Texas
Trump approves firing squad execution for Fort Hood shooter
President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.
The U.S. military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961. The Army secretary will decide a time and place for the execution, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 injured.
He said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims and made almost no effort to defend himself at trial. He told jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”
Trump’s approval triggers a series of procedural steps toward carrying out the execution, but Hasan could put them on hold — potentially for years — with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.
Death sentences are extremely rare in the military justice system, and executions even rarer. Four men, including Hasan, are currently on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. President George W. Bush approved the execution Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008 but it was put on hold by a judge and he remains at Leavenworth.
The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl.
Alabama
High court rejects appeal to restore defamation verdict of $8.2M
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Roy Moore’s push to restore an $8.2 million defamation verdict over a 2017 Senate race ad funded by a Democratic-aligned super PAC.
Justices declined to hear Moore’s appeal of a lower court decision that vacated the large verdict. The outcome keeps in place the decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a jury’s decision that Moore had been defamed by the ad.
It was a victory for Senate Majority PAC, which funded the ad, and argued it was truthful.
The decision comes months after the court in June rejected Moore’s emergency request to put the 11th Circuit decision on hold while he appealed.
Moore, a former Alabama chief justice, known for his hardline stances opposing same-sex marriage and supporting the public display of the Ten Commandments, lost the 2017 Senate race after his campaign was rocked by misconduct allegations.
Leigh Corfman said Moore inappropriately touched her in 1979 when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Moore denied the accusation. Other women said Moore dated them, or asked them out on dates, when they were older teens.
Senate Majority PAC funded Highway 31, a group that ran an advertising blitz against Moore during the Senate race.
Moore filed a defamation lawsuit against Senate Majority PAC centered on a television ad. Moore’s attorneys argued the ad juxtaposed statements and partial quotes from separate news articles that, when read together, falsely implied he was accused of soliciting sex from young girls at a shopping mall.
Moore’s attorneys called it a “fabricated accusation, never made by any reporter” that was “broadcast into Alabama homes 533 times in the final days of a United States Senate election.”
A federal jury in 2022 agreed with Moore and awarded him $8.2 million in damages. The appeals court vacated the verdict after finding Moore failed to prove the organization acted with malice, one of the legal standards for cases involving public figures.
Moore appealed to the Supreme Court.
Washington
ABC and Trump’s FCC battle in federal court over issues of free speech and jurisdiction
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for ABC on Tuesday asked a federal judge to prevent the Trump administration from conducting an unusual, early review of its broadcast licenses, likening it to a looming execution by guillotine that was already chilling the network’s editorial decisions just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan did not immediately rule on ABC’s request for a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from conducting its early review, which it said was unconstitutional, a violation of free speech and a retaliation for content President Donald Trump dislikes.
A government attorney argued that, as a procedural matter, the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over ABC’s case because it belongs in a different venue. The government also challenged the network’s First Amendment arguments, and said ABC had failed to show it suffered irreparable harm.
A ruling was not expected until at least mid-October. The judge asked the two sides to submit brief additional arguments by Oct. 9, for the government, and Oct. 14, for ABC.
ABC and its parent company, Disney, sued the FCC and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in August, several months after the commission ordered eight ABC-owned stations to submit renewal applications for their broadcast licenses years ahead of schedule.
The case is one of several ongoing legal battles between Trump’s administration and news outlets — including The Associated Press — over their coverage and access to the executive branch since Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
ABC had asked the judge to temporarily prohibit the FCC from taking any further action related to its license renewal proceedings. ABC also sought to prohibit the commission from trying to coerce or threaten the network to alter its “exercise of editorial discretion.”
Carr, a Trump ally, ordered the early review of the stations’ licenses in April — just after a joke by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel infuriated Trump, who called for the comedian’s firing.
ABC also had been fighting Carr’s efforts to make the morning talk show “The View” subject to equal-time rules. Carr defended his agency’s actions against ABC by saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest.”
Government attorneys urged the court to dismiss ABC’s lawsuit, accusing the network of trying to prematurely ward off scrutiny by federal regulators.
“To foreclose the Commission from using all the tools at its disposal to investigate whether Plaintiffs are meeting their statutory and regulatory duties would seriously harm both the government and the public,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.
AliKhan was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden.
Trump approves firing squad execution for Fort Hood shooter
President Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas.
The U.S. military has not carried out the death penalty since 1961. The Army secretary will decide a time and place for the execution, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell wrote in a post on X.
Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, walked into a medical building where soldiers were getting medical checkups, shouted “Allahu akbar” — Arabic for “God is great!” — and opened fire with a laser-sighted handgun. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 injured.
