New York
Guardians pitchers Clase and Ortiz face May trial date in gambling case
NEW YORK (AP) — Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are facing a May trial on federal charges that they took bribes to help gamblers betting on their pitches.
U.S. District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto on Tuesday said jury selection would tentatively begin May 4 in Brooklyn federal court, with the trial opening the following week or sooner.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Sherman told the judge at the brief hearing that prosecutors anticipate the trial could last two weeks.
He said both sides have been in discussions since the pitchers were arrested last month, but have not yet talked about a possible plea deal in the case to avoid trial.
Matsumoto initially proposed a February trial date, but prosecutors and defense lawyers pushed for a spring start.
Sherman said prosecutors began providing defense lawyers evidence and other materials this week in anticipation of a trial, including hundreds of gigabytes of files pulled from a number of electronic devices.
Clase, Ortiz and their lawyers declined to comment outside the courtroom. They’re due back in court Jan. 15.
The two have been out on bond since pleading not guilty last month to wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery.
According to prosecutors, the two accepted thousands of dollars in bribes to help two unnamed gamblers in their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on bets placed on the speed and outcome of their pitches.
They allege that Clase, the Guardians’ star closer, began providing the bettors with information about his pitches in 2023 and then recruited Ortiz into the scheme earlier this year.
Lawyers for the men have denied the charges. Ortiz’s lawyer has maintained that payments between his client and individuals in the Dominican Republic were for legal activities, not payoffs.
Clase, 27, is a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year who is on the fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contract.
Ortiz, 26, earned a $782,600 salary this year as a starting pitcher for the Guardians.
The two pitchers have been on nondisciplinary paid leave since July, when MLB began investigating what it said was unusually high in-game betting activity when they pitched.
The Guardians open spring training in February. The team’s home opener is April 3.
Iowa
GOP-led states settle lawsuit against federal government over checking citizenship status of voters
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Four Republican-led states agreed to settle lawsuits against the federal government over access to voters’ citizenship data, ending a dispute that began with the Biden administration in advance of the 2024 presidential election.
Officials in Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio entered the settlement with the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Kristi Noem roughly a year after the states individually sued the agency under President Joe Biden. They had alleged the previous administration was withholding information about citizenship status that they needed to determine whether thousands of registered voters were actually eligible to cast a ballot.
Each of the states could soon run searches for thousands of voters using names, birthdays and Social Security numbers through the federal government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program. It has been significantly upgraded under the Trump administration. In turn, the settlement reached Friday says the states may share driver’s license records with the Department of Homeland Security “to assist in improving and modernizing” its database.
The information sharing is likely to be a focal point of the 2026 midterm elections. Voting rights groups have already sued the administration over the expanded program, known as SAVE, arguing that the recent updates could result in eligible voters being unlawfully purged from voter lists. Separately, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has asked at least half the states for their complete voter rolls, a request that Democratic elections officials have questioned out of concern that the data would be provided to DHS.
Voting by noncitizens is illegal in federal elections and can lead to felony charges and deportation. State reviews show it is rare for noncitizen s to register to vote and even rarer that they actually cast a ballot.
Still, before the 2024 election, Trump pushed claims without evidence that noncitizens might vote in large enough numbers to sway the outcome. Many Republican candidates and lawmakers nationally emphasize that even one instance of a noncitizen voting illegally is too many.
The SAVE program, which has been around for decades, is operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of DHS. It has been widely used by local and state officials to check the citizenship status of people applying for public benefits by running them through a variety of federal databases.
DHS and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency updated the SAVE program earlier this year, according to public announcements. It is now free for election officials, allows searches for voters by the thousands instead of one at a time and no longer requires agencies to search using DHS-issued identification numbers. When a name, date of birth and government-issued number is entered, the database will return initial verification of citizenship status within 48 hours, according to the settlement.
As part of the settlement, Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio will develop a memorandum of understanding with the federal government within 90 days on use of the SAVE program. The settlement also dictates that they will negotiate a new information-sharing agreement for “for the purpose of improving” the SAVE system. That may include providing DHS with 1,000 “randomly selected driver’s license records from their state” within 90 days.
Texas
Federal prosecutors say Afghan national made bomb threat on TikTok video
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A Texas man has been charged with making threats online after authorities said a video showing him threatening to build a bomb, conduct a suicide attack and kill Americans was posted to TikTok and other social media sites.
The charge against Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, an Afghan national, was filed Saturday in federal court. He has not yet had an opportunity to enter a plea, and court records do not reveal if he had obtained an attorney. The federal public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a voicemail left by The Associated Press.
The Texas Department of Public Safety alerted the FBI on Nov. 25 that a video shared by multiple social media accounts showed a video call in which a man claiming to live in the Dallas-Forth Worth area threatened to build a bomb in his vehicle and kill the others on the call. The man said the Taliban were dear to him, FBI special agent Justin Killian said in a court document describing the video.
The FBI used facial recognition technology to identify Alokozay as the man in the video, and he was arrested the same day. Killian said Alokozay admitted making the statements, and said he deleted his TikTok application from his phone after people contacted him saying they had seen the video on social media.
