Maine
17-year-old charged with murder in paddleboarder’s killing at pond
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Authorities in Maine said Friday they have charged a 17-year-old with murder in the death of a paddleboarder who went missing on a rural pond.
The body of Sunshine Stewart, 48, of Tenants Harbor, was found this month on Crawford Pond in Union, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Portland. The killing shocked and scared the community, where trips to the pond and nearby campground are a summer staple.
Maine State Police said a 17-year-old boy was taken into custody in Union on Wednesday night in connection with the homicide investigation but initially did not elaborate and declined to release additional information about him.
On Friday, the state attorney general’s office said the teen was charged with one count of murder. The office did not release the teen’s name and did not immediately say when he was due in court.
A medical examiner determined Stewart’s cause of death was strangulation and blunt force trauma, police said.
Police said in a statement Friday that they were not releasing any additional information and that the case was “still a very active investigation.” They have said they are seeking information from anyone who may have seen Stewart paddleboarding on July 2 on Crawford Pond.
Stewart lived about 21 miles (34 kilometers) from the pond, which is a popular summer destination about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the scenic coastal areas of the state’s midcoast region. A person reached by phone who identified herself as Stewart’s sister on Thursday declined to comment.
Friends of Stewart have posted online testimonials remembering her as fiercely independent and always up for a challenge, including outdoor adventures and building projects. Over the years, she worked in many roles, including as a fisherman and bartender, friends said.
She renovated her home in Tenants Harbor, a neighborhood in St. George, said Bruce Twyon, a friend who knew Stewart from her time living in the Virgin Islands. That spoke to her self-motivation and spirit of “getting things done and enjoying life every day,” he said.
“She was such a sweet person and very strong and independent, and took care of a lot of people,” Twyon said.
The pond, in the 2,400-resident town of Union, is about 600 acres (243 hectares) and does not have public access. It is available for a variety of uses, including boating and fishing. The 100 Acre Island preserve in the center of the pond is a wooded island reachable by canoe, kayak or paddleboard from a nearby campground.
The pond has numerous nooks and narrow areas, so it’s possible there were other boaters on the water at the time of the killing who were unaware someone was in danger.
Police said the teen was taken to Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland.
Loved ones of Stewart — who was known as “Sunny” by her friends — launched a GoFundMe page to help celebrate her life. The page said memorial service dates were being determined.
Washington
Trump’s firing of 2 Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission was unconstitutional, judge rules
A federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump illegally fired two Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year in his efforts to exert control over independent agencies across the government.
One of the commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya, resigned after suing to challenge the firings. The other plaintiff, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, can now resume her duties as commissioner because Trump lacks the constitutional authority to remove her, the judge ruled Thursday.
Attorneys for the Trump administration almost immediately declared their intent to appeal.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan cited decades of legal precedent in her written opinion, including a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found a similar attempt by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was unlawful because commissioners could be removed only for cause, not at the president’s whim. She said her ruling would uphold “clearly established law that has been enacted by a coequal branch of government, reaffirmed by another coequal branch, and acquiesced to by thirteen executives over the course of ninety years.”
Trump fired the commission’s two Democratic members in March. The FTC is a regulator created by Congress that enforces consumer protection measures and antitrust legislation. Its seats typically include three members of the president’s party and two from the opposing party.
Commissioners Bedoya and Slaughter said they’d been dismissed illegally and immediately promised to sue. Bedoya later submitted his resignation in June. Slaughter has four years left in her term as commissioner.
“As the Court recognized today, the law is clear, and I look forward to getting back to work,” Slaughter said in a statement Thursday.
During a May court hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., plaintiffs’ attorneys warned against granting the president “absolute removal power over any executive officer,” saying it would effectively eliminate an important check on his power.
“That has never been the case in this country,” said attorney Aaron Crowell. “That’s not the law. That has never been the law.”
But attorneys for the Trump administration argued that the FTC’s role has expanded since the 1930s, and as such, its members should answer directly to the president.
“The president should be able to remove someone who is actively blocking his policies, for example,” Department of Justice attorney Emily Hall said during the hearing.
