Washington
Disney sues FCC over challenge to broadcast licenses, claiming retaliation over ‘Jimmy Kimmel’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Disney filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission alleging a violation of its First Amendment rights.
The suit comes after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently defended the agency’s actions against ABC, saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest” and the FCC is merely trying to restore that standard.
Carr has said the country should have a “trusted, respected news media, and we’re not there.”
ABC had accused the agency of a brazen attempt to chill its constitutionally protected free speech — and by extension, that of every media outlet in the country. The network’s July comments came in its latest filing to the agency, expressing its formal opposition to the FCC’s early review, launched in April, of eight ABC local broadcast licenses well before they expire.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired. When the FCC launched its early review of ABC’s licenses in April, it came amid a fight with Kimmel over a joke that offended Trump. The agency cited diversity, equity and inclusion practices at the company.
Messages were sent seeking comment to the FCC and ABC.
New York
Mangione’s state murder trial postponed indefinitely amid double jeopardy fight
NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which was slated to begin Sept. 8, has been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds following his guilty plea last week to federal charges.
Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense’s double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.
Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.
“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said.
Immediately after his plea, Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork seeking to have the state case thrown out on double jeopardy and due process grounds. They described him as a “pawn in parallel prosecutions” and accused state and federal prosecutors of “trying to punish him twice for the exact conduct.”
Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.
Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.
It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.
Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.
“The full range of conduct that comprises the stalking offense is coterminous with the conduct committed as part of the murder offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote in their double jeopardy filing.
That Mangione traveled from out of state “to be at the crime scene at the time of the shooting does nothing to eliminate the stalking of Mr. Thompson from the acts constituting his murder,” they added. “They are all part of the same criminal incident or criminal transaction.”
Bragg’s office contends that the state charges, including murder and firearms offenses, involve different legal elements and criminal conduct. In a letter last month, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann objected to the possibility of a federal guilty plea wiping out the state case.
Any guilty plea, Seidemann wrote, “must account for the seriousness of defendant’s offenses” and for the state’s interests in prosecuting Mangione, “including the sanctity of life principle that underpins the state homicide charges.”
Tennessee
Justice Department pushes to revive criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Justice Department is pushing to revive criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, telling a federal appeals court late Monday that a judge erred in his scathing ruling that called the case against the man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison an “abuse of prosecuting power.”
The government is appealing the May ruling by U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw that threw out charges of human smuggling against the Salvadoran national. The ruling amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that under President Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of targeting defendants for political purposes.
Crenshaw found that Abrego Garcia would never have faced criminal charges had he not successfully sued the government over his 2025 deportation. The ruling was an embarrassment for the Trump administration, which only brought him back after securing a criminal indictment against him.
Crenshaw stopped short of finding the government acted with “actual vindictiveness,” a rarely-met standard that usually requires evidence like a prosecutor admitting that charges were filed in retaliation against someone. But the judge did find there was enough evidence of “presumptive vindictiveness.” That included the timing of the indictment.
Homeland Security had been aware of the 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee that was the basis for the human smuggling charges for more than two years before Abrego Garcia was deported. The agency only reopened the case and began investigating in earnest after Abrego Garcia was ordered returned to the U.S.
Crenshaw also found that statements by U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was a deputy at the time, suggested the Justice Department was targeting Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.
In a brief filed Monday night with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, federal prosecutors argued that Crenshaw got it wrong. Blanche’s statements, they argue, demonstrated a legitimate motive for prosecuting him. His rationale reflected a “normal assessment of the societal interest in punishment,” not an “improper penalty,” they said. The statements “explained that the government was seeking to protect the public and confirm its prior assertions about Abrego’s criminal activity,” the brief states.
But even if Blanche’s statements reflected an animus against Abrego Garcia, they are irrelevant because the person who actually brought the charges was then-Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire, the brief states — rehashing an argument thoroughly rejected by Crenshaw that McGuire’s motives were the only motives that mattered in the case.
Crenshaw’s ruling noted the sustained oversight of the case by top Justice Department officials, including regular communications between McGuire and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, in finding that the criminal case was thoroughly tainted. Crenshaw also noted that prosecutors never called as a witness the investigator who actually reopened the case, to explain why.
