Pennsylvania
Feds’ suit claims city’s ‘at-large’ election system is biased against Hispanic voters
The U.S. Justice Department wants a judge to declare that a Pennsylvania city’s method of electing council members citywide instead of by districts has illegally diluted the political power of its growing Hispanic population, arguing in a lawsuit that Hazleton is violating the federal Voting Rights Act.
A complaint filed Tuesday in Scranton federal court claims the “at-large” system “results in Hispanic citizens not having an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice.”
The Justice Department under outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden is seeking a court order that the city, the five-member City Council and Republican Mayor Jeff Cusat come up with a new system.
Cusat and City Council President Jim Perry issued a statement Wednesday saying the election method does allow Hispanic people an equal chance to participate.
Hazleton’s growing cohort of Hispanic voters has not turned out in sufficient numbers to get one of their own elected, Perry said in a phone interview Wednesday, noting there are Hispanic people serving on city boards and authorities.
“They run and they don’t make it,” said Perry, a Republican. “So it just, to me, is you got to vote.”
Hazleton’s 30,000 residents are about two-thirds Hispanic, one third non-Hispanic white and less than 2% non-Hispanic Black, the lawsuit stated. The voting age population of 17,000 is about 53% non-Hispanic white, about 43% Hispanic and nearly 4% non-Hispanic black.
“Hazleton’s Hispanic community, including Spanish speakers who are limited-English-proficient, continue to suffer from the effects of discrimination in education, employment, housing and policing,” the Justice Department argued.
No Hispanic candidate has ever been elected to the Hazleton City Council or appointed to fill a council vacancy, according to the lawsuit. It alleges that “racially polarized voting patterns characterize” council elections, with Hispanic candidates having difficulty raising funds, getting endorsements and being invited to panel discussions and other campaign events.
State Rep. Manny Guzman, a Democrat from Reading and vice chairperson of the Pennsylvania Legislative Latino Caucus, said he thinks the lawsuit will improve the political power of Hazleton’s Hispanic residents.
A separate lawsuit filed a year ago by two Hispanic parents that is currently pending before the same judge, U.S. District Judge Karoline Mehalchick, alleges the at-large system of voting for members of the Hazleton Area School Board also has shut out Hispanic voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The school district filed a response in November that said it has not violated the federal law or “denied or abridged the right of anyone to vote on account of race or color.”
Minnesota
Judge orders Mike Lindell’s MyPillow to pay nearly $778K to delivery service DHL
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota judge has ordered MyPillow to pay nearly $778,000 for unpaid bills and other costs to package delivery service DHL, which had sued the company that’s synonymous with its founder, chief pitchman and election denier Mike Lindell.
The award includes over $48,000 in interest and over $4,800 for DHL’s attorney’s fees. The order, signed last month by Hennepin County Judge Susan Burke, said MyPillow had agreed in October to pay DHL $550,000 but failed to do so and did not send anyone to a hearing last month on DHL’s effort to collect.
DHL’s lawsuit, filed in September, is one of a series of legal and financial disputes involving Chaska, Minnesota-based MyPillow and Lindell, a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump who has helped amplify Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Lindell said after the lawsuit was filed that MyPillow stopped using DHL over a year earlier in a dispute over shipments that he said were DHL’s fault.
The “MyPillow Guy” is also being sued for defamation by two voting machine companies, Dominion Voting Systems in Washington, D.C., and Smartmatic in Minnesota.
New York
Leader of Japanese crime syndicate pleads guilty to conspiring to traffic nuclear materials to Iran
NEW YORK (AP) — The purported leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges alleging that he conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, of Japan, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to weapons and narcotics trafficking charges that carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and the possibility of life behind bars. Sentencing was set for April 9.
Prosecutors say Ebisawa didn’t know he was communicating in 2021 and 2022 with a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Administration along with the source’s associate, who posed as an Iranian general. Ebisawa was arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a release that the prosecution demonstrated the DEA’s “unparalleled ability to dismantle the world’s most dangerous criminal networks.”
