Justice Department in September.
(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
The Department of Education and the CIF have called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, arguing that Title IX regulations “do not require the exclusion of transgender girls” and that the Justice Department had provided no evidence that the state’s policies left cisgender girls unable to compete.
The CIF said in a statement that it “provides students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete in education-based experiences in compliance with California law,” but it and the Department of Education said they do not comment on pending litigation. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office has slammed the Trump administration’s efforts, and filed its own lawsuit to block them.
Separate from the California litigation, there is a major case on transgender youth athletes before the U.S. Supreme Court.
After athletes successfully challenged West Virginia and Idaho bans on transgender competition in lower federal courts, the states appealed. During arguments last month, the high court’s conservative majority sounded ready to uphold the state bans — but not necessarily in a way that would topple liberal state laws allowing such athletes to compete.
Pressure and resolve
Lily, AB and Abigail — all of whom are referenced anonymously in the federal lawsuit against California — agreed, with their parents, to be identified by The Times in order to share how it has felt to be targeted.
Abigail, 17, graduated early and is preparing to start college but hasn’t stopped being an advocate for transgender high school athletes, continuing to show up to CIF and school board meetings to support their right to compete.
“This is a part of my life now, whether I like it or not,” she said.
Speaking can be intimidating, Abigail said, but it has also become familiar — as has the cast of anti-transgender activists who routinely show up to speak as well. “It’s always the same people,” she said.
Abigail Jones participates in a protest against President Trump and his attacks on transgender people in April in Riverside.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
AB, also 17, said last year — when everyone, including Trump, seemed to be talking about her — was “just so much — too much.”
She felt she had to constantly “maintain an image,” including among her peers, that she was “not bothered by anything and just confident,” which was exhausting, she said. “There were a lot of times I just didn’t go to school, because I felt like I couldn’t keep up that image and I didn’t want them to see me down.”
It still can be overwhelming if she looks at all the vitriol aimed her way online, she said, but “off the internet, it’s a completely different story.”
AB was nervous headed into last year’s championships, but a couple of other competitors reached out with their support and the meet ended up being “a blast,” she said. At track practice this year, she’s surrounded by friends — one of her favorite things about being on the team.
For Lily, the last year has been “different and interesting, in not really a good way.”
She has had slurs lobbed at her and been physically threatened. She sometimes waits all day to use the toilet, nearly bursting by the time she gets home. When she has to use a school restroom, she times herself to be in and out in under three minutes. She took P.E. courses over the summer in part because she felt there would be fewer students around, but faced harassment anyway. Like AB, she feels as though she’s under a constant spotlight.
And yet, Lily said she is also “a lot happier with who I am” than she ever was before transitioning a couple of years ago. She said she’s enjoying her classes and her school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance, where LGBTQ+ kids gather at lunch to swap stories, and is optimistic about the future — even if things aren’t great right now.
Her dad said watching her come out and transition has been gratifying, because “the smile came back, the light in her eyes came back.” Watching her navigate the current campaign against her, he said, has been “really hard,” because “she has been forced to grow up too quickly — she has been forced to defend herself in a way that most kids don’t.”
Mostly, though, he’s just proud of his kid.
“We had our fears as parents, as any parent would, that, OK, this is a different path than we thought our kid was going to be on, and we are worried about her safety and her future in this world,” he said. “But she is amazingly strong — amazingly courageous.”
NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase acknowledged for the first time that it closed the bank accounts of Donald Trump and several of his businesses in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the latest development in a legal saga between the president and the nation’s biggest bank over the issue known as “debanking.”
The acknowledgment came in a court filing submitted this week in Trump’s lawsuit against the bank and its leader, Jamie Dimon. The president sued for $5 billion, alleging that his accounts were closed for political reasons, disrupting his business operations.
“In February 2021, JPMorgan informed Plaintiffs that certain accounts maintained with JPMorgan’s CB and PB would be closed,” JPMorgan’s former chief administrative officer Dan Wilkening wrote in the court filing. The “PB” and “CB” stands for JPMorgan’s private bank and commercial bank.
Until now, JPMorgan has never admitted it closed the president’s accounts in writing after Jan. 6. The bank would only speak hypothetically about when the bank closes accounts and its reasons for closing accounts, citing bank privacy laws.
A spokeswoman for the bank declined to comment beyond what the bank said in its legal filings.