“This Afghan national came into America during the Biden administration and as alleged, explicitly stated that he came here in order to kill American citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a press release. “The public safety threat created by the Biden administration’s vetting breakdown cannot be overstated – the Department of Justice will continue working with our federal and state partners to protect the American people from the prior administration’s dangerous incompetence.”
About 76,000 Afghans who helped Americans were brought to the country as the Taliban took Afghanistan back over in 2021 under a program called Operation Allies Welcome.
Alokozay was initially arrested on a state charge of making a terroristic threat. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin announced the arrest on the social media platform X on Saturday — one day after the Trump administration halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports.
Those moves came after two National Guard members were shot Wednesday in Washington. Federal authorities have identified the suspect in the shooting near the White House as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War.
He applied for asylum during the Biden administration and was granted it this year under President Donald Trump, according to a group that assists with resettlement of Afghans who helped U.S. forces in their country.
Neither McLaughlin nor U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Ryan Raybould indicated any connection between the cases.
Florida
Despite legal challenge, college votes again to transfer valuable land for Trump presidential library
The board of the South Florida college that’s giving away a valuable piece of property for Donald Trump’s future presidential library revoted to transfer the land on Tuesday.
The board of Miami Dade College faces a lawsuit filed by a local activist and a trial set for August over allegations it violated the state’s open government law when it first voted to gift the parcel. The lawsuit said the board failed to provide sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property in downtown Miami. A judge has temporarily blocked the college from formally transferring the land, while the lawsuit plays out.
The site is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.
On Tuesday, the board held a new meeting at its campus in Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban American and Republican-leaning suburb of Miami. Dozens of students, professors, alumni and local officials packed the meeting to weigh in on the land transfer, an opportunity some felt they were denied when the board initially voted on the matter.
An agenda released ahead of the September meeting simply stated the board would consider conveying property to a state fund overseen by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet, but provided no details on which piece of property was being considered or why. Unlike the majority of the board’s other meetings, neither the September vote nor Tuesday’s redo were livestreamed.
A week after the initial vote, DeSantis and other top GOP officials voted to transfer the land again, effectively putting the property under the control of the Trump family when they deeded it to the foundation for Trump’s library. That foundation is led by three trustees: Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump’s husband; Michael Boulos; and the president’s attorney James Kiley.
Guardians pitchers Clase and Ortiz face May trial date in gambling case
NEW YORK (AP) — Cleveland Guardians pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz are facing a May trial on federal charges that they took bribes to help gamblers betting on their pitches.
U.S. District Court Judge Kiyo Matsumoto on Tuesday said jury selection would tentatively begin May 4 in Brooklyn federal court, with the trial opening the following week or sooner.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Sherman told the judge at the brief hearing that prosecutors anticipate the trial could last two weeks.
He said both sides have been in discussions since the pitchers were arrested last month, but have not yet talked about a possible plea deal in the case to avoid trial.
Matsumoto initially proposed a February trial date, but prosecutors and defense lawyers pushed for a spring start.
Sherman said prosecutors began providing defense lawyers evidence and other materials this week in anticipation of a trial, including hundreds of gigabytes of files pulled from a number of electronic devices.
Clase, Ortiz and their lawyers declined to comment outside the courtroom. They’re due back in court Jan. 15.
The two have been out on bond since pleading not guilty last month to wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery.
According to prosecutors, the two accepted thousands of dollars in bribes to help two unnamed gamblers in their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on bets placed on the speed and outcome of their pitches.
They allege that Clase, the Guardians’ star closer, began providing the bettors with information about his pitches in 2023 and then recruited Ortiz into the scheme earlier this year.
Lawyers for the men have denied the charges. Ortiz’s lawyer has maintained that payments between his client and individuals in the Dominican Republic were for legal activities, not payoffs.
Clase, 27, is a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year who is on the fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contract.
Ortiz, 26, earned a $782,600 salary this year as a starting pitcher for the Guardians.
The two pitchers have been on nondisciplinary paid leave since July, when MLB began investigating what it said was unusually high in-game betting activity when they pitched.
The Guardians open spring training in February. The team’s home opener is April 3.
Iowa
GOP-led states settle lawsuit against federal government over checking citizenship status of voters
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Four Republican-led states agreed to settle lawsuits against the federal government over access to voters’ citizenship data, ending a dispute that began with the Biden administration in advance of the 2024 presidential election.
Officials in Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio entered the settlement with the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Kristi Noem roughly a year after the states individually sued the agency under President Joe Biden. They had alleged the previous administration was withholding information about citizenship status that they needed to determine whether thousands of registered voters were actually eligible to cast a ballot.
Each of the states could soon run searches for thousands of voters using names, birthdays and Social Security numbers through the federal government’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program. It has been significantly upgraded under the Trump administration. In turn, the settlement reached Friday says the states may share driver’s license records with the Department of Homeland Security “to assist in improving and modernizing” its database.
