Washington
National Trust says it won’t drop suit against Trump’s $400M White House ballroom after DOJ request
WASHINGTON (AP) — Preservationists are pressing ahead with their lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s planned $400 million White House ballroom, declining a request by the Department of Justice to withdraw the complaint following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
Trump and other conservatives have made a renewed push for the ballroom in the wake of Saturday’s media dinner shooting, arguing it exposed the difficulties in ensuring presidential security at large events outside the White House grounds, and urging the National Trust for Historic Preservation to drop its lawsuit.
Top Justice officials said the government would ask a court to dismiss the lawsuit “in light of last night’s extraordinary events” if the Trust did not voluntarily drop it.
Trust attorney Gregory Craig declined that request, writing to the Justice Department that the legal issues at the heart of the lawsuit are unchanged.
The preservation group sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for a below-ground bunker and security upgrades.
In its lawsuit, the Trust argued that Trump had overstepped his authority by moving forward with the project without first getting approval from key federal agencies and Congress.
A federal appeals court has allowed Trump to continue the project, ruling a day after a lower court judge continued to block above-ground construction on the site and scheduling a June 5 hearing to review the case.
Illinois
Robbery suspect charged with murder of officer while at hospital
CHICAGO (AP) — A robbery suspect now faces murder and attempted murder charges along with a long list of other felony counts in the shooting death of a Chicago police officer and the wounding of another at a hospital where they took him for treatment.
Alphanso Talley, 26, was scheduled to make his first appearance Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, the state’s attorney’s office said.
Officer John Bartholomew, 38, a 10-year veteran of the force, was pronounced dead just before 1 p.m. Saturday after being shot at Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
A second officer was critically wounded in the Saturday morning shooting, police said. His name was not immediately released. Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a statement Monday that the wounded officer — 57 years old with 21 years of service — was “still fighting for his life.”
The officers had taken Talley, who had been arrested for suspicion in an armed robbery that morning, to the hospital for observation. He fled after the shooting — a surveillance photo obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times appeared to show him running naked, with electrodes on his chest — and was arrested less than two hours later.
Police have not said how the suspect was able to get a gun. Snelling said investigators ultimately recovered three weapons.
The hospital said in a Facebook posting that an individual in custody of law enforcement had been brought to the emergency department for treatment and was “wanded upon arrival” in a search for any weapons, following protocol. He was escorted by law enforcement at all times, the hospital said.
According to Illinois Department of Corrections records, Talley’s criminal record includes convictions for aggravated battery of a peace officer and for aiding, abetting, possessing or selling a stolen motor vehicle in 2023, as well as previous robbery and firearms convictions.
Washington
DOJ to allow firing squads for executions
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.
The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.
The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Joe Biden converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by Bill Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.
Attorney General Merrick Garland in the final days of the Biden administration withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review of scientific and medical research found there remains “significant uncertainty” about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.”
In 2020, under Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department published a rule in the Federal Register to allow the federal government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.”
A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution, inhaling nitrogen gas or death by firing squad.
The Trump administration, in a report released Friday, said the Biden administration “got the standard and the science wrong.” The Biden administration’s findings, among other things, “failed to address the overwhelming evidence” that an injected with pentobarbital quickly “quickly loses consciousness—rendering him unable to experience pain,” the report said.
Currently on death row are are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.
National Trust says it won’t drop suit against Trump’s $400M White House ballroom after DOJ request
WASHINGTON (AP) — Preservationists are pressing ahead with their lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s planned $400 million White House ballroom, declining a request by the Department of Justice to withdraw the complaint following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
Trump and other conservatives have made a renewed push for the ballroom in the wake of Saturday’s media dinner shooting, arguing it exposed the difficulties in ensuring presidential security at large events outside the White House grounds, and urging the National Trust for Historic Preservation to drop its lawsuit.
Top Justice officials said the government would ask a court to dismiss the lawsuit “in light of last night’s extraordinary events” if the Trust did not voluntarily drop it.
Trust attorney Gregory Craig declined that request, writing to the Justice Department that the legal issues at the heart of the lawsuit are unchanged.
The preservation group sued in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people. Trump says the project is funded by private donations, although public money is paying for a below-ground bunker and security upgrades.
In its lawsuit, the Trust argued that Trump had overstepped his authority by moving forward with the project without first getting approval from key federal agencies and Congress.
A federal appeals court has allowed Trump to continue the project, ruling a day after a lower court judge continued to block above-ground construction on the site and scheduling a June 5 hearing to review the case.
Illinois
Robbery suspect charged with murder of officer while at hospital
CHICAGO (AP) — A robbery suspect now faces murder and attempted murder charges along with a long list of other felony counts in the shooting death of a Chicago police officer and the wounding of another at a hospital where they took him for treatment.
Alphanso Talley, 26, was scheduled to make his first appearance Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, the state’s attorney’s office said.
Officer John Bartholomew, 38, a 10-year veteran of the force, was pronounced dead just before 1 p.m. Saturday after being shot at Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
A second officer was critically wounded in the Saturday morning shooting, police said. His name was not immediately released. Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said in a statement Monday that the wounded officer — 57 years old with 21 years of service — was “still fighting for his life.”
The officers had taken Talley, who had been arrested for suspicion in an armed robbery that morning, to the hospital for observation. He fled after the shooting — a surveillance photo obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times appeared to show him running naked, with electrodes on his chest — and was arrested less than two hours later.
Police have not said how the suspect was able to get a gun. Snelling said investigators ultimately recovered three weapons.
The hospital said in a Facebook posting that an individual in custody of law enforcement had been brought to the emergency department for treatment and was “wanded upon arrival” in a search for any weapons, following protocol. He was escorted by law enforcement at all times, the hospital said.
According to Illinois Department of Corrections records, Talley’s criminal record includes convictions for aggravated battery of a peace officer and for aiding, abetting, possessing or selling a stolen motor vehicle in 2023, as well as previous robbery and firearms convictions.
Washington
DOJ to allow firing squads for executions
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.
The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.
The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Joe Biden converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison, though the Trump administration has so far authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by Bill Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.
Attorney General Merrick Garland in the final days of the Biden administration withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review of scientific and medical research found there remains “significant uncertainty” about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.”
In 2020, under Barr’s leadership, the Justice Department published a rule in the Federal Register to allow the federal government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.”
A number of states allow other methods of execution, including electrocution, inhaling nitrogen gas or death by firing squad.
The Trump administration, in a report released Friday, said the Biden administration “got the standard and the science wrong.” The Biden administration’s findings, among other things, “failed to address the overwhelming evidence” that an injected with pentobarbital quickly “quickly loses consciousness—rendering him unable to experience pain,” the report said.
Currently on death row are are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.
