National Roundup

Florida
Board renames schools honoring Confederate leaders, soldiers
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida school board has voted to rename six schools named for Confederate leaders, but will keep three others named for a French colonizer and a U.S. president who supported slavery and forced Native Americans to move west along the Trail of Tears.

Following a months-long debate, the Duval County School Board decided on the names Tuesday night, news outlets reported.

The result: Joseph Finegan Elementary will become Anchor Academy; Stonewall Jackson Elementary will be Hidden Oaks Elementary School; Jefferson Davis Middle will become Charger Academy; Kirby-Smith Middle will be named Springfield Middle School; J.E.B. Stuart Middle will be Westside Middle School and Robert E. Lee High will become Riverside High School.

Three Jacksonville-area schools will keep their names: Jean Ribault Middle and High School and Andrew Jackson High School.

Some school board members wanted to nix the name of the 7th president, but their amendment failed.

The changes won’t come quickly, since the school’s signs and uniforms have to be updated.

Memorabilia and marquees in the schools will be saved, Superintendent Diana Greene told FirstCoast News.

Washington
National Enquirer owner fined for illegal Trump campaign aid
A federal election watchdog fined the publisher of the National Enquirer $187,500 for squelching the story of a former Playboy model who claimed she’d had an affair with former President Donald Trump.

The Federal Election Commission fined A360 Media, formerly known as American Media, for paying Karen McDougal $150,000 in August 2016, saying the payment was made to keep her story from becoming public before the presidential election.

The FEC said the publisher’s “payment to Karen McDougal to purchase a limited life story right combined with its decision not to publish the story, in consultation with an agent of Donald J. Trump and for the purpose of influencing the election, constituted a prohibited corporate in-kind contribution.”

Campaign finance laws prohibit corporations from cooperating with a campaign to affect an election.

The publisher didn’t immediately return a message left via its website. An emailed statement from a representative for David Pecker, who stepped down as CEO of the publisher in 2020, said that that Pecker was not a party to the settlement and had not paid a fine.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan agreed in 2018 not to prosecute American Media in exchange for its cooperation in a campaign finance investigation. That probe led to a three-year prison term for Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who had urged the publisher to obtain the rights to McDougal’s story and promised to reimburse them for the payment.

Cohen served about a year of his sentence before he was released to home confinement as the coronavirus spread through prisons. Since then, he has spoken out frequently against Trump, and tweeted on Wednesday that he was willing to cooperate with federal prosecutors on any other prosecution of Trump or his associates.

The National Enquirer for years buried stories about Trump and some other celebrities with a “catch-and-kill” strategy of buying the rights to these stories and then not publishing them.

Common Cause, a public interest group which filed the complaint with the FEC in 2018, said in a statement that the fine was a “win for democracy” but said the agency’s “failure to hold former-President Trump and his campaign accountable for this violation lays bare the dysfunction at the FEC.” In its 2018 complaint, it also asked the agency to investigate Trump and his campaign. In a letter to Common Cause Tuesday, the agency said there was “an insufficient number of votes to find reason to believe that the remaining respondents violated the Federal Election Campaign Act “
Common Cause also noted that the FEC’s Republican commissioners had blocked enforcement against Trump for a payment to Stormy Daniels in a decision released last month. The FEC has three Republicans, two Democrats and an Independent commissioner.

Common Cause said that the FEC “has again shown itself incapable of fully enforcing the campaign finance laws passed by Congress.”


Missouri
High court denies case of man prosecutor deems innocent
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri prosecutor on Wednesday said she’s disappointed the state Supreme Court won’t hear the case of a Kansas City man imprisoned for more than 40 years for a triple murder that prosecutors say he didn’t commit.

Missouri Supreme Court judges on Tuesday denied 61-year-old Kevin Strickland’s case without providing an explanation.

Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker in response said her office is “pursuing all avenues of exoneration for Mr. Strickland.” Strickland’s lawyers, including Midwest Innocence Project attorneys, said in a statement that they plan to refile his petition in circuit court.

“This denial is just one more procedural barrier the system throws up in front of innocent people,” they said. “There is no doubt that Mr. Strickland is innocent and every court should have the power to set him free.”

Strickland, who will turn 62 on Monday, was 18 when he was arrested. Prosecutors say the case was “thin from its inception,” resting almost entirely on the dubious identification of a traumatized shooting victim. Prosecutors said they wouldn’t charge Strickland with any crimes if the same case was before them today.

The killings occurred in 1978 when a group of assailants ransacked a Kansas City home. Larry Ingram, 21; John Walker, 20; and Sherrie Black, 22, were fatally shot. Cynthia Douglas, the only eye witness, was wounded but pretended to be dead.

In an investigation published in September, The Kansas City Star reported that for decades, two men who pleaded guilty in the killings swore Strickland was not with them and two other accomplices during the killings. Douglas later said detectives pressured her into identifying Strickland as the shooter, The Star reported. She tried to recant for years before her death in 2015.

In a letter supporting Strickland’s release, Baker and her chief deputy, Dan Nelson, said the evidence used to convict Strickland as a teenager has since been “eviscerated.”

Federal prosecutors in the Western District of Missouri, Jackson County’s presiding judge, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and members of the team that convicted Strickland four decades ago also now all agree that he deserves to be exonerated.

If Strickland is exonerated, he will have experienced the longest wrongful imprisonment known in Missouri history.