Abrego Garcia, 31, is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years although he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. A 2019 order by an immigration judge prohibited his deportation to El Salvador, finding he had a “well founded fear” of a gang that had targeted his family there. The judge allowed him to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision, but he was not given residency status.
Blocked from re-deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, the Trump administration has vowed to deport him to a third county, threatening to send him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. Abrego Garcia has said he would agree to be deported to Costa Rica, which has said they will accept him, but the government has so far declined to send him there.
He is fighting deportation to Liberia in a separate federal court case in Maryland.
Germany
81-year-old man admits to 1994 killing of American tourist as trial opens in Koblenz
BERLIN (AP) — An 81-year-old man admitted to sexually assaulting and killing an American tourist in Germany more than 30 years ago at the opening of his trial on Tuesday, German news agency dpa reported.
The defendant, whose name was not given in line with German privacy rules, admitted to killing 24-year-old Amy Lopez in 1994 in the western German city of Koblenz, the news agency reported.
Prosecutors accused him of “killing a person in a treacherous manner and for base motives in order to satisfy his sexual urges.”
The defense lawyer, Volker Klein, said during the session in the Koblenz district court that the defendant admitted fully to the crime. When the presiding judge, Rupert Stehlin, asked the defendant if that was true, the 81-year-old nodded and said “yes.”
The crime took place Sept. 26, 1994, when Amy Lopez was visiting Koblenz as a tourist.
The prosecution accuses the man, who was 49 years old at the time, of luring her under false pretenses into a secluded room of the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Koblenz, where he then allegedly handcuffed her, sexually assaulted her and killed her with nine knife wounds to the chest area.
The suspect allegedly also strangled Lopez with a belt and struck her on the left side of her head with a rock when she tried to defend herself and shouted, dpa reported.
Shortly afterward, children playing nearby found Lopez’s body.
The cold case remained unsolved for decades until investigators analyzed old DNA traces using new methods, ultimately leading to a breakthrough. DNA found on the victim’s waistband and thigh were eventually linked to the man, dpa reported.
The man was arrested in late February at a nursing home in the Koblenz area and has been in pretrial detention since.
A total of eight trial days have been scheduled and a verdict is expected in September.
Disney sues FCC over challenge to broadcast licenses, claiming retaliation over ‘Jimmy Kimmel’
WASHINGTON (AP) — Disney filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission alleging a violation of its First Amendment rights.
The suit comes after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently defended the agency’s actions against ABC, saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest” and the FCC is merely trying to restore that standard.
Carr has said the country should have a “trusted, respected news media, and we’re not there.”
ABC had accused the agency of a brazen attempt to chill its constitutionally protected free speech — and by extension, that of every media outlet in the country. The network’s July comments came in its latest filing to the agency, expressing its formal opposition to the FCC’s early review, launched in April, of eight ABC local broadcast licenses well before they expire.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to be fired. When the FCC launched its early review of ABC’s licenses in April, it came amid a fight with Kimmel over a joke that offended Trump. The agency cited diversity, equity and inclusion practices at the company.
Messages were sent seeking comment to the FCC and ABC.
New York
Mangione’s state murder trial postponed indefinitely amid double jeopardy fight
NEW YORK (AP) — Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which was slated to begin Sept. 8, has been postponed indefinitely as his lawyers seek to have the case thrown out on double jeopardy grounds following his guilty plea last week to federal charges.
Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense’s double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.
Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.
“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said.
Immediately after his plea, Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork seeking to have the state case thrown out on double jeopardy and due process grounds. They described him as a “pawn in parallel prosecutions” and accused state and federal prosecutors of “trying to punish him twice for the exact conduct.”
Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.
Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.
It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.
Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.
“The full range of conduct that comprises the stalking offense is coterminous with the conduct committed as part of the murder offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote in their double jeopardy filing.
That Mangione traveled from out of state “to be at the crime scene at the time of the shooting does nothing to eliminate the stalking of Mr. Thompson from the acts constituting his murder,” they added. “They are all part of the same criminal incident or criminal transaction.”
Bragg’s office contends that the state charges, including murder and firearms offenses, involve different legal elements and criminal conduct. In a letter last month, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann objected to the possibility of a federal guilty plea wiping out the state case.
Any guilty plea, Seidemann wrote, “must account for the seriousness of defendant’s offenses” and for the state’s interests in prosecuting Mangione, “including the sanctity of life principle that underpins the state homicide charges.”
