Louisiana
Appeals court ends decades-old order of school desegregation
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ended more than 60 years of federal oversight of a Louisiana school system that had been ordered to eradicate segregation.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a decades-old desegregation mandate for the Concordia Parish School Board, handing a victory to President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pushed to end the court-ordered plans. The school system has been a focal point in the administration’s attempt to end legal cases dating to the Civil Rights era.
The U.S. Justice Department spent decades fighting for such cases but reversed course under Trump. Officials in his administration have framed the remaining segregation orders as federal intrusion into local school systems. Louisiana officials agree they’re no longer needed and describe them as relics of a time when Black students were once forbidden from attending some schools.
“The good people of Concordia Parish elected their school board to govern their schools — not unelected federal judges,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in announcing the ruling. “Today’s decision puts that authority back where it belongs.”
Members of the Concordia Parish School Board did not immediately respond Tuesday to emails seeking comment.
Families who brought the suit are no longer involved.
The Concordia Parish case dates to 1965, when the area was segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. Black families in Ferriday, a town on the central-eastern border of Louisiana, sued for access to all-white schools, and the federal government intervened. As the district integrated its schools, many white families fled Ferriday.
The district’s schools came to reflect the demographics of their surrounding areas. Ferriday is still mostly Black and low-income, while neighboring Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a hydroelectric plant.
Some parents and civil rights groups have argued that desegregation orders remain important tools to address vestiges of segregation such as racial disparities in student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring.
The Concordia Parish order was used to force a mostly white charter school that opened in 2013 to prioritize Black students and create a more integrated student body.
Tennessee
Indictments show five inmate murders, assaults and other violence at prison
TIPTONVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A grand jury returned dozens of indictments for five inmate murders, assaults against staff and inmates and other violence at a Tennessee prison, District Attorney Danny H. Goodman Jr. announced on Tuesday.
The Lake County grand jury returned 50 indictments in 19 cases involving violent acts committed at Northwest Correctional Complex, according to a release from Goodman. Some of those indicted include former staff members and inmates.
Those include murder charges related to inmates who were killed in five separate incidents in 2025 and 2026. The district attorney was withholding the names of those indicted until all the individuals have been arrested or served notice.
According to the DA, eight people were indicted for the first-degree murder of an inmate on Aug. 12, 2025. In another indictment, two former employees were indicted for aggravated assault, assault, official misconduct, official oppression and violating the oath of office.
Six people were indicted for the first-degree murder of an inmate on Oct. 8, 2025. Other indictments included charges of especially aggravated rape, especially aggravated kidnapping, attempted first-degree murder, assaults on correctional staff and possession of controlled substances.
“Violence within the Department of Corrections has increased significantly in the past few years and we will continue to prosecute these cases to make the penal system as safe as possible for not only the correctional officers but the inmates who are serving a sentence,” Goodman said in a statement.
The Tennessee Department of Correction did not respond to requests for information about staff and inmates at the prison and the indictments.
Northwest Correctional Complex can house 1,776 male inmates and can house juvenile inmates who have been convicted as adults, according to the Department of Correction. In 2023, an audit of Tennessee prisons found that the department was struggling to fill open positions at the prison in Lake County and had a 61% vacancy rate for correctional officers in that fiscal year.
Louisiana
Man charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a marshal trying to arrest him
A Louisiana man has been accused of murder in the fatal shooting of a deputy U.S. marshal who joined other officers in trying to arrest him at his home after he failed to show up for trial on rape and sexual battery charges.
Clarence A. Frazier Jr., 48, of Alexandria, faces one count in federal court of murder of a federal officer, Deputy Marshal Drew Hanson, a crime punishable by either life in prison or death.
Authorities filed a complaint against him after he was taken into custody Monday, based on an FBI agent’s affidavit, and a federal magistrate unsealed the complaint Tuesday.
Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche said in a statement that Frazier would be “held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
A federal public defender representing Frazier did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages seeking comment.
