Washington
In lawsuit filing, Pentagon says transgender troops can’t serve unless they meet warfighting need
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon revealed the specifics of its new transgender troop policy in a court filing Wednesday that says any service member or recruit who has been diagnosed with or treated for gender dysphoria is disqualified from serving — unless they can prove they meet a specific warfighting need and adhere to severe restrictions on their day-to-day behavior.
The policy memo was included in the latest court filing in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order against transgender military service, one of many hot-button issues the president made a priority to address on his first days in office.
Like the executive order, the policy filed Wednesday suggests that the lethality and integrity of the military “is inconsistent” with what transgender personnel go through as they transition to the gender they identify with, and issues an edict that gender is “immutable, unchanging during a person’s life.”
The policy provides two exceptions — if transgender personnel who seek to enlist can prove on a case-by-case basis that they directly support warfighting activities, or if an existing service member, who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, can prove they support a specific warfighting need and never transitioned to the gender they identify with and proves over 36 months they are stable in their biological sex “without clinically significant distress.”
If a waiver is issued in either case, the applicant would still face a situation where only their biological sex was recognized for bathroom facilities, sleeping quarters and even in official recognition, such as being called “Sir” or “Ma’am.”
Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.
While the number of transgender troops serving is small compared to the size of the total force, it’s taken up a large amount of time and attention both at the White House and within the Pentagon. The military services due to medical privacy laws do not provide an exact count of transgender troops, but a 2018 independent study by the Palm Center, which researched LGBTQ issues, assessed there were an estimated 14,000 transgender troops among the more than 2 million troops serving.
It was a policy Trump tried to overturn in his first term in office but the issue ended up mired in lawsuits until former President Joe Biden was elected and he overturned the ban.
Maryland
Judge declares mistrial in parking dispute shooting that killed 3
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland judge declared a mistrial on Wednesday in the case of a man who is charged with killing three people and injuring three others in a 2023 shooting after a dispute over parking in the state’s capital city.
Media outlets reported that Anne Arundel Circuit Judge J. Michael Wachs said the prosecutor made “several transgressions” that tainted the testimony of Charles Robert Smith, who is charged in the shooting.
Smith, who is white, was indicted in July 2023 and charged with six counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree murder substantially motivated by hate towards Latino people, and other offenses.
There was an alleged argument between Smith’s mother and neighbors over a parking space before the fatal shooting in Annapolis. The victims, all Latino, were a father and son, Nicolas Mireles, 55, and Mario Mireles Ruiz, 27; and a family friend, Christian Marlon Segovia Jr., 24. Three others were injured.
The Baltimore Banner reported that Smith’s attorney called for a mistrial, saying State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess mischaracterized evidence and brought up facts the judge ruled to be irrelevant to the case.
Wachs said Leitess violated several rules of evidence and he had “no choice” but to declare a mistrial.
The case isn’t likely to be heard again until 2026, the judge said.
The Capital Gazette reports that Smith is still being held without bond, according to the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office.
In a statement after Wednesday’s decision, Leitess said, “This was a thorough, professional and hard-fought case by the prosecution and defense. The State will try this case again and seek justice for the victims.”
South Carolina
3 city councilmen charged in bribery and kickback plot
Three members of the City Council in South Carolina’s third-largest city accepted kickbacks and bribes to give out grant money and rezone land or lied about what they knew, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Charges against North Charleston councilmen Jerome Heyward, Sandino Moses and Mike A. Brown along with five others were announced Wednesday after a yearlong investigation by the FBI and state officials.
Heyward took a $40,000 kickback from two nonprofit organizations in return for steering to them part of a $1.3 million grant to fight gun violence in North Charleston, according to court documents.
Heyward and Brown were part of a scheme by a boat maker to rezone land on the Ashley River in North Charleston that was once a hospital and before that a fertilizer plant to sell to a boat manufacturer. The company offered to build a park but also wanted a plant on the site.
The councilmen accepted bribes to try to get the rezoning passed and by that time the FBI was listening to Heyward’s call, catching Brown saying he was annoyed it was taking too long to get his money because he needed to pay for his son’s wedding, prosecutors said.
The rezoning plan was rejected.
Moses also took money to support the rezoning. He returned it, but he lied about the offer and what he knew about his fellow councilmen being on the take, according to charging documents.
