Florida
State wins key ruling allowing it to enforce a law that targets social media use by kids
The state of Florida won a key court decision Wednesday that allows it to enforce a ban on social media accounts for kids under 14 and other restrictions.
The law was one of the most restrictive in the U.S. on social media use by children when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it in 2024.
The law implicates the First Amendment, an appeals court said, but “likely does so in a content-neutral manner.”
It would likely survive a full legal challenge “because it doesn’t burden substantially more speech than necessary to advance the important interest in protecting minors from social media addiction,” a panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 opinion.
The law bans social media accounts for Florida children under 14 and requires parental consent for use by kids who are 14 or 15.
Industry trade groups the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice sued Florida, arguing that the law violated the free-speech rights of social media providers and users. A judge in 2025 said the law likely was unconstitutional and granted an injunction.
That injunction was put on hold while the appeals court heard the case. The lawsuit, with the injunction now overturned, will return to federal court in Tallahassee.
The appeals court noted that the law covers social media platforms “that have been determined to induce heavy use by children, and applies only to platforms that use both algorithms and one of several addictive features.”
An email seeking comment from the Florida attorney general’s office was not immediately answered. NetChoice said it was disappointed with the decision.
“We are currently evaluating all of our options as we continue the fight to ensure Floridians’ rights to free expression online are protected, and parents remain in the driver’s seat when it comes to making decisions for their families,” said Paul Taske, a lawyer at NetChoice.
Washington
Watchdog group seeks to block Jared Kushner from serving in his volunteer envoy role
WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent Washington watchdog group is suing Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, trying to block him from serving as one of the administration’s top envoys without disclosing his personal finances and potential conflicts of interest.
The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues that Kushner’s role as a chief negotiator in the U.S.’s most prominent ongoing foreign policy concerns means he should be considered an official government employee and comply with all relevant requirements.
Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy, are considered to be the president’s closest and most influential diplomats. Neither is Senate-confirmed, and Witkoff is a formal employee, although the wealthy investor does not draw a taxpayer-funded salary.
The White House has repeatedly said Kushner remains a private citizen and is doing his diplomatic duties on a volunteer basis.
But in the lawsuit, CREW said Kushner is representing the United States while simultaneously running an investment firm that manages billions of dollars of foreign-owned assets.
“While his personal business interests abroad raise serious conflict-of-interest concerns, he has not been properly vetted for his government role,” read the legal complaint, filed Wednesday. “(A)nd he has evaded transparency obligations that aim to ensure that he exercises government authority for the good of the American people and not himself.”
The Constitution’s appointments clause and a post-Watergate ethics law are meant to ensure that federal officials are properly vetted and that their assets are adequately disclosed.
Kushner’s unofficial role has made him central to the biggest foreign policy challenges of the second Trump administration, including the wars between Israel and Hamas, Ukraine and Russia and the U.S. and Iran. He was a primary negotiator of the peace plan that was inked between Israel and Hamas last year, and he regularly travels abroad to meet with world leaders as a representative of his father-in-law.
Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, were formal government employees during the first Trump administration and filed the appropriate financial disclosures, although neither took a salary. Though Kushner had some domestic policies in his portfolio during Trump’s first term in office, he has been mainly focused on foreign policy the second time around.
Chad Mizelle, an attorney for Kushner, said in a statement on X that the lawsuit is “without merit” and that CREW lacks standing to challenge him.
CREW insists that it is directly harmed because Kushner is depriving it of records that would otherwise be available from government officials.
“Both outside ethics counsel and government ethics attorneys have reviewed Jared Kushner’s volunteer government service and confirmed that his arrangements comply with applicable ethics requirements,” said Mizelle, who served as chief of staff at the Justice Department from the start of the second Trump administration before leaving government service last year.
Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly attacked CREW as an “unserious, Trump-deranged organization that has been attacking President Trump, his family, and his administration since the first term.”
Calling Kushner a “proven dealmaker,” Kelly said his “personal business activities have nothing to do with his diplomatic engagements, which he conducts on a volunteer basis at the President’s request and while paying his own expenses.”
Kushner himself has brushed off conflict-of-interest questions in the past, saying in a CBS News interview last year that his business and financial connections were actually an asset.