She said the investigation “exposed the shocking depths of international organized crime from trafficking nuclear materials to fueling the narcotics trade and arming violent insurgents.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said Ebisawa admitted at his plea that he “brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma.”
“At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on battlefields in Burma,” he added.
Court papers said Ebisawa told the DEA’s confidential source in 2020 that he had access to a large quantity of nuclear materials that he wanted to sell. To support his claim, he sent the source photographs depicting rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation, claiming they contained thorium and uranium, the papers said.
The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country, prosecutors said. Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons purchase from the general, court documents allege.
Prosecutors said samples of the alleged nuclear materials were obtained and a U.S. federal lab found they contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
West Virginia
Care facility staff members charged in death of patient left in scalding hot bathtub
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Two staff members at a northern West Virginia long-term care facility have been charged in the death of a patient who was left in a scalding hot bathtub a year ago, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Wednesday.
Registered nurse Delilah Clyburn-Hill and certified nursing assistant Kylah Beard were charged with felony neglect of an incapacitated adult by a caregiver, Morrisey said in a news release.
Larry Hedrick, 61, a nonverbal patient who required around-the-clock care, was submerged in the 134-degree Fahrenheit (56.7 Celsius) water for 47 minutes on Jan. 4, 2024, at Hopemont Hospital, a 98-bed facility in the Preston County community of Terra Alta. Hedrick died a week later at a Pittsburgh hospital, the statement says.
An investigation by Morrisey’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit determined Beard helped Hedrick into the tub but failed to check the water temperature gauge. Hedrick suffered second- and third-degree burns and blisters to his feet and legs.
Investigators said Clyburn-Hill was told about the burns and blisters but she allegedly failed to implement appropriate treatment and therapy for Hedrick’s injuries, “including but not limited to the use of pain medication,” the statement says.
It wasn’t immediately known whether Clyburn-Hill or Beard had attorneys who could comment on the charge. A message left at a listed phone number for Clyburn-Hill wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday. Beard could not be directly reached for comment. A working phone number for her could not be found.
Preston County Prosecutor Jay Shay approved the criminal charges. Clyburn-Hill and Beard are scheduled for an initial appearance in Preston County Magistrate Court on Jan. 29.
Morrisey, who is being sworn in as governor next week, called it a “very disturbing case,” saying “there needs to be accountability for the horrific death of the victim, Mr. Larry Hedrick, who was supposed to be under the care of medical professionals.”
Georgia
Fani Willis seeks to overturn her disqualification from Trump election case
ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has asked Georgia’s highest court to review a lower appeals court’s ruling that removed her from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others.
The Georgia Court of Appeals last month ruled that Willis and her office could not continue to prosecute the case because of an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case. In a petition filed late Wednesday, Willis asked the Georgia Supreme Court to review and reverse that decision.
The filing argues that the 2-1 ruling “overreached the Court of Appeals’ authority,” creating a new standard for disqualification of a prosecutor and disregarding decades of precedent.
Even if the high court eventually rules in Willis’ favor, it seems unlikely that she will be able to prosecute Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20. But there are 14 other defendants who still face charges in the case.
A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden. Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
The Georgia case was one of four criminal cases brought last year against Trump. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith abandoned two federal prosecutions after Trump won the November election. The judge in Trump’s hush money case in New York has scheduled a sentencing hearing for Friday, though Trump is trying to stop that.
Willis’ filing asks the Georgia high court to consider whether the lower appeals court was wrong to disqualify her “based solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct.”
The state Supreme Court is also asked to weigh whether the Court of Appeals erred “in substituting the trial court’s discretion with its own” in this case.
“No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest,” Willis’ filing says. “And no Georgia court has ever reversed a trial court’s order declining to disqualify a prosecutor based solely on an appearance of impropriety.”
Feds’ suit claims city’s ‘at-large’ election system is biased against Hispanic voters
The U.S. Justice Department wants a judge to declare that a Pennsylvania city’s method of electing council members citywide instead of by districts has illegally diluted the political power of its growing Hispanic population, arguing in a lawsuit that Hazleton is violating the federal Voting Rights Act.