Heyward is charged with extortion, bribery and wire fraud. Brown is charged with bribery and wire fraud, and Moses is charged with lying to federal investigators.
Heyward and Moses plan to plead guilty to their charges on Friday, acting U.S. Attorney for South Carolina Brook Andrews said.
Heyward and Moses have resigned from council, North Charleston officials said.
North Charleston is South Carolina’s third-largest city with about 125,000 people. Mayor Reggie Burgess thanked the FBI and state investigators for their work to make sure residents remained certain with their city government. He said the city fully cooperated with the investigation.
“Transparency and accountability remain core principles of this administration, and we welcomed this review as a necessary step to uphold those standards,” Burgess said.
Georgia
Election board drops lawsuit after group fails to produce ballot-stuffing evidence
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia State Election Board on Wednesday voted to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to enforce a subpoena against a conservative group that was unable to produce evidence to support its claims of ballot stuffing in the state.
Texas-based True the Vote in 2021 filed complaints with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a crucial runoff election for two U.S. Senate seats in January 2021.
Investigators with the secretary’s office looked into the group’s complaints and in April 2022 subpoenaed True the Vote for evidence supporting its allegations. A lawyer for the group wrote to a state attorney in May 2023 that a complete response would require it to identify people to whom it had pledged confidentiality and said it was withdrawing its complaints.
Then-State Election Board chair William Duffey responded that the group had made “serious allegations” and that he wouldn’t allow the complaints to be withdrawn. He asked the state attorney general’s office to enforce the subpoenas, and the board filed a lawsuit.
A Fulton County judge in November 2023 ordered True the Vote to provide evidence it had collected, including the names of people it said had provided information. The organization said in a subsequent court filing it had no names, contact information or other documentary evidence to provide. The case was administratively closed in January 2024.
Election Board member Janice Johnston on Wednesday proposed dismissing the lawsuit, withdrawing the subpoena and dismissing the group’s complaint. She said it is apparent that an alleged whistleblower whom True the Vote said it was relying on for evidence “will not be identified or cannot be identified” and that the investigation was unlikely to be successful as a result.
After a brief discussion, the board voted to approve Johnston’s proposal.
Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, said in an emailed statement that the organization welcomes the dismissal of the case, which she described as “a legal dispute that never should have begun.” She said the organization “remains committed to our mission.”
True the Vote’s allegations that people engaged in ballot stuffing in Georgia were relied upon heavily for “2000 Mules,” a widely debunked film by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election. A State Election Board investigation found that surveillance camera footage used in the film showed people submitting ballots for themselves and family members who lived with them, which is allowed under Georgia law.
D’Souza in December issued a statement saying “inaccurate information” was provided to him about ballot box surveillance video and apologizing to a Georgia man who was falsely accused of ballot stuffing in the film. Previously, in May, Salem Media Group, the publisher of “2000 Mules,” also publicly apologized to the same man.
Pennsylvania
Man charged with having child sex abuse material
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Federal prosecutors say a man from the Pittsburgh area charged with possessing child sexual abuse material also targeted the city’s Jewish community with antisemitic flyers and has previously said he wanted to commit a “high kill-count” attack.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Pittsburgh said Wednesday that it successfully argued against bail for Aidan Harding, 20, during a hearing earlier this month. Harding was indicted on one count of possessing sexual content, in videos and photos, of children under age 12.
His lawyers argued Harding is not a flight risk, saying he has lived in the Pittsburgh area his entire life and works at a family farm. They wrote in a Feb. 12 filing that Harding is accused of having the child sexual abuse material on his phone, not producing such material or trying to meet a child.
Prosecutors allege Harding follows a “racially-motivated violent extremist ideology” and has more than 20 guns. They say Harding had previously been adjudicated delinquent for terroristic threats after posting online that he wanted to commit a “high kill-count” attack.
“To the extent that the government relies on assertions ... that the Defendant is adherent to a violent racist ideology or has visited Internet sites associated with racially or ethnically motivated extremism, it may be deplorable but it is not criminal,” wrote lawyers Chris Capozzi and Casey Mullen in a case filing. They said Harding’s guns are lawfully owned. Mullen declined to comment Wednesday.
Magistrate Judge Christopher B. Brown ordered Harding kept in jail until trial, and Butler County Prison’s telephone system indicated he was incarcerated there as of Wednesday afternoon.