Trump originally sued JPMorgan in Florida state court, where the president’s primary residence is now located. The filings this week are part of an effort by JPMorgan Chase to have the case moved from state to federal court and to have the jurisdiction of the case moved to New York, which is where the bank accounts were located and where Trump kept much of his business operations until recently.
Trump originally accused the bank of trade libel and violating state and federal unfair and deceptive trade practices.
In the original lawsuit, Trump said he tried to raise the issue personally with Dimon after the bank sent him notices that JPMorgan would close his accounts, and that Dimon assured Trump he would figure out what was happening. The lawsuit alleges Dimon failed to follow up with Trump.
Further, Trump’s lawyers allege that JPMorgan placed the president and his companies on a reputational “blacklist” that both JPMorgan and other banks use to keep clients from opening accounts with them in the future. The blacklist has yet to be defined by the president’s lawyers.
“If and when Plaintiffs explain what they mean by this ‘blacklist,’ JPMorgan will respond accordingly,” the bank’s lawyers said in a filing.
JPMorgan has previously said that although it regrets that Trump felt the need to sue the bank, the lawsuit has no merit.
The issue of debanking is at the center of the case. Debanking occurs when a bank closes the accounts of a customer or refuses to do business with a customer in the form of loans or other services. Once a relatively obscure issue in finance, debanking has become a politically charged issue in recent years, with conservative politicians arguing that banks have discriminated against them and their affiliated interests.
“In a devastating concession that proves President Trump’s entire claim, JPMorgan Chase admitted to unlawfully and intentionally de-banking President Trump, his family, and his businesses, causing overwhelming financial harm,” the president’s lawyers said in a statement. “President Trump is standing up for all those wrongly debanked by JPMorgan Chase and its cohorts, and will see this case to a just and proper conclusion.”
Debanking first became a national issue when conservatives accused the Obama administration of pressuring banks to stop extending services to gun stores and payday lenders under “Operation Choke Point.”
Trump and other conservative figures have alleged that banks cut them off from their accounts under the umbrella term of “reputational risk” after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump was impeached on a charge of inciting insurrection on Jan. 6, though not convicted in the Senate; and he was criminally indicted for his role in the riot and his attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat, but that case was dismissed after he won the 2024 election.
Since Trump came back into office, the president’s banking regulators have moved to stop any banks from using “reputational risk” as a reason for denying service to customers.
This is not the first lawsuit Trump has filed against a big bank alleging that he was debanked. The Trump Organization sued credit card giant Capital One in March 2025 for similar reasons and allegations. The case is ongoing.
New UCLA coach Bob Chesney will direct his first football season in a historic venue the Bruins have long called home.
UCLA announced on Saturday that the Bruins will play the 2026 season at the Rose Bowl amid ongoing litigation of the university’s right to potentially break its lease and play home games at SoFi Stadium.
“We know how much game day means to Bruins — to our students, alumni and fans who plan their autumn around Saturdays together,” UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications Mary Osako said in a statement. “Our priority is delivering a strong season experience for our student-athletes and our community, and we have great momentum in our football program.
“During this unprecedented time in college athletics, UCLA will always be guided by what’s best for our student-athletes and the Bruin community.”
The California Post was the first to report UCLA’s decision to play another season at the Rose Bowl.
While the lawsuit states UCLA has formally notified the Rose Bowl that it is “moving on” and that “there’s no way we’re staying long term,” the school has never publicly announced plans to move its home games to SoFi Stadium.
“While we continue to evaluate the long-term arrangement for UCLA football home games, no decision has been made,” Osako said in a statement to The Times in October.
After a judge denied UCLA’s request to settle its legal dispute with the Rose Bowl operators and city of Pasadena via arbitration, it seemed unlikely the legal issues would be resolved in time for UCLA play the 2026 season anywhere but the Rose Bowl.
The city of Pasadena and the Rose Bowl Operating Co. filed a lawsuit in October to force UCLA to honor its contract and play games at the stadium through the 2044 season.
The complaint and subsequent filings have alleged that the university has been working to play its home games at SoFi Stadium, calling the move “a profound betrayal of trust.” Rose Bowl officials have since added SoFi Stadium and its operator, Kroenke Sports, to the lawsuit.
UCLA’s lease runs through June 30, 2044, and Pasadena officials say taxpayers have invested more than $150 million in stadium renovations while recently refinancing an additional $130 million in bonds for capital improvements.