“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” Kushner said in the interview, referring to Witkoff. “If Steve and I didn’t have these deep relationships, the deal we were able to get done, that freed these hostages, would not have occurred.”
Kushner was referring to the Israeli hostages who were freed by Hamas as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement.
Also named in the lawsuit are Witkoff, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in their official capacities.
Pennsylvania
Fixer in lucrative NCAA basketball betting scheme sentenced to 6 years in prison
A man charged with rigging college basketball games as part of an elaborate point-fixing scheme that raked in millions was sentenced to six years in federal prison, prosecutors in Pennsylvania announced on Tuesday.
It was the first penalty handed down as part of an investigation that revealed a sprawling network of professional gamblers and college basketball players who, prosecutors say, profited off fixed games.
Prosecutors said Jalen Smith, 30, played a “central role” in helping fix games in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 NCAA Division I basketball seasons, placing bets and recruiting players with the promise of a big payment for purposefully underperforming during a game, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said on Tuesday. Bettors would then wager against the players’ teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other gamblers, authorities said. Smith pleaded guilty earlier this year to bribery and wire fraud charges.
The sentencing comes at the start of the 2026-27 NCAA basketball season, when bettors will wager billions of dollars both legally and illegally on games nationwide. In the meantime, law enforcement, regulators and sports leagues have struggled to keep up with gambling’s growing popularity in collegiate and professional sports alike.
“Today’s sentencing sends a clear message: Those who exploit professional and collegiate athletes for personal gain will be held accountable,” said Wayne A. Jacobs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office. “This conduct does more than harm individual athletes. It undermines the integrity of sports and the trust placed in fair competition.”
Smith’s attorney, Rocco Cipparone, said his client took full responsibility for crimes at the sentencing hearing and apologized to those impacted. Cipparone also noted that the federal judge seemed to take Smith’s apology as sincere, sentencing him to less time than what prosecutors recommended.
The point-shaving scheme Smith was involved in is said to have involved nearly 30 NCAA basketball games, and included schools like DePaul University, State University of New York at Buffalo and Tulane University, among others.
Prosecutors accused Smith and at least 26 other named defendants of wagering millions of dollars and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to players in bribes. Payments to players typically ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 per game, according to an indictment.
Smith and others strategically targeted players considered “underdogs” in games, encouraging them to underperform in order to guarantee certain spreads. Those players were prime targets, prosecutors said, because they were offered money that exceeded potential income from legitimate sponsorships.
Smith, of Charlotte, North Carolina, trained and developed local basketball players for professional scouting combines and used those connections with players when he became part of the scheme, according to prosecutors.
The point-shaving scheme resulted in more than $3 million in fraudulent wagers. Smith, who also pleaded guilty to a separate felony gun possession charge, will have to pay $1.1 million in restitution, which prosecutors said is the cost incurred by gambling platforms as a result of the scheme.
Besides the fixers who recruited players and placed bets, the charges targeted over a dozen former college basketball players and four other players who were active with their college teams last season.
Massachusetts
Holdout juror in Lindsay Clancy trial was struck by how ‘methodical’ he thought she was
The lone juror who blocked Lindsay Clancy from being acquitted was influenced by how “methodical” he thought she was while killing her three children, he said during an interview aired Thursday, his first since the trial ended with a deadlocked jury.
Michael Desronvil said he didn’t have any doubt that Clancy was guilty, telling Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that he was struck by her “thought process” during the killings.
Desronvil was the only juror who opposed clearing Clancy of criminal responsibility, siding with prosecutors who argued that she knew what she was doing. Clancy’s defense argued she was in the grip of a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids.
“The focus has to be on the children,” Desronvil said. “They are the ones who don’t have anyone fighting for them.”
Clancy’s trial ended with a mistrial in early September and generated intense public interest, drawing attention to maternal mental health after childbirth. She had mental health problems that included months of treatment and a stay in a psychiatric hospital before she killed the children and then tried to kill herself at her family’s Massachusetts home in 2023.
Prosecutors have yet to decide whether they will put the case in front of a jury for a second time. They could retry her on first-degree murder charges, seek lesser charges or drop the case entirely.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.
Her former husband Patrick Clancy, who discovered the children’s bodies, has said in interviews that he forgives her.
