Washington
Judge blocks Trump administration from moving former death row inmates to ‘Supermax’ prison
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 inmates with commuted death sentences to the nation’s highest security federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send the former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be sent to ADX Florence — “administrative maximum” — to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
“At least for now, they will remain serving life sentences for their heinous crimes where they are currently imprisoned,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.
In December 2024, less than a month before Trump returned to the White House, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
Twenty of the 37 inmates are plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the lawsuit proceeds. All were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.
Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide what facilities the inmates should be redesignated for after their commutations.
The judge concluded that the inmates have not had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because it appears the outcome of the review process was predetermined.
“But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,” Kelly wrote.
The Florence prison has housed some of the most notorious criminals in federal custody, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers say the inmates there live alone, eat their meals and shower in cells roughly the size of a parking space.
Government attorneys said other courts have held that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.
London
Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the BBC is set to go to trial in 2027
LONDON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC can go to trial in 2027, a U.S. judge has said.
Judge Roy K. Altman of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida rejected an attempt by Britain’s national broadcaster to delay proceedings.
He set a provisional start date of Feb. 15 2027 for a two-week trial. Altman’s court order was issued Wednesday.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him. The furor triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
Papers filed last month said the BBC plans to file a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that the court lacks jurisdiction, because the program was not broadcast in Florida, and that Trump failed to state a claim.
Ahead of that motion it asked the court to postpone discovery — the pretrial process in which parties must turn over documents and other information — pending a decision on the motion to dismiss. The discovery process could require the BBC to hand over reams of emails and other materials related to its coverage of Trump.
The judge said the motion “is premature” because it’s too early in the legal process for the BBC to request such a stay.
The BBC said “we will be defending this case. We ae not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
Washington
Democratic-led states sue to stop Trump from withholding $600M in health grants
Four Democratic-led states that have become frequent targets of President Donald Trump sued Wednesday to try to block his administration from cutting off hundreds of millions in public health grants.
The Department of Health and Human Services told Congress on Monday that it planned to withhold about $600 million in grant funding allocated to the four states: California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota. Their attorneys general argue the cuts are backlash for the states’ opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The lawsuit says the cuts violate the Constitution by imposing retroactive conditions on funding and asks a federal court in Illinois to block them from taking effect.
Some grants could be terminated as soon as Thursday, and others in the coming weeks, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said.
Health officials have said the grants — several focused on LGBTQ+ people and communities of color — are “inconsistent with agency priorities” as the Trump administration has shifted away from supporting programs for specific populations.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its priorities in September, dubbing health equity an “ideologically-laden” concept that “has undermined core American values.”
Health department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
The administration also plans to pull hundreds of millions in transportation funding from the same four states.
Courts have temporarily blocked similar efforts by the administration to restrict federal funds.
A judge last week ruled that, for now, the administration cannot cut off billions in child care subsidies and other social service programs for lower-income people in those four states plus New York.
Several of the largest planned health funding cuts are to programs aimed at preventing the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in Chicago and Los Angeles, with a focus on adolescents, ethnic minorities and gay men.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called the funding cuts “a slap in the face” to public health leaders who have stepped up as the Trump administration “takes a sledgehammer to public health infrastructure.”
The administration is also targeting a $7.2 million grant for the Chicago-based American Medical Association, noting its support for gender-affirming care for minors, which a Trump executive order opposes.
Other grants help the states track disease outbreaks and collect public health data that the CDC also uses.
California faces the largest share of the planned cuts, which Attorney General Rob Bonta said will “irreparably harm” public health in the state.
“President Trump is resorting to a familiar playbook. He is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda,” Bonta said. “Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again.”
New York
Gun accessory company to pay $1.75 million to Buffalo supermarket shooting victims
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The maker of a gun accessory tied to a racist shooting that killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo will pay $1.75 million to survivors and victims’ families and stop selling the device in New York, state Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday.
The agreement with Georgia-based Mean Arms settles a lawsuit filed by James and covers claims from various victims’ families and survivors of the 2022 attack at Tops Friendly Market. They also reached agreements to resolve their own separate suits against gunman Payton Gendron’s family and a gun seller, Vintage Firearms LLC, the plaintiffs’ lawyers announced Wednesday.