The iconic Rose Bowl opened in 1922, is a national historic landmark and boasts ample tailgating opportunities, but some fans have complained about the aging venue’s uncomfortable seating and lack of modern amenities.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday as it proceeds toward trial.
Feb. 18 (UPI) — A federal court gave a final ruling Wednesday negating the Department of Education’s 2025 directive that sought to prevent federally funded schools and universities from practicing diversity, equity and inclusion.
The U.S. District Court in New Hampshire issued the ruling that permanently invalidated the “Dear Colleague” letter of Feb. 14, 2025, after the Department of Education backed down from the lawsuit. The letter, signed by Craig Trainor, who was then the acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, told schools they had 14 days to comply with the directive or face consequences, including loss of funding. Trainor cited the Supreme Court‘s 2023 ruling on Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, which effectively ended affirmative action.
Soon after, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Massachusetts and lawyers for the National Education Association, filed suit to block enforcement of the letter. The Center for Black Educator Development and several New Hampshire School Districts later joined the case as plaintiffs.
In April, the court issued a preliminary injunction stopping the Department of Education from enforcing the new ruling.
District Court Judge Landya McCafferty ruled earlier in the case that the letter’s “isolated characterizations of unlawful DEI” conflicted with the term’s meaning, saying that DEI is fostering “a group culture of equitable and inclusive treatment.”
McCafferty said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in proving that the letter was vague, viewpoint discriminatory and unlawfully imposed new legal obligations.
Plaintiffs said they were pleased with the decision.
“This ruling affirms what educators and communities have long known: celebrating the full existence of every person and sharing the truth about our history is essential,” Sharif El-Mekki, CEO at The Center for Black Educator Development, said in a statement. “Today’s decision protects educators’ livelihoods and their responsibility to teach honestly.”
“While [President Donald] Trump and [Secretary of Education Linda] McMahon want to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion, educators know these values are at the core of our nation,” Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s unlawful Dear Colleague letter and certification requirement have now been vacated and abandoned, underscoring how badly Trump and McMahon overreached in their attempt to interfere with curriculum and instruction.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. — A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday threw out a lawsuit filed by President Trump’s campaign, dismissing its challenges to the battleground state’s poll-watching law and the campaign’s efforts to limit how mail-in ballots can be collected and which of them can be counted.
Elements of the ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan could be appealed by Trump’s campaign, with just over three weeks to go until election day in a state hotly contested by Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The lawsuit was opposed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, the state Democratic Party, the League of Women Voters, the NAACP’s Pennsylvania office and other allied groups.
“The court’s decision today affirms what we’ve long known, that Pennsylvania’s elections are safe, secure and accurate, and residents can vote on Nov. 3 with confidence that their votes will be counted and their voices heard,” Wolf’s office said in a statement.
“The ruling is a complete rejection of the continued misinformation about voter fraud and corruption and those who seek to sow chaos and discord ahead of the upcoming election,” the statement added.
However, Trump’s campaign indicated in a statement that it would appeal and looked forward to a quick decision “that will further protect Pennsylvania voters from the Democrats’ radical voting system.”
The lawsuit is one of many partisan battles being fought in the state Legislature and the courts over mail-in voting amid the prospect that a presidential election result could be delayed for days by a drawn-out vote count in Pennsylvania.
In this case, Trump’s campaign wanted the court to bar counties from collecting mail ballots using drop boxes or mobile sites that are not “staffed, secured and employed consistently within and across all 67 of Pennsylvania’s counties.”
More than 20 counties — including Philadelphia and most other heavily populated Democratic-leaning counties — have told the state elections office that they plan to use drop boxes and satellite election offices to help collect mail-in ballots.
Trump’s campaign also wanted the court to free county election officials to disqualify mail-in ballots where the voter’s signature may not match their signature on file and to remove a county residency requirement for poll watchers.
In guidance last month, Wolf’s top elections official told counties that state law does not require or permit them to reject a mail-in ballot solely over a perceived signature inconsistency.
The Trump campaign had asked Ranjan to declare that guidance unconstitutional and to block counties from following it.
In throwing out the case, Ranjan wrote that the Trump campaign could not prove its central claim that election fraud in Pennsylvania threatened to cost Trump the election and that adopting the changes the campaign sought would remove that threat.
