Massachusetts
Scientists sue NIH, saying politics cut their research funding
A group of scientists and health groups sued the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday, arguing that an “ideological purge” of research funding is illegal and threatens medical cures.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, hundreds of NIH research grants have been abruptly canceled for science that mentions the words diversity, gender and vaccine hesitancy, as well as other politically charged topics.
That has led to grants being cut that fund studies of HIV prevention, violence prevention in children, pregnancy health disparities and Alzheimer’s disease, among others, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
The suit aims to restore the money and end the terminations, arguing they violate NIH’s usual science-based review process, specific orders from Congress to tackle health equity and disparities, and federal regulations.
It also argues the cancellations waste taxpayer dollars by ending projects midstream before the results are in.
The suit was filed by the American Public Health Association, unions representing scientists and some researchers who were stripped of grants.
NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, declined comment on litigation.
California
Real estate software company sues city officials over rental algorithm ban
Real estate software company RealPage filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Berkeley, California — the latest city to try to block landlords from using algorithms when deciding rents. Officials in many cities claim the practice is anti-competitive and is driving up the price of housing.
Texas-based RealPage said Berkeley’s ordinance, which goes into effect this month violates the company’s free speech rights and is the result of an “intentional campaign of misinformation and often-repeated false claims” about its products.
“Berkeley is trying to enact an ordinance that prohibits speech — speech in the form of advice and recommendations from RealPage to its customers,” RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman told reporters on a conference call.
The Department of Justice sued RealPage in August under former President Joe Biden, saying its algorithm combines confidential information from each real estate management company in ways that enable landlords to align prices and avoid competition that would otherwise push down rents. That amounts to cartel-like illegal price collusion, prosecutors said. RealPage’s clients include huge landlords who collectively oversee millions of units across the U.S.
In the lawsuit, the DOJ pointed to RealPage executives’ own words about how their product maximizes prices for landlords. One executive said, “There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down.”
San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis have since passed ordinances restricting landlords from using rental algorithms. The DOJ case remains ongoing, as do lawsuits against RealPage brought by tenants and the attorneys general of Arizona and Washington, D.C.
Berkeley’s ordinance, which fines violators up to $1,000 per infraction, says algorithmic rental software has contributed to “double-digit rent increases ... higher vacancy rates and higher rates of eviction.”
RealPage said all these claims are false, and that the real driver of high rents is a lack of housing supply.
The company also denies providing “price fixing software” or a “coordinated pricing algorithm,” saying its pricing recommendations — higher, lower or no change — align with whatever property-specific objectives the housing providers want to achieve using the software.
And since landlords already are incentivized to maximize revenue, RealPage argues that real estate management software can show them how best to maintain high occupancy, and this in turn reduces constraints on the supply of homes.
The lawsuit accuses American Economic Liberties Project, an advocacy group that opposes monopolistic practices, of spreading falsehoods that have caused local officials to pursue misguided policies.
“AELP’s false narrative has taken root in certain municipalities that are particularly eager to find a scapegoat for their own hand in impeding the housing supply,” the lawsuit said.
Weissman said RealPage officials were never given an opportunity to present their arguments to the Berkeley City Council before the ordinance was passed and said the company is considering legal action against other cities that have passed similar policies, including San Francisco.
New York
Judge dismisses gender bias suit by woman who lost bid to be top pastor of famed Black church
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by a professor and minister who lost her bid to become the first woman to serve as senior pastor of New York City’s prominent Abyssinian Baptist Church.
The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor and former assistant pastor at Abyssinian, was among the candidates interviewed in the search for a successor to longtime senior pastor Calvin O. Butts III, who died in 2022.
After not being named a finalist, Marshall Turman sued the church and the search committee for gender discrimination in December 2023. No woman has ever been senior pastor of Abyssinian, which was founded in 1808
In a ruling Monday to dismiss Marshall Turman’s lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho referred to the legal concept of “ministerial exception,” which grants religious organizations some protection against employment discrimination claims related to the hiring and firing of clergy.
Ho also said Marshall Turman did not make a sufficiently persuasive case that she was more qualified than the five men who were named as finalists.
Marshall Turman, in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday, said she was considering an appeal and depicted Abyssinian as “mired in hypocrisy.”