The claims against Mean Arms focused on an item that locks a magazine onto a rifle. The lock is supposed to keep people from swapping in high-capacity magazines, which are illegal in New York.
But according to James, Gendron easily removed the lock from an AR-15-style rifle and was able to add high-capacity magazines. She also said the company provided step-by-step instructions on the back of its product packaging on how to remove the lock.
“We hope that by holding this manufacturer accountable and banning it from selling this device in New York state, we can offer the people of Buffalo some measure of comfort,” James, a Democrat, said at a news conference in the city.
Messages seeking comment were left for Mean Arms and its attorney.
Some victims’ relatives joined James on Wednesday and said the settlement is a step forward.
“No one should be able to come into a store and, in two minutes, inflict so much damage to a community, to a family, to children,” said Pamela Pritchett, whose mother, Pearl Young, was killed. Young was a 77-year-old Sunday school teacher who ran a food pantry.
Everytown Law, which helped represent some survivors and victims’ relatives, said in a statement that Vintage Firearms has permanently closed and its owner has agreed to refrain from obtaining a federal firearms license in the future. Eric Tirschwell of Everytown Law said its clients’ settlements with Gendron’s parents were confidential.
Attorneys for the gunman’s parents and Vintage Firearms declined to comment.
Authorities say Gendron, who is white, targeted Tops, a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, for the attack. The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86 and included a guard, a man shopping for a birthday cake, a grandmother of nine and the mother of a former Buffalo fire commissioner.
Gendron is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty in November 2022 to multiple state charges including murder.
A trial on federal hate crime and weapons counts is expected to begin this year. Gendron has pleaded not guilty. The Justice Department said it would seek the death penalty.
Judge blocks Trump administration from moving former death row inmates to ‘Supermax’ prison
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring 20 inmates with commuted death sentences to the nation’s highest security federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ruled late Wednesday that the government cannot send the former death row inmates to the “Supermax” federal prison in Florence, Colorado, because it likely would violate their Fifth Amendment rights to due process.
Kelly cited evidence that officials from the Republican administration “made it clear” to the federal Bureau of Prisons that the inmates had to be sent to ADX Florence — “administrative maximum” — to punish them because Democratic President Joe Biden had commuted their death sentences.
“At least for now, they will remain serving life sentences for their heinous crimes where they are currently imprisoned,” wrote Kelly, who was nominated to the bench by President Donald Trump.
In December 2024, less than a month before Trump returned to the White House, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment.
On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to house the 37 inmates “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”
Twenty of the 37 inmates are plaintiffs in the lawsuit before Kelly, who issued a preliminary injunction blocking their transfers to Florence while the lawsuit proceeds. All were incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana, when Biden commuted their death sentences.
Government lawyers argued that the bureau has broad authority to decide what facilities the inmates should be redesignated for after their commutations.
The judge concluded that the inmates have not had a meaningful opportunity to challenge their redesignations because it appears the outcome of the review process was predetermined.
“But the Constitution requires that whenever the government seeks to deprive a person of a liberty or property interest that the Due Process Clause protects — whether that person is a notorious prisoner or a law-abiding citizen — the process it provides cannot be a sham,” Kelly wrote.
The Florence prison has housed some of the most notorious criminals in federal custody, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers say the inmates there live alone, eat their meals and shower in cells roughly the size of a parking space.
Government attorneys said other courts have held that the conditions are not objectively cruel and unusual.
London
Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the BBC is set to go to trial in 2027
LONDON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC can go to trial in 2027, a U.S. judge has said.
Judge Roy K. Altman of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida rejected an attempt by Britain’s national broadcaster to delay proceedings.
He set a provisional start date of Feb. 15 2027 for a two-week trial. Altman’s court order was issued Wednesday.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him. The furor triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
Papers filed last month said the BBC plans to file a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that the court lacks jurisdiction, because the program was not broadcast in Florida, and that Trump failed to state a claim.
Ahead of that motion it asked the court to postpone discovery — the pretrial process in which parties must turn over documents and other information — pending a decision on the motion to dismiss. The discovery process could require the BBC to hand over reams of emails and other materials related to its coverage of Trump.
The judge said the motion “is premature” because it’s too early in the legal process for the BBC to request such a stay.