AliKhan, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Joe Biden in 2023, noted the long line of presidents before Trump who didn’t try to push the limits.
Commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They serve seven-year terms that are staggered to prevent multiple vacancies at once.
They can be fired for displaying specific bad behaviors, including inefficiency, neglect of duty and malfeasance in office.
Trump told Bedoya and Slaughter that he was dismissing them because their service on the commission was inconsistent with his administration’s priorities, according to the lawsuit.
In its 1935 decision, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president couldn’t fire leaders of independent agencies without cause. Otherwise, the agencies would become more political and less independent. While that restriction was eroded in a subsequent decision that came in 2020, it has largely remained in place. The case, known as Humphrey’s Executor has been central to a number of court challenges against the Trump administration’s personnel moves targeting boards and government executives.
The legal fight over the firings could have consequences for other independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve, an institution that has long sought to protect its independence. Economists and financial markets broadly support an independent Fed because they worry a politicized version would be more reluctant to take unpopular steps to fight inflation, such as raise interest rates.
Plaintiffs argue that a politicized FTC could also favor powerful corporations while driving up prices for consumers.
Attorney Amit Agarwal said the case isn’t just about his clients keeping their jobs. He said it’s about protecting “the will of the American people” and their right to have independent agencies working on their behalf.
“America is already suffering from an excess of executive power, and the last thing we need is to hand vast new powers to the president over Congress’s explicit and longstanding objection,” Agarwal said in a statement responding to the ruling, adding that “if Trump wants even more power, he should ask the people’s elected representatives in Congress, not unelected and politically unaccountable courts.”
Pennsylvania
Man who sent Facebook message about committing a 2013 campus sexual assault pleads guilty
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — An American extradited from France to face charges that he sexually assaulted a fellow Pennsylvania college student in 2013 — and later sent her a Facebook message that said “So I raped you” — pleaded guilty Thursday.
Ian Cleary, 32, pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault more than a decade after Shannon Keeler says he sneaked into her first-year dorm at Gettysburg College on the eve of winter break and assaulted her. Cleary’s guilty plea was the first time she’d seen him since the assault.
“I had been thinking about this moment for 12 years,” said Keeler, who clenched her husband’s hand as Cleary was led into court by deputies. She called it a surreal moment. A decade ago, a former prosecutor had declined the case.
“It’s taken a lot of twists and turns to get to this point,” said Keeler, now 30. “It took a lot of people doing the right thing to get us here.”
Judge Kevin Hess set an Oct. 20 sentencing date. The two sides proposed a four- to eight-year sentence, which the judge can accept or not.
Keeler, in interviews with The Associated Press, described her decade-long efforts to persuade authorities to pursue charges, starting hours after the assault.
She renewed the quest in 2021, after finding a series of disturbing Facebook messages from his account.
Cleary has been in custody since his arrest on minor, unrelated charges in Metz, France, in April 2024. A defense lawyer told the judge Thursday that Cleary
experienced several mental health episodes there and was hospitalized around the time he sent the Facebook messages in 2019.
Cleary left Gettysburg after the assault and finished college in Silicon Valley, California, where he’d grown up. He then got a master’s degree and worked for Tesla before moving overseas, where he spent time writing medieval fiction, according to his online posts.
The AP published an investigation on the case and on the broader reluctance among prosecutors to pursue campus sex assault charges in May 2021. An indictment followed weeks later.
Authorities in the U.S. and Europe tried to track Cleary down for the next three years, but seemed unable to follow his trail, online or otherwise.
In court Thursday, defense lawyer John Abom said Cleary was homeless at times and unaware of the charges. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett on Thursday said he has his doubts, but cannot prove that Cleary was on the run, so it’s unlikely to be an issue at sentencing.
The second-degree sexual assault charge carries a maximum 10 years in prison. His family members have declined to comment on the case and have not attended his court hearings. Abom also declined to comment on Cleary’s behalf Thursday.
The AP typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Keeler has done.
“I hope that we as a society, the institutions around us, can make truly successful legal outcomes more viable for victims,” she said after the plea.
“It starts with listening to victims and making sure their voices are heard,” she said, “even if the system’s slow to catch up.”