A complaint filed Tuesday in Scranton federal court claims the “at-large” system “results in Hispanic citizens not having an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice.”
The Justice Department under outgoing Democratic President Joe Biden is seeking a court order that the city, the five-member City Council and Republican Mayor Jeff Cusat come up with a new system.
Cusat and City Council President Jim Perry issued a statement Wednesday saying the election method does allow Hispanic people an equal chance to participate.
Hazleton’s growing cohort of Hispanic voters has not turned out in sufficient numbers to get one of their own elected, Perry said in a phone interview Wednesday, noting there are Hispanic people serving on city boards and authorities.
“They run and they don’t make it,” said Perry, a Republican. “So it just, to me, is you got to vote.”
Hazleton’s 30,000 residents are about two-thirds Hispanic, one third non-Hispanic white and less than 2% non-Hispanic Black, the lawsuit stated. The voting age population of 17,000 is about 53% non-Hispanic white, about 43% Hispanic and nearly 4% non-Hispanic black.
“Hazleton’s Hispanic community, including Spanish speakers who are limited-English-proficient, continue to suffer from the effects of discrimination in education, employment, housing and policing,” the Justice Department argued.
No Hispanic candidate has ever been elected to the Hazleton City Council or appointed to fill a council vacancy, according to the lawsuit. It alleges that “racially polarized voting patterns characterize” council elections, with Hispanic candidates having difficulty raising funds, getting endorsements and being invited to panel discussions and other campaign events.
State Rep. Manny Guzman, a Democrat from Reading and vice chairperson of the Pennsylvania Legislative Latino Caucus, said he thinks the lawsuit will improve the political power of Hazleton’s Hispanic residents.
A separate lawsuit filed a year ago by two Hispanic parents that is currently pending before the same judge, U.S. District Judge Karoline Mehalchick, alleges the at-large system of voting for members of the Hazleton Area School Board also has shut out Hispanic voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The school district filed a response in November that said it has not violated the federal law or “denied or abridged the right of anyone to vote on account of race or color.”
Minnesota
Judge orders Mike Lindell’s MyPillow to pay nearly $778K to delivery service DHL
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota judge has ordered MyPillow to pay nearly $778,000 for unpaid bills and other costs to package delivery service DHL, which had sued the company that’s synonymous with its founder, chief pitchman and election denier Mike Lindell.
The award includes over $48,000 in interest and over $4,800 for DHL’s attorney’s fees. The order, signed last month by Hennepin County Judge Susan Burke, said MyPillow had agreed in October to pay DHL $550,000 but failed to do so and did not send anyone to a hearing last month on DHL’s effort to collect.
DHL’s lawsuit, filed in September, is one of a series of legal and financial disputes involving Chaska, Minnesota-based MyPillow and Lindell, a prominent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump who has helped amplify Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Lindell said after the lawsuit was filed that MyPillow stopped using DHL over a year earlier in a dispute over shipments that he said were DHL’s fault.
The “MyPillow Guy” is also being sued for defamation by two voting machine companies, Dominion Voting Systems in Washington, D.C., and Smartmatic in Minnesota.
New York
Leader of Japanese crime syndicate pleads guilty to conspiring to traffic nuclear materials to Iran
NEW YORK (AP) — The purported leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges alleging that he conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons.
Takeshi Ebisawa, 60, of Japan, entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to weapons and narcotics trafficking charges that carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison and the possibility of life behind bars. Sentencing was set for April 9.
Prosecutors say Ebisawa didn’t know he was communicating in 2021 and 2022 with a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Administration along with the source’s associate, who posed as an Iranian general. Ebisawa was arrested in April 2022 in Manhattan during a DEA sting.
DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in a release that the prosecution demonstrated the DEA’s “unparalleled ability to dismantle the world’s most dangerous criminal networks.”
She said the investigation “exposed the shocking depths of international organized crime from trafficking nuclear materials to fueling the narcotics trade and arming violent insurgents.”
Acting U.S. Attorney Edward Y. Kim said Ebisawa admitted at his plea that he “brazenly trafficked nuclear material, including weapons-grade plutonium, out of Burma.”