In lawsuit filing, Pentagon says transgender troops can’t serve unless they meet warfighting need
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon revealed the specifics of its new transgender troop policy in a court filing Wednesday that says any service member or recruit who has been diagnosed with or treated for gender dysphoria is disqualified from serving — unless they can prove they meet a specific warfighting need and adhere to severe restrictions on their day-to-day behavior.
The policy memo was included in the latest court filing in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order against transgender military service, one of many hot-button issues the president made a priority to address on his first days in office.
Like the executive order, the policy filed Wednesday suggests that the lethality and integrity of the military “is inconsistent” with what transgender personnel go through as they transition to the gender they identify with, and issues an edict that gender is “immutable, unchanging during a person’s life.”
The policy provides two exceptions — if transgender personnel who seek to enlist can prove on a case-by-case basis that they directly support warfighting activities, or if an existing service member, who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, can prove they support a specific warfighting need and never transitioned to the gender they identify with and proves over 36 months they are stable in their biological sex “without clinically significant distress.”
If a waiver is issued in either case, the applicant would still face a situation where only their biological sex was recognized for bathroom facilities, sleeping quarters and even in official recognition, such as being called “Sir” or “Ma’am.”
Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.
While the number of transgender troops serving is small compared to the size of the total force, it’s taken up a large amount of time and attention both at the White House and within the Pentagon. The military services due to medical privacy laws do not provide an exact count of transgender troops, but a 2018 independent study by the Palm Center, which researched LGBTQ issues, assessed there were an estimated 14,000 transgender troops among the more than 2 million troops serving.
It was a policy Trump tried to overturn in his first term in office but the issue ended up mired in lawsuits until former President Joe Biden was elected and he overturned the ban.
Maryland
Judge declares mistrial in parking dispute shooting that killed 3
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland judge declared a mistrial on Wednesday in the case of a man who is charged with killing three people and injuring three others in a 2023 shooting after a dispute over parking in the state’s capital city.
Media outlets reported that Anne Arundel Circuit Judge J. Michael Wachs said the prosecutor made “several transgressions” that tainted the testimony of Charles Robert Smith, who is charged in the shooting.
Smith, who is white, was indicted in July 2023 and charged with six counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of first-degree murder substantially motivated by hate towards Latino people, and other offenses.
There was an alleged argument between Smith’s mother and neighbors over a parking space before the fatal shooting in Annapolis. The victims, all Latino, were a father and son, Nicolas Mireles, 55, and Mario Mireles Ruiz, 27; and a family friend, Christian Marlon Segovia Jr., 24. Three others were injured.
The Baltimore Banner reported that Smith’s attorney called for a mistrial, saying State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess mischaracterized evidence and brought up facts the judge ruled to be irrelevant to the case.
Wachs said Leitess violated several rules of evidence and he had “no choice” but to declare a mistrial.
The case isn’t likely to be heard again until 2026, the judge said.
The Capital Gazette reports that Smith is still being held without bond, according to the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office.
In a statement after Wednesday’s decision, Leitess said, “This was a thorough, professional and hard-fought case by the prosecution and defense. The State will try this case again and seek justice for the victims.”
South Carolina
3 city councilmen charged in bribery and kickback plot
Three members of the City Council in South Carolina’s third-largest city accepted kickbacks and bribes to give out grant money and rezone land or lied about what they knew, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Charges against North Charleston councilmen Jerome Heyward, Sandino Moses and Mike A. Brown along with five others were announced Wednesday after a yearlong investigation by the FBI and state officials.
Heyward took a $40,000 kickback from two nonprofit organizations in return for steering to them part of a $1.3 million grant to fight gun violence in North Charleston, according to court documents.
Heyward and Brown were part of a scheme by a boat maker to rezone land on the Ashley River in North Charleston that was once a hospital and before that a fertilizer plant to sell to a boat manufacturer. The company offered to build a park but also wanted a plant on the site.
The councilmen accepted bribes to try to get the rezoning passed and by that time the FBI was listening to Heyward’s call, catching Brown saying he was annoyed it was taking too long to get his money because he needed to pay for his son’s wedding, prosecutors said.
The rezoning plan was rejected.
Moses also took money to support the rezoning. He returned it, but he lied about the offer and what he knew about his fellow councilmen being on the take, according to charging documents.