He said it was an effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims and made almost no effort to defend himself at trial. He told jurors that evidence would show he was the shooter and described himself as a soldier who had “switched sides.”
Trump’s approval triggers a series of procedural steps toward carrying out the execution, but Hasan could put them on hold — potentially for years — with a habeas corpus appeal in the civilian federal court system, according to an article published in May in the magazine Army Lawyer.
Death sentences are extremely rare in the military justice system, and executions even rarer. Four men, including Hasan, are currently on the military’s death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. President George W. Bush approved the execution Army Spc. Ronald Gray in 2008 but it was put on hold by a judge and he remains at Leavenworth.
The last man executed in the military system was Pvt. John Bennett, hanged in 1961 for raping an 11-year-old girl.
Alabama
High court rejects appeal to restore defamation verdict of $8.2M
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Roy Moore’s push to restore an $8.2 million defamation verdict over a 2017 Senate race ad funded by a Democratic-aligned super PAC.
Justices declined to hear Moore’s appeal of a lower court decision that vacated the large verdict. The outcome keeps in place the decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a jury’s decision that Moore had been defamed by the ad.
It was a victory for Senate Majority PAC, which funded the ad, and argued it was truthful.
The decision comes months after the court in June rejected Moore’s emergency request to put the 11th Circuit decision on hold while he appealed.
Moore, a former Alabama chief justice, known for his hardline stances opposing same-sex marriage and supporting the public display of the Ten Commandments, lost the 2017 Senate race after his campaign was rocked by misconduct allegations.
Leigh Corfman said Moore inappropriately touched her in 1979 when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Moore denied the accusation. Other women said Moore dated them, or asked them out on dates, when they were older teens.
Senate Majority PAC funded Highway 31, a group that ran an advertising blitz against Moore during the Senate race.
Moore filed a defamation lawsuit against Senate Majority PAC centered on a television ad. Moore’s attorneys argued the ad juxtaposed statements and partial quotes from separate news articles that, when read together, falsely implied he was accused of soliciting sex from young girls at a shopping mall.
Moore’s attorneys called it a “fabricated accusation, never made by any reporter” that was “broadcast into Alabama homes 533 times in the final days of a United States Senate election.”
A federal jury in 2022 agreed with Moore and awarded him $8.2 million in damages. The appeals court vacated the verdict after finding Moore failed to prove the organization acted with malice, one of the legal standards for cases involving public figures.
Moore appealed to the Supreme Court.
Washington
ABC and Trump’s FCC battle in federal court over issues of free speech and jurisdiction
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for ABC on Tuesday asked a federal judge to prevent the Trump administration from conducting an unusual, early review of its broadcast licenses, likening it to a looming execution by guillotine that was already chilling the network’s editorial decisions just weeks before the U.S. midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan did not immediately rule on ABC’s request for a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Federal Communications Commission from conducting its early review, which it said was unconstitutional, a violation of free speech and a retaliation for content President Donald Trump dislikes.
A government attorney argued that, as a procedural matter, the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over ABC’s case because it belongs in a different venue. The government also challenged the network’s First Amendment arguments, and said ABC had failed to show it suffered irreparable harm.
A ruling was not expected until at least mid-October. The judge asked the two sides to submit brief additional arguments by Oct. 9, for the government, and Oct. 14, for ABC.
ABC and its parent company, Disney, sued the FCC and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in August, several months after the commission ordered eight ABC-owned stations to submit renewal applications for their broadcast licenses years ahead of schedule.
The case is one of several ongoing legal battles between Trump’s administration and news outlets — including The Associated Press — over their coverage and access to the executive branch since Trump returned to the White House for a second term.
ABC had asked the judge to temporarily prohibit the FCC from taking any further action related to its license renewal proceedings. ABC also sought to prohibit the commission from trying to coerce or threaten the network to alter its “exercise of editorial discretion.”
Carr, a Trump ally, ordered the early review of the stations’ licenses in April — just after a joke by ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel infuriated Trump, who called for the comedian’s firing.
ABC also had been fighting Carr’s efforts to make the morning talk show “The View” subject to equal-time rules. Carr defended his agency’s actions against ABC by saying broadcasters have a duty to “operate in the public interest.”
Government attorneys urged the court to dismiss ABC’s lawsuit, accusing the network of trying to prematurely ward off scrutiny by federal regulators.
“To foreclose the Commission from using all the tools at its disposal to investigate whether Plaintiffs are meeting their statutory and regulatory duties would seriously harm both the government and the public,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.
AliKhan was nominated to the bench by President Joe Biden.