“The case was not dismissed on its merits but on a technicality — religious exception — which contends that the church has a right to discriminate, even though the Bible says, ‘in Christ there is neither male nor female,’” Marshall Turman wrote.
“My moral claim still stands: gender discrimination against me or anyone else has no place in God’s house.”
Abyssinian defended its selection process and welcomed Ho’s ruling.
“While the church celebrates this legal victory, it reaffirms its commitment to gender equity in religious leadership and remains committed to its long history of championing social justice and equality for all,” it said in a statement Wednesday.
Among the five finalists for the senior pastor position, the selection committee’s eventual choice was Kevin R. Johnson, who founded Dare to Imagine Church in Philadelphia after a contentious resignation and split with historic Bright Hope Baptist Church in 2014.
Abyssinian congregants elected Johnson as senior pastor in June 2024.
However, some longtime members were displeased by the selection process, and the election itself. Four filed a lawsuit in October in a New York State court, alleging that several aspects of the process violated the church’s bylaws.
That lawsuit remains pending, though Abyssinian filed a motion in December seeking its dismissal.
The lawsuit “is nothing more than a scheme developed by Petitioners to remove the duly-elected pastor of a historic Baptist Church in Harlem, simply so they can propose a candidate whom they believe is more spiritually qualified for the position,” the motion said. “They have not made sufficient allegations to demonstrate fraud or wrongdoing in the election process.”
Based in Harlem, Abyssinian became a famous megachurch with the political rise of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., perhaps the most influential of the many men who have led the congregation.
Powell, pastor from 1937 to 1972, served in Congress for 26 years. Over the years, Abyssinian has been the spiritual home of many influential New Yorkers.
Georgia
Prosecutors want Young Thug in prison over a viral post that sparked backlash
ATLANTA (AP) — Prosecutors in Atlanta are asking a judge to revoke Young Thug ‘s probation and send him to prison because of his viral post that sparked an online backlash against the district attorney’s office.
The Grammy-winning rapper pleaded guilty in October to gang, drug and gun charges and was released from jail. However, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said he “engaged in conduct that directly threatens the safety of witnesses and prosecutors, compromises ongoing legal proceedings, and warrants immediate revocation of probation.”
In a court filing on Wednesday, Willis said Young Thug reposted a social media post that included a photo of an investigator in the district attorney’s office with a caption that said the investigator is “the biggest liar in the DA’s office.” The post “quickly went viral, amassing over 2 million views, with thousands of comments and retweets.”
The investigator’s home address and that of her parents were posted publicly, and some posts included threats to the investigator and her family, the filing says. One post threatened the assassination of Willis.
“I don’t make threats to people I’m a good person,” Young Thug posted Wednesday night on the social platform X. “I would never condone anyone threatening anyone or definitely participate in threatening anyone. I’m all about peace and love.”
The rapper, whose given name is Jeffery Williams, was indicted along with more than two dozen other people in May 2022, accused of violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. The indictment said the rapper co-founded a violent street gang that committed multiple murders, shootings and carjackings over roughly a decade and promoted its activities in songs and on social media.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge gave him a total sentence of 40 years. The first five years were to be served in prison, but that was commuted to time served. Then he has 15 years on probation. Finally, a “backloaded” 20 years in prison will be commuted to time served if he complies with all of the conditions of his probation.
If the judge grants the probation revocation, that 20-year prison sentence would take effect.
Prosecutors say the investigator whose photo Young Thug reposted is currently a witness in a “multi-defendant gang murder” case. The judge explicitly said during a hearing that the investigator was not to be shown on television while testifying, their filing says.
A blogger posted the investigator’s photo on social media with the caption, “She doesn’t want to be shown on screen? Well, here she is,” and Young Thug reposted that, prosecutors wrote.
Young Thug’s “continued association with individuals actively involved in witness intimidation, threats of violence, and obstruction of justice” is a violation of the conditions of his probation, prosecutors wrote.
The trial for Young Thug and five others began in November 2023 after it took nearly 10 months to seat a jury. The rapper and three other defendants pleaded guilty in October. A jury in November found the two remaining defendants in the trial not guilty of racketeering, murder and gang-related charges, although one of them was convicted on a gun charge.
Young Thug co-wrote the hit “This is America” with Childish Gambino, which became the first hip-hop track to win the song of the year Grammy in 2019.