Tennessee
Justice Department pushes to revive criminal case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Justice Department is pushing to revive criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, telling a federal appeals court late Monday that a judge erred in his scathing ruling that called the case against the man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison an “abuse of prosecuting power.”
The government is appealing the May ruling by U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw that threw out charges of human smuggling against the Salvadoran national. The ruling amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that under President Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of targeting defendants for political purposes.
Crenshaw found that Abrego Garcia would never have faced criminal charges had he not successfully sued the government over his 2025 deportation. The ruling was an embarrassment for the Trump administration, which only brought him back after securing a criminal indictment against him.
Crenshaw stopped short of finding the government acted with “actual vindictiveness,” a rarely-met standard that usually requires evidence like a prosecutor admitting that charges were filed in retaliation against someone. But the judge did find there was enough evidence of “presumptive vindictiveness.” That included the timing of the indictment.
Homeland Security had been aware of the 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee that was the basis for the human smuggling charges for more than two years before Abrego Garcia was deported. The agency only reopened the case and began investigating in earnest after Abrego Garcia was ordered returned to the U.S.
Crenshaw also found that statements by U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was a deputy at the time, suggested the Justice Department was targeting Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.
In a brief filed Monday night with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, federal prosecutors argued that Crenshaw got it wrong. Blanche’s statements, they argue, demonstrated a legitimate motive for prosecuting him. His rationale reflected a “normal assessment of the societal interest in punishment,” not an “improper penalty,” they said. The statements “explained that the government was seeking to protect the public and confirm its prior assertions about Abrego’s criminal activity,” the brief states.
But even if Blanche’s statements reflected an animus against Abrego Garcia, they are irrelevant because the person who actually brought the charges was then-Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire, the brief states — rehashing an argument thoroughly rejected by Crenshaw that McGuire’s motives were the only motives that mattered in the case.
Crenshaw’s ruling noted the sustained oversight of the case by top Justice Department officials, including regular communications between McGuire and Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh, in finding that the criminal case was thoroughly tainted. Crenshaw also noted that prosecutors never called as a witness the investigator who actually reopened the case, to explain why.
Abrego Garcia, 31, is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years although he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. A 2019 order by an immigration judge prohibited his deportation to El Salvador, finding he had a “well founded fear” of a gang that had targeted his family there. The judge allowed him to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision, but he was not given residency status.
Blocked from re-deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, the Trump administration has vowed to deport him to a third county, threatening to send him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. Abrego Garcia has said he would agree to be deported to Costa Rica, which has said they will accept him, but the government has so far declined to send him there.
He is fighting deportation to Liberia in a separate federal court case in Maryland.
Germany
81-year-old man admits to 1994 killing of American tourist as trial opens in Koblenz
BERLIN (AP) — An 81-year-old man admitted to sexually assaulting and killing an American tourist in Germany more than 30 years ago at the opening of his trial on Tuesday, German news agency dpa reported.
The defendant, whose name was not given in line with German privacy rules, admitted to killing 24-year-old Amy Lopez in 1994 in the western German city of Koblenz, the news agency reported.
Prosecutors accused him of “killing a person in a treacherous manner and for base motives in order to satisfy his sexual urges.”
The defense lawyer, Volker Klein, said during the session in the Koblenz district court that the defendant admitted fully to the crime. When the presiding judge, Rupert Stehlin, asked the defendant if that was true, the 81-year-old nodded and said “yes.”
The crime took place Sept. 26, 1994, when Amy Lopez was visiting Koblenz as a tourist.
The prosecution accuses the man, who was 49 years old at the time, of luring her under false pretenses into a secluded room of the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Koblenz, where he then allegedly handcuffed her, sexually assaulted her and killed her with nine knife wounds to the chest area.
The suspect allegedly also strangled Lopez with a belt and struck her on the left side of her head with a rock when she tried to defend herself and shouted, dpa reported.
Shortly afterward, children playing nearby found Lopez’s body.
The cold case remained unsolved for decades until investigators analyzed old DNA traces using new methods, ultimately leading to a breakthrough. DNA found on the victim’s waistband and thigh were eventually linked to the man, dpa reported.
The man was arrested in late February at a nursing home in the Koblenz area and has been in pretrial detention since.
A total of eight trial days have been scheduled and a verdict is expected in September.