State wins key ruling allowing it to enforce a law that targets social media use by kids
The state of Florida won a key court decision Wednesday that allows it to enforce a ban on social media accounts for kids under 14 and other restrictions.
The law was one of the most restrictive in the U.S. on social media use by children when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it in 2024.
The law implicates the First Amendment, an appeals court said, but “likely does so in a content-neutral manner.”
It would likely survive a full legal challenge “because it doesn’t burden substantially more speech than necessary to advance the important interest in protecting minors from social media addiction,” a panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 3-0 opinion.
The law bans social media accounts for Florida children under 14 and requires parental consent for use by kids who are 14 or 15.
Industry trade groups the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice sued Florida, arguing that the law violated the free-speech rights of social media providers and users. A judge in 2025 said the law likely was unconstitutional and granted an injunction.
That injunction was put on hold while the appeals court heard the case. The lawsuit, with the injunction now overturned, will return to federal court in Tallahassee.
The appeals court noted that the law covers social media platforms “that have been determined to induce heavy use by children, and applies only to platforms that use both algorithms and one of several addictive features.”
An email seeking comment from the Florida attorney general’s office was not immediately answered. NetChoice said it was disappointed with the decision.
“We are currently evaluating all of our options as we continue the fight to ensure Floridians’ rights to free expression online are protected, and parents remain in the driver’s seat when it comes to making decisions for their families,” said Paul Taske, a lawyer at NetChoice.
Washington
Watchdog group seeks to block Jared Kushner from serving in his volunteer envoy role
WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent Washington watchdog group is suing Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, trying to block him from serving as one of the administration’s top envoys without disclosing his personal finances and potential conflicts of interest.
The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues that Kushner’s role as a chief negotiator in the U.S.’s most prominent ongoing foreign policy concerns means he should be considered an official government employee and comply with all relevant requirements.
Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy, are considered to be the president’s closest and most influential diplomats. Neither is Senate-confirmed, and Witkoff is a formal employee, although the wealthy investor does not draw a taxpayer-funded salary.
The White House has repeatedly said Kushner remains a private citizen and is doing his diplomatic duties on a volunteer basis.
But in the lawsuit, CREW said Kushner is representing the United States while simultaneously running an investment firm that manages billions of dollars of foreign-owned assets.
“While his personal business interests abroad raise serious conflict-of-interest concerns, he has not been properly vetted for his government role,” read the legal complaint, filed Wednesday. “(A)nd he has evaded transparency obligations that aim to ensure that he exercises government authority for the good of the American people and not himself.”
The Constitution’s appointments clause and a post-Watergate ethics law are meant to ensure that federal officials are properly vetted and that their assets are adequately disclosed.
Kushner’s unofficial role has made him central to the biggest foreign policy challenges of the second Trump administration, including the wars between Israel and Hamas, Ukraine and Russia and the U.S. and Iran. He was a primary negotiator of the peace plan that was inked between Israel and Hamas last year, and he regularly travels abroad to meet with world leaders as a representative of his father-in-law.
Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, were formal government employees during the first Trump administration and filed the appropriate financial disclosures, although neither took a salary. Though Kushner had some domestic policies in his portfolio during Trump’s first term in office, he has been mainly focused on foreign policy the second time around.
Chad Mizelle, an attorney for Kushner, said in a statement on X that the lawsuit is “without merit” and that CREW lacks standing to challenge him.
CREW insists that it is directly harmed because Kushner is depriving it of records that would otherwise be available from government officials.
“Both outside ethics counsel and government ethics attorneys have reviewed Jared Kushner’s volunteer government service and confirmed that his arrangements comply with applicable ethics requirements,” said Mizelle, who served as chief of staff at the Justice Department from the start of the second Trump administration before leaving government service last year.
Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly attacked CREW as an “unserious, Trump-deranged organization that has been attacking President Trump, his family, and his administration since the first term.”
Calling Kushner a “proven dealmaker,” Kelly said his “personal business activities have nothing to do with his diplomatic engagements, which he conducts on a volunteer basis at the President’s request and while paying his own expenses.”
Kushner himself has brushed off conflict-of-interest questions in the past, saying in a CBS News interview last year that his business and financial connections were actually an asset.
“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,” Kushner said in the interview, referring to Witkoff. “If Steve and I didn’t have these deep relationships, the deal we were able to get done, that freed these hostages, would not have occurred.”