Scientists sue NIH, saying politics cut their research funding
A group of scientists and health groups sued the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday, arguing that an “ideological purge” of research funding is illegal and threatens medical cures.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, hundreds of NIH research grants have been abruptly canceled for science that mentions the words diversity, gender and vaccine hesitancy, as well as other politically charged topics.
That has led to grants being cut that fund studies of HIV prevention, violence prevention in children, pregnancy health disparities and Alzheimer’s disease, among others, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
The suit aims to restore the money and end the terminations, arguing they violate NIH’s usual science-based review process, specific orders from Congress to tackle health equity and disparities, and federal regulations.
It also argues the cancellations waste taxpayer dollars by ending projects midstream before the results are in.
The suit was filed by the American Public Health Association, unions representing scientists and some researchers who were stripped of grants.
NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, declined comment on litigation.
California
Real estate software company sues city officials over rental algorithm ban
Real estate software company RealPage filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Berkeley, California — the latest city to try to block landlords from using algorithms when deciding rents. Officials in many cities claim the practice is anti-competitive and is driving up the price of housing.
Texas-based RealPage said Berkeley’s ordinance, which goes into effect this month violates the company’s free speech rights and is the result of an “intentional campaign of misinformation and often-repeated false claims” about its products.
“Berkeley is trying to enact an ordinance that prohibits speech — speech in the form of advice and recommendations from RealPage to its customers,” RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman told reporters on a conference call.
The Department of Justice sued RealPage in August under former President Joe Biden, saying its algorithm combines confidential information from each real estate management company in ways that enable landlords to align prices and avoid competition that would otherwise push down rents. That amounts to cartel-like illegal price collusion, prosecutors said. RealPage’s clients include huge landlords who collectively oversee millions of units across the U.S.
In the lawsuit, the DOJ pointed to RealPage executives’ own words about how their product maximizes prices for landlords. One executive said, “There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down.”
San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis have since passed ordinances restricting landlords from using rental algorithms. The DOJ case remains ongoing, as do lawsuits against RealPage brought by tenants and the attorneys general of Arizona and Washington, D.C.
Berkeley’s ordinance, which fines violators up to $1,000 per infraction, says algorithmic rental software has contributed to “double-digit rent increases ... higher vacancy rates and higher rates of eviction.”
RealPage said all these claims are false, and that the real driver of high rents is a lack of housing supply.
The company also denies providing “price fixing software” or a “coordinated pricing algorithm,” saying its pricing recommendations — higher, lower or no change — align with whatever property-specific objectives the housing providers want to achieve using the software.
And since landlords already are incentivized to maximize revenue, RealPage argues that real estate management software can show them how best to maintain high occupancy, and this in turn reduces constraints on the supply of homes.
The lawsuit accuses American Economic Liberties Project, an advocacy group that opposes monopolistic practices, of spreading falsehoods that have caused local officials to pursue misguided policies.
“AELP’s false narrative has taken root in certain municipalities that are particularly eager to find a scapegoat for their own hand in impeding the housing supply,” the lawsuit said.
Weissman said RealPage officials were never given an opportunity to present their arguments to the Berkeley City Council before the ordinance was passed and said the company is considering legal action against other cities that have passed similar policies, including San Francisco.
New York
Judge dismisses gender bias suit by woman who lost bid to be top pastor of famed Black church
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by a professor and minister who lost her bid to become the first woman to serve as senior pastor of New York City’s prominent Abyssinian Baptist Church.
The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor and former assistant pastor at Abyssinian, was among the candidates interviewed in the search for a successor to longtime senior pastor Calvin O. Butts III, who died in 2022.
After not being named a finalist, Marshall Turman sued the church and the search committee for gender discrimination in December 2023. No woman has ever been senior pastor of Abyssinian, which was founded in 1808
In a ruling Monday to dismiss Marshall Turman’s lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho referred to the legal concept of “ministerial exception,” which grants religious organizations some protection against employment discrimination claims related to the hiring and firing of clergy.
Ho also said Marshall Turman did not make a sufficiently persuasive case that she was more qualified than the five men who were named as finalists.
Marshall Turman, in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday, said she was considering an appeal and depicted Abyssinian as “mired in hypocrisy.”