The information sharing is likely to be a focal point of the 2026 midterm elections. Voting rights groups have already sued the administration over the expanded program, known as SAVE, arguing that the recent updates could result in eligible voters being unlawfully purged from voter lists. Separately, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has asked at least half the states for their complete voter rolls, a request that Democratic elections officials have questioned out of concern that the data would be provided to DHS.
Voting by noncitizens is illegal in federal elections and can lead to felony charges and deportation. State reviews show it is rare for noncitizen s to register to vote and even rarer that they actually cast a ballot.
Still, before the 2024 election, Trump pushed claims without evidence that noncitizens might vote in large enough numbers to sway the outcome. Many Republican candidates and lawmakers nationally emphasize that even one instance of a noncitizen voting illegally is too many.
The SAVE program, which has been around for decades, is operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of DHS. It has been widely used by local and state officials to check the citizenship status of people applying for public benefits by running them through a variety of federal databases.
DHS and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency updated the SAVE program earlier this year, according to public announcements. It is now free for election officials, allows searches for voters by the thousands instead of one at a time and no longer requires agencies to search using DHS-issued identification numbers. When a name, date of birth and government-issued number is entered, the database will return initial verification of citizenship status within 48 hours, according to the settlement.
As part of the settlement, Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio will develop a memorandum of understanding with the federal government within 90 days on use of the SAVE program. The settlement also dictates that they will negotiate a new information-sharing agreement for “for the purpose of improving” the SAVE system. That may include providing DHS with 1,000 “randomly selected driver’s license records from their state” within 90 days.
Texas
Federal prosecutors say Afghan national made bomb threat on TikTok video
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A Texas man has been charged with making threats online after authorities said a video showing him threatening to build a bomb, conduct a suicide attack and kill Americans was posted to TikTok and other social media sites.
The charge against Mohammad Dawood Alokozay, an Afghan national, was filed Saturday in federal court. He has not yet had an opportunity to enter a plea, and court records do not reveal if he had obtained an attorney. The federal public defender’s office did not immediately respond to a voicemail left by The Associated Press.
The Texas Department of Public Safety alerted the FBI on Nov. 25 that a video shared by multiple social media accounts showed a video call in which a man claiming to live in the Dallas-Forth Worth area threatened to build a bomb in his vehicle and kill the others on the call. The man said the Taliban were dear to him, FBI special agent Justin Killian said in a court document describing the video.
The FBI used facial recognition technology to identify Alokozay as the man in the video, and he was arrested the same day. Killian said Alokozay admitted making the statements, and said he deleted his TikTok application from his phone after people contacted him saying they had seen the video on social media.
“This Afghan national came into America during the Biden administration and as alleged, explicitly stated that he came here in order to kill American citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a press release. “The public safety threat created by the Biden administration’s vetting breakdown cannot be overstated – the Department of Justice will continue working with our federal and state partners to protect the American people from the prior administration’s dangerous incompetence.”
About 76,000 Afghans who helped Americans were brought to the country as the Taliban took Afghanistan back over in 2021 under a program called Operation Allies Welcome.
Alokozay was initially arrested on a state charge of making a terroristic threat. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin announced the arrest on the social media platform X on Saturday — one day after the Trump administration halted all asylum decisions and paused issuing visas for people traveling on Afghan passports.
Those moves came after two National Guard members were shot Wednesday in Washington. Federal authorities have identified the suspect in the shooting near the White House as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who worked with the CIA during the Afghanistan War.
He applied for asylum during the Biden administration and was granted it this year under President Donald Trump, according to a group that assists with resettlement of Afghans who helped U.S. forces in their country.
Neither McLaughlin nor U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Ryan Raybould indicated any connection between the cases.
Florida
Despite legal challenge, college votes again to transfer valuable land for Trump presidential library
The board of the South Florida college that’s giving away a valuable piece of property for Donald Trump’s future presidential library revoted to transfer the land on Tuesday.
The board of Miami Dade College faces a lawsuit filed by a local activist and a trial set for August over allegations it violated the state’s open government law when it first voted to gift the parcel. The lawsuit said the board failed to provide sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property in downtown Miami. A judge has temporarily blocked the college from formally transferring the land, while the lawsuit plays out.
The site is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.
On Tuesday, the board held a new meeting at its campus in Hialeah, a predominantly Cuban American and Republican-leaning suburb of Miami. Dozens of students, professors, alumni and local officials packed the meeting to weigh in on the land transfer, an opportunity some felt they were denied when the board initially voted on the matter.
An agenda released ahead of the September meeting simply stated the board would consider conveying property to a state fund overseen by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet, but provided no details on which piece of property was being considered or why. Unlike the majority of the board’s other meetings, neither the September vote nor Tuesday’s redo were livestreamed.
A week after the initial vote, DeSantis and other top GOP officials voted to transfer the land again, effectively putting the property under the control of the Trump family when they deeded it to the foundation for Trump’s library. That foundation is led by three trustees: Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump’s husband; Michael Boulos; and the president’s attorney James Kiley.