Kushner was referring to the Israeli hostages who were freed by Hamas as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement.
Also named in the lawsuit are Witkoff, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in their official capacities.
Pennsylvania
Fixer in lucrative NCAA basketball betting scheme sentenced to 6 years in prison
A man charged with rigging college basketball games as part of an elaborate point-fixing scheme that raked in millions was sentenced to six years in federal prison, prosecutors in Pennsylvania announced on Tuesday.
It was the first penalty handed down as part of an investigation that revealed a sprawling network of professional gamblers and college basketball players who, prosecutors say, profited off fixed games.
Prosecutors said Jalen Smith, 30, played a “central role” in helping fix games in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 NCAA Division I basketball seasons, placing bets and recruiting players with the promise of a big payment for purposefully underperforming during a game, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said on Tuesday. Bettors would then wager against the players’ teams in those games, defrauding sportsbooks and other gamblers, authorities said. Smith pleaded guilty earlier this year to bribery and wire fraud charges.
The sentencing comes at the start of the 2026-27 NCAA basketball season, when bettors will wager billions of dollars both legally and illegally on games nationwide. In the meantime, law enforcement, regulators and sports leagues have struggled to keep up with gambling’s growing popularity in collegiate and professional sports alike.
“Today’s sentencing sends a clear message: Those who exploit professional and collegiate athletes for personal gain will be held accountable,” said Wayne A. Jacobs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office. “This conduct does more than harm individual athletes. It undermines the integrity of sports and the trust placed in fair competition.”
Smith’s attorney, Rocco Cipparone, said his client took full responsibility for crimes at the sentencing hearing and apologized to those impacted. Cipparone also noted that the federal judge seemed to take Smith’s apology as sincere, sentencing him to less time than what prosecutors recommended.
The point-shaving scheme Smith was involved in is said to have involved nearly 30 NCAA basketball games, and included schools like DePaul University, State University of New York at Buffalo and Tulane University, among others.
Prosecutors accused Smith and at least 26 other named defendants of wagering millions of dollars and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to players in bribes. Payments to players typically ranged from $10,000 to $30,000 per game, according to an indictment.
Smith and others strategically targeted players considered “underdogs” in games, encouraging them to underperform in order to guarantee certain spreads. Those players were prime targets, prosecutors said, because they were offered money that exceeded potential income from legitimate sponsorships.
Smith, of Charlotte, North Carolina, trained and developed local basketball players for professional scouting combines and used those connections with players when he became part of the scheme, according to prosecutors.
The point-shaving scheme resulted in more than $3 million in fraudulent wagers. Smith, who also pleaded guilty to a separate felony gun possession charge, will have to pay $1.1 million in restitution, which prosecutors said is the cost incurred by gambling platforms as a result of the scheme.
Besides the fixers who recruited players and placed bets, the charges targeted over a dozen former college basketball players and four other players who were active with their college teams last season.
Massachusetts
Holdout juror in Lindsay Clancy trial was struck by how ‘methodical’ he thought she was
The lone juror who blocked Lindsay Clancy from being acquitted was influenced by how “methodical” he thought she was while killing her three children, he said during an interview aired Thursday, his first since the trial ended with a deadlocked jury.
Michael Desronvil said he didn’t have any doubt that Clancy was guilty, telling Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that he was struck by her “thought process” during the killings.
Desronvil was the only juror who opposed clearing Clancy of criminal responsibility, siding with prosecutors who argued that she knew what she was doing. Clancy’s defense argued she was in the grip of a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids.
“The focus has to be on the children,” Desronvil said. “They are the ones who don’t have anyone fighting for them.”
Clancy’s trial ended with a mistrial in early September and generated intense public interest, drawing attention to maternal mental health after childbirth. She had mental health problems that included months of treatment and a stay in a psychiatric hospital before she killed the children and then tried to kill herself at her family’s Massachusetts home in 2023.
Prosecutors have yet to decide whether they will put the case in front of a jury for a second time. They could retry her on first-degree murder charges, seek lesser charges or drop the case entirely.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, remains charged with murder and is expected to stay at a psychiatric hospital until her case is resolved.
Her former husband Patrick Clancy, who discovered the children’s bodies, has said in interviews that he forgives her.