“At the same time, he worked to send massive quantities of heroin and methamphetamine to the United States in exchange for heavy-duty weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles to be used on battlefields in Burma,” he added.
Court papers said Ebisawa told the DEA’s confidential source in 2020 that he had access to a large quantity of nuclear materials that he wanted to sell. To support his claim, he sent the source photographs depicting rocky substances with Geiger counters measuring radiation, claiming they contained thorium and uranium, the papers said.
The nuclear material came from an unidentified leader of an “ethnic insurgent group” in Myanmar who had been mining uranium in the country, prosecutors said. Ebisawa had proposed that the leader sell uranium through him in order to fund a weapons purchase from the general, court documents allege.
Prosecutors said samples of the alleged nuclear materials were obtained and a U.S. federal lab found they contained uranium, thorium and plutonium, and that the “the isotope composition of the plutonium” was weapons-grade, meaning enough of it would be suitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
West Virginia
Care facility staff members charged in death of patient left in scalding hot bathtub
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Two staff members at a northern West Virginia long-term care facility have been charged in the death of a patient who was left in a scalding hot bathtub a year ago, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said Wednesday.
Registered nurse Delilah Clyburn-Hill and certified nursing assistant Kylah Beard were charged with felony neglect of an incapacitated adult by a caregiver, Morrisey said in a news release.
Larry Hedrick, 61, a nonverbal patient who required around-the-clock care, was submerged in the 134-degree Fahrenheit (56.7 Celsius) water for 47 minutes on Jan. 4, 2024, at Hopemont Hospital, a 98-bed facility in the Preston County community of Terra Alta. Hedrick died a week later at a Pittsburgh hospital, the statement says.
An investigation by Morrisey’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit determined Beard helped Hedrick into the tub but failed to check the water temperature gauge. Hedrick suffered second- and third-degree burns and blisters to his feet and legs.
Investigators said Clyburn-Hill was told about the burns and blisters but she allegedly failed to implement appropriate treatment and therapy for Hedrick’s injuries, “including but not limited to the use of pain medication,” the statement says.
It wasn’t immediately known whether Clyburn-Hill or Beard had attorneys who could comment on the charge. A message left at a listed phone number for Clyburn-Hill wasn’t immediately returned Wednesday. Beard could not be directly reached for comment. A working phone number for her could not be found.
Preston County Prosecutor Jay Shay approved the criminal charges. Clyburn-Hill and Beard are scheduled for an initial appearance in Preston County Magistrate Court on Jan. 29.
Morrisey, who is being sworn in as governor next week, called it a “very disturbing case,” saying “there needs to be accountability for the horrific death of the victim, Mr. Larry Hedrick, who was supposed to be under the care of medical professionals.”
Georgia
Fani Willis seeks to overturn her disqualification from Trump election case
ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has asked Georgia’s highest court to review a lower appeals court’s ruling that removed her from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others.
The Georgia Court of Appeals last month ruled that Willis and her office could not continue to prosecute the case because of an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case. In a petition filed late Wednesday, Willis asked the Georgia Supreme Court to review and reverse that decision.
The filing argues that the 2-1 ruling “overreached the Court of Appeals’ authority,” creating a new standard for disqualification of a prosecutor and disregarding decades of precedent.
Even if the high court eventually rules in Willis’ favor, it seems unlikely that she will be able to prosecute Trump, who returns to the White House on Jan. 20. But there are 14 other defendants who still face charges in the case.
A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden. Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
The Georgia case was one of four criminal cases brought last year against Trump. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith abandoned two federal prosecutions after Trump won the November election. The judge in Trump’s hush money case in New York has scheduled a sentencing hearing for Friday, though Trump is trying to stop that.
Willis’ filing asks the Georgia high court to consider whether the lower appeals court was wrong to disqualify her “based solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct.”
The state Supreme Court is also asked to weigh whether the Court of Appeals erred “in substituting the trial court’s discretion with its own” in this case.
“No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest,” Willis’ filing says. “And no Georgia court has ever reversed a trial court’s order declining to disqualify a prosecutor based solely on an appearance of impropriety.”
