Missouri
St. Louis and city official sue over the state’s control of local police
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The city of St. Louis and the leader of its city council filed a federal lawsuit Monday against a new Missouri law putting a state-appointed board back in control of the local police department, putting St. Louis among a handful of major U.S. cities that don’t fully oversee law enforcement.
The president of the city’s Board of Aldermen, Megan Green, argues in the lawsuit that the new law violates her rights to free expression, freedom of assembly and to petition state government, all guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The city says the law violates a provision of the Missouri Constitution that prohibits unfunded mandates from the state.
The law, approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe last month, gives the governor the power to appoint four city residents as voting members of a new board to manage the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to serve along with the city’s elected mayor, currently Democrat Tishaura Jones. The police department of Kansas City, Missouri, is overseen by such a board.
Some critics suggested that Republican lawmakers wanted to wrest control of the police away from Jones, a Black woman, but Kehoe has said legislators were “prioritizing public safety.”
The lawsuit alleges that the new law violates Green’s rights through vague and overly broad provisions that prohibit city officials from taking any action to “impede, obstruct or interfere” with the state board, subjecting them to fines and removal from office. The new law also requires St. Louis to increase its spending on the police department each year through 2028.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is promising to defend the law.
St. Louis first lost full control over its police department during the Civil War in 1861, when Missouri was sharply divided between Union and Confederate supporters. St. Louis and Kansas City had larger Black populations than other parts of the state and were centers of Union support. A pro-Confederate government persuaded the Legislature to give the state control of the local police.
That control lasted until a statewide vote in 2012 decisively approved an amendment to the state constitution to allow St. Louis to take control of the police department. However, Republicans argued this year that it was necessary to return control to the state to restore order in the city following years of population loss, a rise in homicides, and power struggles between city leaders and GOP state officials.
New York
Scholar spared prison in US case alleging China spies on dissidents abroad
NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese American scholar convicted of spying on Chinese dissidents was spared prison time Monday by a U.S. judge.
Shujun Wang was sentenced by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin to time served and three years’ supervised release, according to attorneys. Wang has been free on bail since the day of his arrest.
Wang, 76, was convicted last summer of charges including conspiring to act as an illegal foreign agent.
With a story that federal prosecutors have described as akin to a spy novel, the case is part of their portfolio on what Washington views as “ transnational repression “ by authoritarian governments targeting critics abroad. The Chinese government has said it’s being slandered by the “malicious fabrication of the so-called ‘transnational suppression’ narrative.”
A Chinese-born American citizen, Wang was a history professor in his homeland. He became a visiting fellow at Columbia University for a time in the 1990s and emigrated to the U.S., where he wrote books and co-founded a pro-democracy group in New York City.
Prosecutors portrayed Wang’s advocacy as a facade that garnered him credibility with sincere activists, allowing him to gather information on Hong Kong democracy protesters, supporters of Taiwanese independence, Uyghur and Tibetan activists and others.
He relayed the intel to China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, in the form of emails styled as “diaries,” according to prosecutors and trial evidence. The messages concerned demonstrations planned during Chinese President Xi Jinping’ s visits to the U.S., anniversary events for the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and more.
Wang also met with ministry officials on trips to China, according to prosecutors and evidence.
One activist and fellow academic mentioned in the “diaries,” Ming Xia, told the court in a letter that he’d altered his daily routine as a result. Another activist, Anna Yeung-Cheung, wrote that Wang’s “betrayal not only damaged personal bonds and shattered our collective trust but also exacerbated harmful stereotypes that depict Chinese and Asian Americans as potential spies.”
Another figure in the “diaries” — Juntao Wang, an academic and dissident who spent years in prison in China — said he knew about Shujun Wang’s Chinese Communist Party connections but still appreciated his work with the pro-democracy movement.
“From the perspective of traditional Chinese political culture and contemporary Chinese politics, his dual identity is a common and understandable phenomenon,” he wrote to the court. Saying that some genuine supporters of democracy also deal with Chinese officials to gain some benefits, he asked for a short sentence for Shujun Wang.
Shujun Wang told FBI agents in interviews that his communiqués were just accounts of publicly available tidbits.
In a New York Times Magazine interview after his conviction, he at times called the diaries a hobby and said he hadn’t known his contacts in China worked for the security agency. At other points, he acknowledged sharing information with Chinese officials and said he was just trying to promote democracy to the Communist government, according to the magazine.
Wang’s attorney, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, called Judge Chin’s sentence a “wise” decision.