Heyward is charged with extortion, bribery and wire fraud. Brown is charged with bribery and wire fraud, and Moses is charged with lying to federal investigators.
Heyward and Moses plan to plead guilty to their charges on Friday, acting U.S. Attorney for South Carolina Brook Andrews said.
Heyward and Moses have resigned from council, North Charleston officials said.
North Charleston is South Carolina’s third-largest city with about 125,000 people. Mayor Reggie Burgess thanked the FBI and state investigators for their work to make sure residents remained certain with their city government. He said the city fully cooperated with the investigation.
“Transparency and accountability remain core principles of this administration, and we welcomed this review as a necessary step to uphold those standards,” Burgess said.
Georgia
Election board drops lawsuit after group fails to produce ballot-stuffing evidence
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia State Election Board on Wednesday voted to dismiss a lawsuit seeking to enforce a subpoena against a conservative group that was unable to produce evidence to support its claims of ballot stuffing in the state.
Texas-based True the Vote in 2021 filed complaints with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a crucial runoff election for two U.S. Senate seats in January 2021.
Investigators with the secretary’s office looked into the group’s complaints and in April 2022 subpoenaed True the Vote for evidence supporting its allegations. A lawyer for the group wrote to a state attorney in May 2023 that a complete response would require it to identify people to whom it had pledged confidentiality and said it was withdrawing its complaints.
Then-State Election Board chair William Duffey responded that the group had made “serious allegations” and that he wouldn’t allow the complaints to be withdrawn. He asked the state attorney general’s office to enforce the subpoenas, and the board filed a lawsuit.
A Fulton County judge in November 2023 ordered True the Vote to provide evidence it had collected, including the names of people it said had provided information. The organization said in a subsequent court filing it had no names, contact information or other documentary evidence to provide. The case was administratively closed in January 2024.
Election Board member Janice Johnston on Wednesday proposed dismissing the lawsuit, withdrawing the subpoena and dismissing the group’s complaint. She said it is apparent that an alleged whistleblower whom True the Vote said it was relying on for evidence “will not be identified or cannot be identified” and that the investigation was unlikely to be successful as a result.
After a brief discussion, the board voted to approve Johnston’s proposal.
Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, said in an emailed statement that the organization welcomes the dismissal of the case, which she described as “a legal dispute that never should have begun.” She said the organization “remains committed to our mission.”
True the Vote’s allegations that people engaged in ballot stuffing in Georgia were relied upon heavily for “2000 Mules,” a widely debunked film by conservative pundit and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election. A State Election Board investigation found that surveillance camera footage used in the film showed people submitting ballots for themselves and family members who lived with them, which is allowed under Georgia law.
D’Souza in December issued a statement saying “inaccurate information” was provided to him about ballot box surveillance video and apologizing to a Georgia man who was falsely accused of ballot stuffing in the film. Previously, in May, Salem Media Group, the publisher of “2000 Mules,” also publicly apologized to the same man.
Pennsylvania
Man charged with having child sex abuse material
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Federal prosecutors say a man from the Pittsburgh area charged with possessing child sexual abuse material also targeted the city’s Jewish community with antisemitic flyers and has previously said he wanted to commit a “high kill-count” attack.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Pittsburgh said Wednesday that it successfully argued against bail for Aidan Harding, 20, during a hearing earlier this month. Harding was indicted on one count of possessing sexual content, in videos and photos, of children under age 12.
His lawyers argued Harding is not a flight risk, saying he has lived in the Pittsburgh area his entire life and works at a family farm. They wrote in a Feb. 12 filing that Harding is accused of having the child sexual abuse material on his phone, not producing such material or trying to meet a child.
Prosecutors allege Harding follows a “racially-motivated violent extremist ideology” and has more than 20 guns. They say Harding had previously been adjudicated delinquent for terroristic threats after posting online that he wanted to commit a “high kill-count” attack.
“To the extent that the government relies on assertions ... that the Defendant is adherent to a violent racist ideology or has visited Internet sites associated with racially or ethnically motivated extremism, it may be deplorable but it is not criminal,” wrote lawyers Chris Capozzi and Casey Mullen in a case filing. They said Harding’s guns are lawfully owned. Mullen declined to comment Wednesday.
Magistrate Judge Christopher B. Brown ordered Harding kept in jail until trial, and Butler County Prison’s telephone system indicated he was incarcerated there as of Wednesday afternoon.