“While plaintiffs may not need to prove actual voter fraud, they must at least prove that such fraud is ‘certainly impending,’” Ranjan wrote. “They haven’t met that burden. At most, they have pieced together a sequence of uncertain assumptions.”
Ranjan also cited decisions in recent days by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in hot-button election cases, saying he should not second-guess decisions by state lawmakers and election officials.
The decision comes as Trump claims he can’t lose the state unless Democrats cheat, and, as he did in the 2016 campaign, suggests that the Democratic bastion of Philadelphia needs to be watched closely for election fraud.
Democrats counter that Trump is running on a conspiracy theory of election fraud because he cannot win on his own record of fraud and mismanagement.
Shia LaBeouf’s Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans allegedly took a violent turn Tuesday morning, landing him in the hospital and facing charges of battery.
The New Orleans Police Department confirmed that officers arrested the “Megalopolis” and “Honey Boy” actor, 39, at 12:45 a.m. in the city’s famed French Quarter. He was charged with two counts of simple battery for allegedly assaulting two men.
A representative for the “Transformers” star did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Police arrived at a business on the 1400 block of Royal Street, responding to a reported assault, officials said. The two men alleged they were assaulted by LaBeouf. The former “Even Stevens” child star was “causing a disturbance” at the business, prompting staff to remove him from the premises, police said. LaBeouf allegedly struck one of the victims and “used his closed fists on the victim several times.”
Police say LaBeouf left the business but returned “acting even more aggressive.” According to the incident report, an unspecified number of people tried to subdue LaBeouf and eventually let him go “in hope that he would leave.” Instead, he allegedly began assaulting the same man as before, hitting his upper body with closed fists. The actor is accused of punching the second man in the nose.
Investigators say people held LaBeouf down again until officials arrived. The actor was transported and treated for unknown injuries and was arrested and charged upon his release. TMZ published bystander video of multiple men standing over LaBeouf as he lies shirtless on a street. The video shows one man punching LaBeouf as he tries to get to his feet. Other bystanders can be heard telling both the man hitting and LaBeouf to “chill.” The video ends with two men holding LaBeouf down.
TMZ also published video of LaBeouf sitting shirtless in the trunk of a police vehicle and video of LaBeouf walking through the French Quarter on Monday.
Los Angeles native LaBeouf has a history of violent and disorderly behavior that shadowed his efforts to move past his Disney Channel days in the early aughts. Following his comeback in the form of filmmaker Alma Har’el’s “Honey Boy,” LaBeouf was sued in 2020 by his ex-girlfriend, musician FKA twigs, for assault, sexual battery and emotional abuse. The lawsuit also alleged LaBeouf abused another former girlfriend. He denied her allegations.
“I am not in the position to defend any of my actions. I owe these women the opportunity to air their statements publicly and accept accountability for those things I have done,” he told the New York Times amid the lawsuit.
Two golfers in Washington, D.C., have sued the federal government to try to prevent the Trump administration from overhauling a more than 100-year-old public golf course, accusing the administration of violating environmental laws and polluting a park that is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The suit, which also claims the administration is violating a congressional act governing the property, is the latest in a series of legal battles challenging President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capital, including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which he ordered closed for renovation.
At the end of last year, a group of preservationists filed a similar lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing of the White House in order to build a ballroom — a project estimated to cost $400 million.
Trump, an avid golfer, also plans to renovate a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used for decades by past presidents.
The complaint filed against the Department of the Interior on Friday says that the Trump administration’s reconstruction of East Potomac Park — which includes the East Potomac Golf Course — would violate the congressional act that created the park in 1897. The act established the park for the “recreation and the pleasure of the people.”
The golf course has been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places in part for its efforts to racially integrate in the 1940s. Municipal golf courses make up only 18% of courses in America.
“East Potomac Golf Links is a testament to what’s possible with public land and why public spaces matter,” said Washington resident and plaintiff Dave Roberts. “It deserves better than becoming a dumping ground for waste and yet another private playground for the privileged and powerful.”
The lawsuit came after the Trump administration in December ended a lease agreement the nonprofit National Links Trust held for East Potomac and two other golf courses in Washington. The Interior Department said it did so because the nonprofit hadn’t implemented required capital improvements and failed to meet the terms of the lease.
The Interior Department press office said in an email Friday that it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but that it would “ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable and accessible for people visiting the greatest capital city in the world which is in line with President Trump’s agenda.”