“It appropriately recognized that his conduct was not driven by any financial motive and did limited, if any harm,” said Margulis-Ohnuma, who also noted that Wang has multiple health problems.
In court papers, Margulis-Ohnuma said the case didn’t depict a debonair spy but rather “an aging democracy activist — lonesome and starved for attention, eager to please and always delighted to engage — who occasionally provided mostly-useless information to the Chinese government and lied about it as he became older, more impaired and more isolated.”
New Hampshire
Judge rules against dads who wore pink wristbands to protest trans high school athletes
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Two fathers who oppose allowing transgender athletes to play high school sports won’t be allowed to wear pink wristbands marked “XX” to games while their lawsuit against the school district continues, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote were banned from school grounds in Bow after wearing the wristbands to a soccer game in September that included a transgender girl on the opposing team. They later sued the school district, and while the no-trespass orders have since expired, they asked the judge to allow them to carry signs and wear the wristbands featuring the symbol for female chromosomes at school events while the case proceeds.
Both men testified at a hearing in November that they didn’t intend to harass or otherwise target transgender athlete Parker Tirrell, and their attorneys argued they did nothing more than silently express their support for reserving girls’ sports for those assigned female at birth.
But in denying their motion Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe said the parents’ “narrow, plausibly inoffensive” intentions weren’t as important as the wider context, and that adults attending a high school athletic event do not enjoy a First Amendment protected right to convey messages that demean, harass or harm students.
“While plaintiffs may very well have never intended to communicate a demeaning or harassing message directed at Parker Tirrell or any other transgender students, the symbols and posters they displayed were fully capable of conveying such a message,” he wrote. “And, that broader messaging is what the school authorities reasonably understood and appropriately tried to prevent.”
School officials described receiving strongly-worded emails from Foote in which he called himself a “real leader” who was prepared to take action and seeing his social media posts urging others to attend the game. In the days leading up to the game, another parent told school officials she overheard others talk about showing up to the game wearing dresses and heckling Tirrell.
“This was organized and targeted,” Superintendent Marcy Kelley said.
Brian Cullen, an attorney for the school district, said Monday he was pleased with what he called a well-reasoned ruling that affirms that school districts can and should protect students from harassment from adults on school grounds. And he noted that the ruling doesn’t prevent the plaintiffs from expressing their views in other ways.
Del Kolde, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he strongly disagrees with the ruling.
“This was adult speech in a limited public forum, which enjoys greater First Amendment protection than student speech in the classroom,” said Kolde, senior attorney for the Institute for Free Speech. “Bow School District officials were obviously discriminating based on viewpoint because they perceived the XX wristbands to be ‘trans-exclusionary.’”
After the ruling was issued, the plaintiffs filed a notice saying they do not intend to enter more evidence before the judge makes a final decision.
Meanwhile, Tirrell and another student athlete are challenging the state law that bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity, as well as President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” A federal judge ruled in their case that they can play sports during the ongoing lawsuit that seeks to overturn the law.
Texas
Rapper Tay-K convicted of murder for second time
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A Texas rapper who performed as Tay-K and was best known for his 2017 single “The Race” was convicted of murder for a second time after a jury found him guilty of fatally shooting a San Antonio man.
Taymor McIntyre faces up to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the killing of 23-year-old Mark Anthony Saldivar in 2017. McIntyre had already been been serving a 55-year sentence over a separate fatal shooting.
Prosecutors said that McIntyre shot Saldivar after the rapper tried to rob him. Authorities said McIntyre had picked up Saldivar, who was a photographer, in a car after asking him to take photos of the rapper for a new song.
McIntyre’s attorneys had criticized the police investigation of the shooting, alleging the case relied too much on self-serving statements from witnesses in the car when the shooting happened.
“Taymor McIntyre is not guilty of capital murder, murder, or manslaughter, and the reason for that is very simple,” John Hunter, one of McIntyre’s attorneys, told jurors during closing arguments last week.
“You have to do it right. You have to do the work. And this case clearly demonstrates the work wasn’t done.”
The jury found McIntyre not guilty of capital murder, which would have meant a life sentence without the chance of parole. The jury will now hear evidence in the trial’s punishment phase before deciding on a sentence.
McIntyre was also convicted in 2019 for the shooting death of 21-year-old Ethan Walker during a home invasion in 2016 in Mansfield, southeast of Fort Worth, Texas.
McIntyre recorded “The Race” while he was on the run from authorities for the home invasion.