Marshals and sheriff’s detectives entered Frazier’s home Monday to serve an arrest warrant for contempt of court and found him in a bedroom, the FBI agent, James Rimmer, said in his affidavit. According to other authorities, Frazier shot at the officers and fatally wounded Hanson.
He then barricaded himself in the bedroom and was arrested after a standoff, Rimmer said.
Frazier had a trial scheduled to start that day in Rapides Parish District Court in a case filed by prosecutors in 2024, according to online court records. He was charged with one count of third-degree rape, punishable by up to 25 years in prison, and one count of sexual battery on a person with infirmities, punishable by up to 20 years, according to court records.
Frazier was a registered sex offender, according to an online list maintained by the local sheriff’s department, though it did not provide details about his previous conviction.
New York
Man gets prison in deadly shooting of ex-girlfriend as she pushed their baby’s stroller
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York man who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend as she pushed their baby in a stroller was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison, prosecutors said.
A jury convicted Isaac Argro in May of murder in the 2022 death of Azsia Johnson. Prosecutors said Argro gunned her down on a street by a Manhattan playground after he persuaded her to meet so he could give her things for their 3-month-old daughter.
“Azsia Johnson was a loving parent who left an abusive relationship and began to rebuild her life. Her dreams of moving forward were brought to a horrific end” by Argro, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
A message seeking comment was sent to a lawyer for Argro, who is 26.
Prosecutors have said Argro physically and emotionally abused Johnson, 20. She ultimately left him but was “determined to give co-parenting a try,” the D.A. said in a statement this spring.
Johnson agreed to meet Argro to collect the supposed baby items on June 29, 2022, telling a relative by text about the meeting, prosecutors said. They said Argro waited for her on the street and shot her, point-blank, in the temple. The child wasn’t injured.
Argro was arrested two days later.
Then-Mayor Eric Adams and other officials attended a vigil for Johnson a day after the shooting and supporters still put up her photo at the shooting site on the anniversary every year.
California
YouTube joins Meta in appealing a jury verdict that faulted them for users’ social media addiction
LOS ANGELES (AP) — YouTube has appealed the verdict of a landmark social media addiction lawsuit in Los Angeles, seeking to challenge the jury’s determination that the company designed its platform to hook young users without concern for their well-being.
Lawyers representing YouTube filed a notice of appeal Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, less than a week after Meta, which was also a defendant in the case, filed its own notice of appeal. The lawyers are expected to provide their arguments related to the appeal in later court filings.
The case centered on a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child and that it worsened her mental health struggles. The jury found that negligence by both Google-owned YouTube and Meta was a substantial factor in causing harm to the young woman, identified in court only by her initials, KGM, and her first name, Kaley.
The jury awarded her $3 million in damages and recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages. Her lead attorney, Mark Lanier, said in a statement last week following Meta’s appeal that Kaley’s legal team is expecting the appellate court to “continue the careful application of the law to this case, affirming the verdict of the trial court.”
José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement last week that YouTube was planning to appeal and that “these are standard motions for this case to move forward.”
Meta and Google had each filed post-trial motions seeking a new trial. The trial judge, Carolyn B. Kuhl, denied those motions in early June.
One of YouTube’s core arguments during the five-week trial was that its platform, which offers video sharing and streaming, is not a social media platform.
Lawyers for both YouTube and Meta also consistently posed questions throughout the trial about whether the evidence and arguments encroached on legal protections for tech companies around content posted by third parties. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act shields these companies from legal responsibility for such content. The plaintiff’s lawyers instead focused on the design features like autoplay functions that they argued could lead to more long-lasting, less intentional use of the platforms.
Kaley’s case was a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, and the verdict could influence the outcome of thousands of similar lawsuits accusing social media companies of deliberately causing harm. TikTok and Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. were also initially named as defendants in the case, but each settled for undisclosed sums before the trial began.