“The case was not dismissed on its merits but on a technicality — religious exception — which contends that the church has a right to discriminate, even though the Bible says, ‘in Christ there is neither male nor female,’” Marshall Turman wrote.
“My moral claim still stands: gender discrimination against me or anyone else has no place in God’s house.”
Abyssinian defended its selection process and welcomed Ho’s ruling.
“While the church celebrates this legal victory, it reaffirms its commitment to gender equity in religious leadership and remains committed to its long history of championing social justice and equality for all,” it said in a statement Wednesday.
Among the five finalists for the senior pastor position, the selection committee’s eventual choice was Kevin R. Johnson, who founded Dare to Imagine Church in Philadelphia after a contentious resignation and split with historic Bright Hope Baptist Church in 2014.
Abyssinian congregants elected Johnson as senior pastor in June 2024.
However, some longtime members were displeased by the selection process, and the election itself. Four filed a lawsuit in October in a New York State court, alleging that several aspects of the process violated the church’s bylaws.
That lawsuit remains pending, though Abyssinian filed a motion in December seeking its dismissal.
The lawsuit “is nothing more than a scheme developed by Petitioners to remove the duly-elected pastor of a historic Baptist Church in Harlem, simply so they can propose a candidate whom they believe is more spiritually qualified for the position,” the motion said. “They have not made sufficient allegations to demonstrate fraud or wrongdoing in the election process.”
Based in Harlem, Abyssinian became a famous megachurch with the political rise of the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., perhaps the most influential of the many men who have led the congregation.
Powell, pastor from 1937 to 1972, served in Congress for 26 years. Over the years, Abyssinian has been the spiritual home of many influential New Yorkers.
Georgia
Prosecutors want Young Thug in prison over a viral post that sparked backlash
ATLANTA (AP) — Prosecutors in Atlanta are asking a judge to revoke Young Thug ‘s probation and send him to prison because of his viral post that sparked an online backlash against the district attorney’s office.
The Grammy-winning rapper pleaded guilty in October to gang, drug and gun charges and was released from jail. However, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said he “engaged in conduct that directly threatens the safety of witnesses and prosecutors, compromises ongoing legal proceedings, and warrants immediate revocation of probation.”
In a court filing on Wednesday, Willis said Young Thug reposted a social media post that included a photo of an investigator in the district attorney’s office with a caption that said the investigator is “the biggest liar in the DA’s office.” The post “quickly went viral, amassing over 2 million views, with thousands of comments and retweets.”
The investigator’s home address and that of her parents were posted publicly, and some posts included threats to the investigator and her family, the filing says. One post threatened the assassination of Willis.
“I don’t make threats to people I’m a good person,” Young Thug posted Wednesday night on the social platform X. “I would never condone anyone threatening anyone or definitely participate in threatening anyone. I’m all about peace and love.”
The rapper, whose given name is Jeffery Williams, was indicted along with more than two dozen other people in May 2022, accused of violating Georgia’s anti-racketeering law. The indictment said the rapper co-founded a violent street gang that committed multiple murders, shootings and carjackings over roughly a decade and promoted its activities in songs and on social media.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge gave him a total sentence of 40 years. The first five years were to be served in prison, but that was commuted to time served. Then he has 15 years on probation. Finally, a “backloaded” 20 years in prison will be commuted to time served if he complies with all of the conditions of his probation.
If the judge grants the probation revocation, that 20-year prison sentence would take effect.
Prosecutors say the investigator whose photo Young Thug reposted is currently a witness in a “multi-defendant gang murder” case. The judge explicitly said during a hearing that the investigator was not to be shown on television while testifying, their filing says.
A blogger posted the investigator’s photo on social media with the caption, “She doesn’t want to be shown on screen? Well, here she is,” and Young Thug reposted that, prosecutors wrote.
Young Thug’s “continued association with individuals actively involved in witness intimidation, threats of violence, and obstruction of justice” is a violation of the conditions of his probation, prosecutors wrote.
The trial for Young Thug and five others began in November 2023 after it took nearly 10 months to seat a jury. The rapper and three other defendants pleaded guilty in October. A jury in November found the two remaining defendants in the trial not guilty of racketeering, murder and gang-related charges, although one of them was convicted on a gun charge.
Young Thug co-wrote the hit “This is America” with Childish Gambino, which became the first hip-hop track to win the song of the year Grammy in 2019.