The White House also didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment Friday evening.
Construction on the East Potomac course has already begun, according to the lawsuit. In October, the National Park Service began dumping debris from the demolition of the East Wing of the White House onto the golf course, the complaint said, raising concerns that the materials could contain contaminants that could pollute the air.
As a result, the plaintiffs argued, the administration also violated the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 by failing to consider the harmful environmental impacts of the project.
The National Links Trust said in December it was “devastated” by the decision to terminate the lease and defended its management of the courses.
The trust said that $8.5 million had gone toward capital improvements at the courses and that rounds played and revenue had more than doubled in its tenure managing the courses. It also said the termination of the lease jeopardized hundreds of local jobs.
The nonprofit has agreed to keep managing the courses for the time being, but long-term renovations will stop.
The first 18 holes of the East Potomac Park Golf Course were built from 1918 to 1923.
Riddle writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report.
The Federal Constitutional Court, the highest Court in Germany, has spoken. That sentence is the centre of gravity. It signals judicial restraint. It confirms that the Federal Government retains broad discretion in determining how it complies with its constitutional duty to protect fundamental human rights, including in the sensitive area of arms exports contributing to a warfare that is deemed genocidal by the United Nations.
The case concerns German-made transmission components for Israeli Merkava and Namer tanks, widely deployed by Israeli forces in Gaza and reportedly used repeatedly in violations of international law. Germany is one of the largest arms suppliers to Israel.
This evidently shows that the protection system referred to by the Federal Constitutional Court is ineffective in legal practice. When arms exports continue despite numerous indications of serious violations of international law, and affected parties are unable to challenge these decisions in court, the protection regime fails to provide meaningful legal safeguards.
If courts do not intervene unless the state has entirely abdicated its duty of protection, then the decisive arena becomes merely political. This represents a discourse in Germany that constantly places Palestinian matters and rights in a political frame, even when they concern fundamental human rights.
The ECCHR is supporting the complainant together with Palestinian human rights organizations Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq, commented:
Neither the legal landscape nor politics are abstract or neutral. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of crimes against humanity. The International Court of Justice, in proceedings concerning Gaza, has indicated that states have obligations to prevent genocide where there is a plausible risk and to ensure that their conduct does not contribute to such acts. In addition, proceedings have been brought before the International Court of Justice against Germany itself, alleging violations of the Genocide Convention in connection with its support and arms exports — directly linking Germany’s conduct to the duty to prevent genocide under international law.
The Constitutional Court’s ruling does not negate these developments. Nor does it declare German exports compliant with international law. It simply affirms that the assessment of risk lies “in principle” with the political branches.
If the government alone decides whether its general protection regime is sufficient in light of allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, then accountability becomes a matter of parliamentary oversight and public scrutiny rather than constitutional adjudication.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Feb. 12 (UPI) — Former Ohio State University board member Leslie Wexner must testify in federal lawsuits accusing the school of enabling sex abuse by Dr. Richard Strauss, a federal court ordered.
Wexner is neither a defendant nor a plaintiff in three lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio, but a Jan. 13 subpoena seeks to depose him on the matter.
Wexner filed a motion to quash the deposition subpoena, which Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers and District Judge Michael Watsondenied Wednesday.
They ordered Wexner to participate in a deposition within 60 days.
“Given the timing and length of Mr. Wexner’s tenure on the OSU Board of Trustees, including his time as vice chairman and chairman of the full board, as well as ranking positions on the board’s personnel committee, plaintiffs are entitled to discover what Mr. Wexner knew about Dr. Stauss and when he knew it,” Deavers and Watson said.
“Mr. Wexner’s testimony may also illuminate what the board did to monitor OSU’s sexual harassment compliance,” they wrote.
“If Mr. Wexner or the board had no knowledge about allegations surrounding Dr. Strauss, this would be evidence of OSU’s deliberate indifference,” they added.
Wexner argued he has no knowledge of the matter and never discussed allegations against Strauss while he was a board member or afterward, but the judges said that is insufficient cause for granting his motion to quash the deposition subpoena.
The three federal lawsuits filed by former students name Ohio State as the defendant and arise from the time that Strauss was the campus doctor from September 1978 to March 1998.
Strauss was accused of sexually abusing at least 177 OSU male student-athletes and chose to end his life by suicide in 2005.