17-year-old charged with murder in paddleboarder’s killing at pond
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Authorities in Maine said Friday they have charged a 17-year-old with murder in the death of a paddleboarder who went missing on a rural pond.
The body of Sunshine Stewart, 48, of Tenants Harbor, was found this month on Crawford Pond in Union, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Portland. The killing shocked and scared the community, where trips to the pond and nearby campground are a summer staple.
Maine State Police said a 17-year-old boy was taken into custody in Union on Wednesday night in connection with the homicide investigation but initially did not elaborate and declined to release additional information about him.
On Friday, the state attorney general’s office said the teen was charged with one count of murder. The office did not release the teen’s name and did not immediately say when he was due in court.
A medical examiner determined Stewart’s cause of death was strangulation and blunt force trauma, police said.
Police said in a statement Friday that they were not releasing any additional information and that the case was “still a very active investigation.” They have said they are seeking information from anyone who may have seen Stewart paddleboarding on July 2 on Crawford Pond.
Stewart lived about 21 miles (34 kilometers) from the pond, which is a popular summer destination about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from the scenic coastal areas of the state’s midcoast region. A person reached by phone who identified herself as Stewart’s sister on Thursday declined to comment.
Friends of Stewart have posted online testimonials remembering her as fiercely independent and always up for a challenge, including outdoor adventures and building projects. Over the years, she worked in many roles, including as a fisherman and bartender, friends said.
She renovated her home in Tenants Harbor, a neighborhood in St. George, said Bruce Twyon, a friend who knew Stewart from her time living in the Virgin Islands. That spoke to her self-motivation and spirit of “getting things done and enjoying life every day,” he said.
“She was such a sweet person and very strong and independent, and took care of a lot of people,” Twyon said.
The pond, in the 2,400-resident town of Union, is about 600 acres (243 hectares) and does not have public access. It is available for a variety of uses, including boating and fishing. The 100 Acre Island preserve in the center of the pond is a wooded island reachable by canoe, kayak or paddleboard from a nearby campground.
The pond has numerous nooks and narrow areas, so it’s possible there were other boaters on the water at the time of the killing who were unaware someone was in danger.
Police said the teen was taken to Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland.
Loved ones of Stewart — who was known as “Sunny” by her friends — launched a GoFundMe page to help celebrate her life. The page said memorial service dates were being determined.
Washington
Trump’s firing of 2 Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission was unconstitutional, judge rules
A federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump illegally fired two Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year in his efforts to exert control over independent agencies across the government.
One of the commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya, resigned after suing to challenge the firings. The other plaintiff, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, can now resume her duties as commissioner because Trump lacks the constitutional authority to remove her, the judge ruled Thursday.
Attorneys for the Trump administration almost immediately declared their intent to appeal.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan cited decades of legal precedent in her written opinion, including a 1935 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found a similar attempt by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was unlawful because commissioners could be removed only for cause, not at the president’s whim. She said her ruling would uphold “clearly established law that has been enacted by a coequal branch of government, reaffirmed by another coequal branch, and acquiesced to by thirteen executives over the course of ninety years.”
Trump fired the commission’s two Democratic members in March. The FTC is a regulator created by Congress that enforces consumer protection measures and antitrust legislation. Its seats typically include three members of the president’s party and two from the opposing party.
Commissioners Bedoya and Slaughter said they’d been dismissed illegally and immediately promised to sue. Bedoya later submitted his resignation in June. Slaughter has four years left in her term as commissioner.
“As the Court recognized today, the law is clear, and I look forward to getting back to work,” Slaughter said in a statement Thursday.
During a May court hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., plaintiffs’ attorneys warned against granting the president “absolute removal power over any executive officer,” saying it would effectively eliminate an important check on his power.
“That has never been the case in this country,” said attorney Aaron Crowell. “That’s not the law. That has never been the law.”
But attorneys for the Trump administration argued that the FTC’s role has expanded since the 1930s, and as such, its members should answer directly to the president.
“The president should be able to remove someone who is actively blocking his policies, for example,” Department of Justice attorney Emily Hall said during the hearing.