Appeals court ends decades-old order of school desegregation
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday ended more than 60 years of federal oversight of a Louisiana school system that had been ordered to eradicate segregation.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a decades-old desegregation mandate for the Concordia Parish School Board, handing a victory to President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pushed to end the court-ordered plans. The school system has been a focal point in the administration’s attempt to end legal cases dating to the Civil Rights era.
The U.S. Justice Department spent decades fighting for such cases but reversed course under Trump. Officials in his administration have framed the remaining segregation orders as federal intrusion into local school systems. Louisiana officials agree they’re no longer needed and describe them as relics of a time when Black students were once forbidden from attending some schools.
“The good people of Concordia Parish elected their school board to govern their schools — not unelected federal judges,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in announcing the ruling. “Today’s decision puts that authority back where it belongs.”
Members of the Concordia Parish School Board did not immediately respond Tuesday to emails seeking comment.
Families who brought the suit are no longer involved.
The Concordia Parish case dates to 1965, when the area was segregated and home to a violent offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. Black families in Ferriday, a town on the central-eastern border of Louisiana, sued for access to all-white schools, and the federal government intervened. As the district integrated its schools, many white families fled Ferriday.
The district’s schools came to reflect the demographics of their surrounding areas. Ferriday is still mostly Black and low-income, while neighboring Vidalia is mostly white and takes in tax revenue from a hydroelectric plant.
Some parents and civil rights groups have argued that desegregation orders remain important tools to address vestiges of segregation such as racial disparities in student discipline, academic programs and teacher hiring.
The Concordia Parish order was used to force a mostly white charter school that opened in 2013 to prioritize Black students and create a more integrated student body.
Tennessee
Indictments show five inmate murders, assaults and other violence at prison
TIPTONVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A grand jury returned dozens of indictments for five inmate murders, assaults against staff and inmates and other violence at a Tennessee prison, District Attorney Danny H. Goodman Jr. announced on Tuesday.
The Lake County grand jury returned 50 indictments in 19 cases involving violent acts committed at Northwest Correctional Complex, according to a release from Goodman. Some of those indicted include former staff members and inmates.
Those include murder charges related to inmates who were killed in five separate incidents in 2025 and 2026. The district attorney was withholding the names of those indicted until all the individuals have been arrested or served notice.
According to the DA, eight people were indicted for the first-degree murder of an inmate on Aug. 12, 2025. In another indictment, two former employees were indicted for aggravated assault, assault, official misconduct, official oppression and violating the oath of office.
Six people were indicted for the first-degree murder of an inmate on Oct. 8, 2025. Other indictments included charges of especially aggravated rape, especially aggravated kidnapping, attempted first-degree murder, assaults on correctional staff and possession of controlled substances.
“Violence within the Department of Corrections has increased significantly in the past few years and we will continue to prosecute these cases to make the penal system as safe as possible for not only the correctional officers but the inmates who are serving a sentence,” Goodman said in a statement.
The Tennessee Department of Correction did not respond to requests for information about staff and inmates at the prison and the indictments.
Northwest Correctional Complex can house 1,776 male inmates and can house juvenile inmates who have been convicted as adults, according to the Department of Correction. In 2023, an audit of Tennessee prisons found that the department was struggling to fill open positions at the prison in Lake County and had a 61% vacancy rate for correctional officers in that fiscal year.
Louisiana
Man charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a marshal trying to arrest him
A Louisiana man has been accused of murder in the fatal shooting of a deputy U.S. marshal who joined other officers in trying to arrest him at his home after he failed to show up for trial on rape and sexual battery charges.
Clarence A. Frazier Jr., 48, of Alexandria, faces one count in federal court of murder of a federal officer, Deputy Marshal Drew Hanson, a crime punishable by either life in prison or death.
Authorities filed a complaint against him after he was taken into custody Monday, based on an FBI agent’s affidavit, and a federal magistrate unsealed the complaint Tuesday.
Acting U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche said in a statement that Frazier would be “held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
A federal public defender representing Frazier did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages seeking comment.