St. Louis and city official sue over the state’s control of local police
ST. LOUIS (AP) — The city of St. Louis and the leader of its city council filed a federal lawsuit Monday against a new Missouri law putting a state-appointed board back in control of the local police department, putting St. Louis among a handful of major U.S. cities that don’t fully oversee law enforcement.
The president of the city’s Board of Aldermen, Megan Green, argues in the lawsuit that the new law violates her rights to free expression, freedom of assembly and to petition state government, all guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The city says the law violates a provision of the Missouri Constitution that prohibits unfunded mandates from the state.
The law, approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Mike Kehoe last month, gives the governor the power to appoint four city residents as voting members of a new board to manage the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to serve along with the city’s elected mayor, currently Democrat Tishaura Jones. The police department of Kansas City, Missouri, is overseen by such a board.
Some critics suggested that Republican lawmakers wanted to wrest control of the police away from Jones, a Black woman, but Kehoe has said legislators were “prioritizing public safety.”
The lawsuit alleges that the new law violates Green’s rights through vague and overly broad provisions that prohibit city officials from taking any action to “impede, obstruct or interfere” with the state board, subjecting them to fines and removal from office. The new law also requires St. Louis to increase its spending on the police department each year through 2028.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is promising to defend the law.
St. Louis first lost full control over its police department during the Civil War in 1861, when Missouri was sharply divided between Union and Confederate supporters. St. Louis and Kansas City had larger Black populations than other parts of the state and were centers of Union support. A pro-Confederate government persuaded the Legislature to give the state control of the local police.
That control lasted until a statewide vote in 2012 decisively approved an amendment to the state constitution to allow St. Louis to take control of the police department. However, Republicans argued this year that it was necessary to return control to the state to restore order in the city following years of population loss, a rise in homicides, and power struggles between city leaders and GOP state officials.
New York
Scholar spared prison in US case alleging China spies on dissidents abroad
NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese American scholar convicted of spying on Chinese dissidents was spared prison time Monday by a U.S. judge.
Shujun Wang was sentenced by U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin to time served and three years’ supervised release, according to attorneys. Wang has been free on bail since the day of his arrest.
Wang, 76, was convicted last summer of charges including conspiring to act as an illegal foreign agent.
With a story that federal prosecutors have described as akin to a spy novel, the case is part of their portfolio on what Washington views as “ transnational repression “ by authoritarian governments targeting critics abroad. The Chinese government has said it’s being slandered by the “malicious fabrication of the so-called ‘transnational suppression’ narrative.”
A Chinese-born American citizen, Wang was a history professor in his homeland. He became a visiting fellow at Columbia University for a time in the 1990s and emigrated to the U.S., where he wrote books and co-founded a pro-democracy group in New York City.
Prosecutors portrayed Wang’s advocacy as a facade that garnered him credibility with sincere activists, allowing him to gather information on Hong Kong democracy protesters, supporters of Taiwanese independence, Uyghur and Tibetan activists and others.
He relayed the intel to China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, in the form of emails styled as “diaries,” according to prosecutors and trial evidence. The messages concerned demonstrations planned during Chinese President Xi Jinping’ s visits to the U.S., anniversary events for the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, and more.
Wang also met with ministry officials on trips to China, according to prosecutors and evidence.
One activist and fellow academic mentioned in the “diaries,” Ming Xia, told the court in a letter that he’d altered his daily routine as a result. Another activist, Anna Yeung-Cheung, wrote that Wang’s “betrayal not only damaged personal bonds and shattered our collective trust but also exacerbated harmful stereotypes that depict Chinese and Asian Americans as potential spies.”
Another figure in the “diaries” — Juntao Wang, an academic and dissident who spent years in prison in China — said he knew about Shujun Wang’s Chinese Communist Party connections but still appreciated his work with the pro-democracy movement.
“From the perspective of traditional Chinese political culture and contemporary Chinese politics, his dual identity is a common and understandable phenomenon,” he wrote to the court. Saying that some genuine supporters of democracy also deal with Chinese officials to gain some benefits, he asked for a short sentence for Shujun Wang.
Shujun Wang told FBI agents in interviews that his communiqués were just accounts of publicly available tidbits.
In a New York Times Magazine interview after his conviction, he at times called the diaries a hobby and said he hadn’t known his contacts in China worked for the security agency. At other points, he acknowledged sharing information with Chinese officials and said he was just trying to promote democracy to the Communist government, according to the magazine.
Wang’s attorney, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, called Judge Chin’s sentence a “wise” decision.