AliKhan, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Joe Biden in 2023, noted the long line of presidents before Trump who didn’t try to push the limits.
Commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. They serve seven-year terms that are staggered to prevent multiple vacancies at once.
They can be fired for displaying specific bad behaviors, including inefficiency, neglect of duty and malfeasance in office.
Trump told Bedoya and Slaughter that he was dismissing them because their service on the commission was inconsistent with his administration’s priorities, according to the lawsuit.
In its 1935 decision, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the president couldn’t fire leaders of independent agencies without cause. Otherwise, the agencies would become more political and less independent. While that restriction was eroded in a subsequent decision that came in 2020, it has largely remained in place. The case, known as Humphrey’s Executor has been central to a number of court challenges against the Trump administration’s personnel moves targeting boards and government executives.
The legal fight over the firings could have consequences for other independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve, an institution that has long sought to protect its independence. Economists and financial markets broadly support an independent Fed because they worry a politicized version would be more reluctant to take unpopular steps to fight inflation, such as raise interest rates.
Plaintiffs argue that a politicized FTC could also favor powerful corporations while driving up prices for consumers.
Attorney Amit Agarwal said the case isn’t just about his clients keeping their jobs. He said it’s about protecting “the will of the American people” and their right to have independent agencies working on their behalf.
“America is already suffering from an excess of executive power, and the last thing we need is to hand vast new powers to the president over Congress’s explicit and longstanding objection,” Agarwal said in a statement responding to the ruling, adding that “if Trump wants even more power, he should ask the people’s elected representatives in Congress, not unelected and politically unaccountable courts.”
Pennsylvania
Man who sent Facebook message about committing a 2013 campus sexual assault pleads guilty
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) — An American extradited from France to face charges that he sexually assaulted a fellow Pennsylvania college student in 2013 — and later sent her a Facebook message that said “So I raped you” — pleaded guilty Thursday.
Ian Cleary, 32, pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault more than a decade after Shannon Keeler says he sneaked into her first-year dorm at Gettysburg College on the eve of winter break and assaulted her. Cleary’s guilty plea was the first time she’d seen him since the assault.
“I had been thinking about this moment for 12 years,” said Keeler, who clenched her husband’s hand as Cleary was led into court by deputies. She called it a surreal moment. A decade ago, a former prosecutor had declined the case.
“It’s taken a lot of twists and turns to get to this point,” said Keeler, now 30. “It took a lot of people doing the right thing to get us here.”
Judge Kevin Hess set an Oct. 20 sentencing date. The two sides proposed a four- to eight-year sentence, which the judge can accept or not.
Keeler, in interviews with The Associated Press, described her decade-long efforts to persuade authorities to pursue charges, starting hours after the assault.
She renewed the quest in 2021, after finding a series of disturbing Facebook messages from his account.
Cleary has been in custody since his arrest on minor, unrelated charges in Metz, France, in April 2024. A defense lawyer told the judge Thursday that Cleary
experienced several mental health episodes there and was hospitalized around the time he sent the Facebook messages in 2019.
Cleary left Gettysburg after the assault and finished college in Silicon Valley, California, where he’d grown up. He then got a master’s degree and worked for Tesla before moving overseas, where he spent time writing medieval fiction, according to his online posts.
The AP published an investigation on the case and on the broader reluctance among prosecutors to pursue campus sex assault charges in May 2021. An indictment followed weeks later.
Authorities in the U.S. and Europe tried to track Cleary down for the next three years, but seemed unable to follow his trail, online or otherwise.
In court Thursday, defense lawyer John Abom said Cleary was homeless at times and unaware of the charges. Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett on Thursday said he has his doubts, but cannot prove that Cleary was on the run, so it’s unlikely to be an issue at sentencing.
The second-degree sexual assault charge carries a maximum 10 years in prison. His family members have declined to comment on the case and have not attended his court hearings. Abom also declined to comment on Cleary’s behalf Thursday.
The AP typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Keeler has done.
“I hope that we as a society, the institutions around us, can make truly successful legal outcomes more viable for victims,” she said after the plea.
“It starts with listening to victims and making sure their voices are heard,” she said, “even if the system’s slow to catch up.”