Marshals and sheriff’s detectives entered Frazier’s home Monday to serve an arrest warrant for contempt of court and found him in a bedroom, the FBI agent, James Rimmer, said in his affidavit. According to other authorities, Frazier shot at the officers and fatally wounded Hanson.
He then barricaded himself in the bedroom and was arrested after a standoff, Rimmer said.
Frazier had a trial scheduled to start that day in Rapides Parish District Court in a case filed by prosecutors in 2024, according to online court records. He was charged with one count of third-degree rape, punishable by up to 25 years in prison, and one count of sexual battery on a person with infirmities, punishable by up to 20 years, according to court records.
Frazier was a registered sex offender, according to an online list maintained by the local sheriff’s department, though it did not provide details about his previous conviction.
New York
Man gets prison in deadly shooting of ex-girlfriend as she pushed their baby’s stroller
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York man who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend as she pushed their baby in a stroller was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years to life in prison, prosecutors said.
A jury convicted Isaac Argro in May of murder in the 2022 death of Azsia Johnson. Prosecutors said Argro gunned her down on a street by a Manhattan playground after he persuaded her to meet so he could give her things for their 3-month-old daughter.
“Azsia Johnson was a loving parent who left an abusive relationship and began to rebuild her life. Her dreams of moving forward were brought to a horrific end” by Argro, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
A message seeking comment was sent to a lawyer for Argro, who is 26.
Prosecutors have said Argro physically and emotionally abused Johnson, 20. She ultimately left him but was “determined to give co-parenting a try,” the D.A. said in a statement this spring.
Johnson agreed to meet Argro to collect the supposed baby items on June 29, 2022, telling a relative by text about the meeting, prosecutors said. They said Argro waited for her on the street and shot her, point-blank, in the temple. The child wasn’t injured.
Argro was arrested two days later.
Then-Mayor Eric Adams and other officials attended a vigil for Johnson a day after the shooting and supporters still put up her photo at the shooting site on the anniversary every year.
California
YouTube joins Meta in appealing a jury verdict that faulted them for users’ social media addiction
LOS ANGELES (AP) — YouTube has appealed the verdict of a landmark social media addiction lawsuit in Los Angeles, seeking to challenge the jury’s determination that the company designed its platform to hook young users without concern for their well-being.
Lawyers representing YouTube filed a notice of appeal Monday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, less than a week after Meta, which was also a defendant in the case, filed its own notice of appeal. The lawyers are expected to provide their arguments related to the appeal in later court filings.
The case centered on a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child and that it worsened her mental health struggles. The jury found that negligence by both Google-owned YouTube and Meta was a substantial factor in causing harm to the young woman, identified in court only by her initials, KGM, and her first name, Kaley.
The jury awarded her $3 million in damages and recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages. Her lead attorney, Mark Lanier, said in a statement last week following Meta’s appeal that Kaley’s legal team is expecting the appellate court to “continue the careful application of the law to this case, affirming the verdict of the trial court.”
José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement last week that YouTube was planning to appeal and that “these are standard motions for this case to move forward.”
Meta and Google had each filed post-trial motions seeking a new trial. The trial judge, Carolyn B. Kuhl, denied those motions in early June.
One of YouTube’s core arguments during the five-week trial was that its platform, which offers video sharing and streaming, is not a social media platform.
Lawyers for both YouTube and Meta also consistently posed questions throughout the trial about whether the evidence and arguments encroached on legal protections for tech companies around content posted by third parties. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act shields these companies from legal responsibility for such content. The plaintiff’s lawyers instead focused on the design features like autoplay functions that they argued could lead to more long-lasting, less intentional use of the platforms.
Kaley’s case was a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, and the verdict could influence the outcome of thousands of similar lawsuits accusing social media companies of deliberately causing harm. TikTok and Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. were also initially named as defendants in the case, but each settled for undisclosed sums before the trial began.