“It appropriately recognized that his conduct was not driven by any financial motive and did limited, if any harm,” said Margulis-Ohnuma, who also noted that Wang has multiple health problems.
In court papers, Margulis-Ohnuma said the case didn’t depict a debonair spy but rather “an aging democracy activist — lonesome and starved for attention, eager to please and always delighted to engage — who occasionally provided mostly-useless information to the Chinese government and lied about it as he became older, more impaired and more isolated.”
New Hampshire
Judge rules against dads who wore pink wristbands to protest trans high school athletes
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Two fathers who oppose allowing transgender athletes to play high school sports won’t be allowed to wear pink wristbands marked “XX” to games while their lawsuit against the school district continues, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote were banned from school grounds in Bow after wearing the wristbands to a soccer game in September that included a transgender girl on the opposing team. They later sued the school district, and while the no-trespass orders have since expired, they asked the judge to allow them to carry signs and wear the wristbands featuring the symbol for female chromosomes at school events while the case proceeds.
Both men testified at a hearing in November that they didn’t intend to harass or otherwise target transgender athlete Parker Tirrell, and their attorneys argued they did nothing more than silently express their support for reserving girls’ sports for those assigned female at birth.
But in denying their motion Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe said the parents’ “narrow, plausibly inoffensive” intentions weren’t as important as the wider context, and that adults attending a high school athletic event do not enjoy a First Amendment protected right to convey messages that demean, harass or harm students.
“While plaintiffs may very well have never intended to communicate a demeaning or harassing message directed at Parker Tirrell or any other transgender students, the symbols and posters they displayed were fully capable of conveying such a message,” he wrote. “And, that broader messaging is what the school authorities reasonably understood and appropriately tried to prevent.”
School officials described receiving strongly-worded emails from Foote in which he called himself a “real leader” who was prepared to take action and seeing his social media posts urging others to attend the game. In the days leading up to the game, another parent told school officials she overheard others talk about showing up to the game wearing dresses and heckling Tirrell.
“This was organized and targeted,” Superintendent Marcy Kelley said.
Brian Cullen, an attorney for the school district, said Monday he was pleased with what he called a well-reasoned ruling that affirms that school districts can and should protect students from harassment from adults on school grounds. And he noted that the ruling doesn’t prevent the plaintiffs from expressing their views in other ways.
Del Kolde, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he strongly disagrees with the ruling.
“This was adult speech in a limited public forum, which enjoys greater First Amendment protection than student speech in the classroom,” said Kolde, senior attorney for the Institute for Free Speech. “Bow School District officials were obviously discriminating based on viewpoint because they perceived the XX wristbands to be ‘trans-exclusionary.’”
After the ruling was issued, the plaintiffs filed a notice saying they do not intend to enter more evidence before the judge makes a final decision.
Meanwhile, Tirrell and another student athlete are challenging the state law that bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity, as well as President Donald Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” A federal judge ruled in their case that they can play sports during the ongoing lawsuit that seeks to overturn the law.
Texas
Rapper Tay-K convicted of murder for second time
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A Texas rapper who performed as Tay-K and was best known for his 2017 single “The Race” was convicted of murder for a second time after a jury found him guilty of fatally shooting a San Antonio man.
Taymor McIntyre faces up to life in prison with the possibility of parole for the killing of 23-year-old Mark Anthony Saldivar in 2017. McIntyre had already been been serving a 55-year sentence over a separate fatal shooting.
Prosecutors said that McIntyre shot Saldivar after the rapper tried to rob him. Authorities said McIntyre had picked up Saldivar, who was a photographer, in a car after asking him to take photos of the rapper for a new song.
McIntyre’s attorneys had criticized the police investigation of the shooting, alleging the case relied too much on self-serving statements from witnesses in the car when the shooting happened.
“Taymor McIntyre is not guilty of capital murder, murder, or manslaughter, and the reason for that is very simple,” John Hunter, one of McIntyre’s attorneys, told jurors during closing arguments last week.
“You have to do it right. You have to do the work. And this case clearly demonstrates the work wasn’t done.”
The jury found McIntyre not guilty of capital murder, which would have meant a life sentence without the chance of parole. The jury will now hear evidence in the trial’s punishment phase before deciding on a sentence.
McIntyre was also convicted in 2019 for the shooting death of 21-year-old Ethan Walker during a home invasion in 2016 in Mansfield, southeast of Fort Worth, Texas.
McIntyre recorded “The Race” while he was on the run from authorities for the home invasion.