His suicide prevented Strauss from being tried in court and potentially convicted of the alleged crimes.
His alleged victims last year held protests, during which they accused Wexner, his security staff and his attorney of preventing process servers from delivering the deposition subpoena to compel his testimony.
Watson issued the court deposition subpoena on Jan. 13 to negate the need for serving him with the prior subpoena, which Wexner’s legal team unsuccessfully sought to quash despite there being no accusations of wrongdoing on his part.
Floyd Mayweather Jr., one of history’s most successful professional boxers, is suing Showtime and a former executive at the company for $340 million, accusing them of depriving him of a “significant portion of his career earnings.”
The 48-year-old retired athlete alleges in the complaint that Showtime “through a complex web of hidden accounts, unauthorized transactions, and deliberate concealment of financial records,” wrongly paid some of his earnings to his former manager, Al Haymon.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is aimed at the Paramount-owned network and its former president of Showtime Sports, Stephen Espinoza. The complaint alleges that Mayweather’s inquiries about his pay were met with conflicting responses from Showtime, including that “critical financial records for Mayweather’s biggest fights were ‘lost’ or inaccessible.”
Haymon is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
A spokesperson for Paramount wrote in a statement to The Times that “these baseless claims lack legal or factual merit. We strongly reject them and will respond accordingly through the court process.”
A spokesperson for Haymon Boxing declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Over Mayweather’s 21-year career, the boxer has reportedly earned $1.2 billion. He first met his former manager, Haymon, in 2004. The boxer soon entered a verbal agreement with Haymon, allowing him to be Mayweather’s manager for a 10% fee. According to the suit, Mayweather considered Haymon to be a “father figure and relied on him to manage virtually all aspects of his finances and contracts.” Haymon worked in this role for about 20 years, and over time, the suit alleges, he became the “mastermind of the financial scheme,” engaging in “financial manipulation and self-dealing behind Mayweather’s back.”
In 2013, Mayweather exited a long-term contract with HBO to ink a new exclusive multi-fight deal with Showtime. The complaint states that Haymon’s “scheme” consisted of “diverting portions” of Mayweather’s earnings “under false pretenses that Haymon then kept or controlled,” putting fight revenues into “secret accounts that Mayweather did not know about or have access to,” paying himself large sums of money without Mayweather‘s knowledge and allegedly altering documents to cover up these actions.
Mayweather’s new team reached out to Showtime in 2024 for documentation of fight revenues and expenses. According to the lawsuit, his team was told the documents were “‘lost in a flood’ or stored off-site and not readily accessible.”
Mayweather also alleges Showtime still owes him $20 million from his 2015 fight against Andre Berto. The payout was originally meant to come from the proceeds of the Manny Pacquiao fight that year.
The lawsuit contends that by wiring Mayweather’s earnings to accounts inaccessible tothe boxer and saying that key documents are missing, both “Showtime and Espinoza enabled Haymon’s scheme and stymied Mayweather’s efforts to uncover the truth.”
MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge says she won’t halt the immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota as a lawsuit over it proceeds.
Judge Katherine M. Menendez on Saturday denied a preliminary injunction sought in a lawsuit filed this month by state Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
It argued that the Department of Homeland Security is violating constitutional protections. The lawsuit sought a quick order to halt the enforcement action or limit its scope. Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice have called the lawsuit “legally frivolous.”
The ruling on the injunction focused on the argument by Minnesota officials that the federal government is violating the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which limits the federal government’s powers to infringe on the sovereignty of states. In her ruling, the judge relied heavily on whether that argument was likely to ultimately succeed in court.
The federal government argued that the surge, which it calls Operation Metro Surge, is necessary in its effort to take criminal immigrants off the streets and because federal efforts have been hindered by state and local “sanctuary laws and policies.” State and local officials argued that the surge is political retaliation after the federal government’s initial attempts to withhold federal funding to try to force immigration cooperation failed.
“Because there is evidence supporting both sides’ arguments as to motivation and the relative merits of each side’s competing positions are unclear, the Court is reluctant to find that the likelihood-of-success factor weighs sufficiently in favor of granting a preliminary injunction,” the judge said in the ruling.
U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi lauded the ruling Saturday on social media, calling it “another HUGE” legal win for the Justice Department.
Federal officers have fatally shot two people on the streets of Minneapolis, Renee Good on Jan. 7 and Alex Pretti on Jan. 24.