The BBC said “we will be defending this case. We ae not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
Washington
Democratic-led states sue to stop Trump from withholding $600M in health grants
Four Democratic-led states that have become frequent targets of President Donald Trump sued Wednesday to try to block his administration from cutting off hundreds of millions in public health grants.
The Department of Health and Human Services told Congress on Monday that it planned to withhold about $600 million in grant funding allocated to the four states: California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota. Their attorneys general argue the cuts are backlash for the states’ opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The lawsuit says the cuts violate the Constitution by imposing retroactive conditions on funding and asks a federal court in Illinois to block them from taking effect.
Some grants could be terminated as soon as Thursday, and others in the coming weeks, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said.
Health officials have said the grants — several focused on LGBTQ+ people and communities of color — are “inconsistent with agency priorities” as the Trump administration has shifted away from supporting programs for specific populations.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its priorities in September, dubbing health equity an “ideologically-laden” concept that “has undermined core American values.”
Health department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit.
The administration also plans to pull hundreds of millions in transportation funding from the same four states.
Courts have temporarily blocked similar efforts by the administration to restrict federal funds.
A judge last week ruled that, for now, the administration cannot cut off billions in child care subsidies and other social service programs for lower-income people in those four states plus New York.
Several of the largest planned health funding cuts are to programs aimed at preventing the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in Chicago and Los Angeles, with a focus on adolescents, ethnic minorities and gay men.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker called the funding cuts “a slap in the face” to public health leaders who have stepped up as the Trump administration “takes a sledgehammer to public health infrastructure.”
The administration is also targeting a $7.2 million grant for the Chicago-based American Medical Association, noting its support for gender-affirming care for minors, which a Trump executive order opposes.
Other grants help the states track disease outbreaks and collect public health data that the CDC also uses.
California faces the largest share of the planned cuts, which Attorney General Rob Bonta said will “irreparably harm” public health in the state.
“President Trump is resorting to a familiar playbook. He is using federal funding to compel states and jurisdictions to follow his agenda,” Bonta said. “Those efforts have all previously failed, and we expect that to happen once again.”
New York
Gun accessory company to pay $1.75 million to Buffalo supermarket shooting victims
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The maker of a gun accessory tied to a racist shooting that killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo will pay $1.75 million to survivors and victims’ families and stop selling the device in New York, state Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday.
The agreement with Georgia-based Mean Arms settles a lawsuit filed by James and covers claims from various victims’ families and survivors of the 2022 attack at Tops Friendly Market. They also reached agreements to resolve their own separate suits against gunman Payton Gendron’s family and a gun seller, Vintage Firearms LLC, the plaintiffs’ lawyers announced Wednesday.
The claims against Mean Arms focused on an item that locks a magazine onto a rifle. The lock is supposed to keep people from swapping in high-capacity magazines, which are illegal in New York.
But according to James, Gendron easily removed the lock from an AR-15-style rifle and was able to add high-capacity magazines. She also said the company provided step-by-step instructions on the back of its product packaging on how to remove the lock.
“We hope that by holding this manufacturer accountable and banning it from selling this device in New York state, we can offer the people of Buffalo some measure of comfort,” James, a Democrat, said at a news conference in the city.
Messages seeking comment were left for Mean Arms and its attorney.
Some victims’ relatives joined James on Wednesday and said the settlement is a step forward.
“No one should be able to come into a store and, in two minutes, inflict so much damage to a community, to a family, to children,” said Pamela Pritchett, whose mother, Pearl Young, was killed. Young was a 77-year-old Sunday school teacher who ran a food pantry.
Everytown Law, which helped represent some survivors and victims’ relatives, said in a statement that Vintage Firearms has permanently closed and its owner has agreed to refrain from obtaining a federal firearms license in the future. Eric Tirschwell of Everytown Law said its clients’ settlements with Gendron’s parents were confidential.
Attorneys for the gunman’s parents and Vintage Firearms declined to comment.
Authorities say Gendron, who is white, targeted Tops, a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood, for the attack. The victims ranged in age from 32 to 86 and included a guard, a man shopping for a birthday cake, a grandmother of nine and the mother of a former Buffalo fire commissioner.
Gendron is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty in November 2022 to multiple state charges including murder.
A trial on federal hate crime and weapons counts is expected to begin this year. Gendron has pleaded not guilty. The Justice Department said it would seek the death penalty.
