Washington
Deadline passes for Trump to ask Supreme Court to reconsider birthright citizenship ruling
WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadline passed Tuesday for the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its rejection of the president’s birthright citizenship restrictions, with no new filing on the docket.
President Donald Trump vowed to seek a rehearing shortly after the opinion handed him a loss on a signature issue, but by Tuesday the 25-day window had elapsed with no new activity.
A petition would face long odds: The court has not agreed to rehear an argued case in more than 50 years.
The high court’s 6-3 decision in June struck down Trump’s executive order that would have denied automatic citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.
The Republican president’s restrictions on birthright citizenship had been blocked by several lower courts before reaching the justices, and they did not take effect anywhere in the U.S.
Still, three justices — Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – would have upheld them. A fourth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, found the Constitution wouldn’t block the president’s plan, though he found it did violate a federal law.
A week after the decision came down, Trump said in a social media post he would “be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY.”
The last time the Supreme Court granted any petition to change an opinion was in 1965, and the last time it reversed a decision was almost a decade earlier, in a case from 1956, said Aaron-Andrew Bruhl, a law professor at William & Mary Law School.
The bar to grant a petition for rehearing is high. It would require at least one justice who ruled against Trump to change their mind and a majority of the court would have to agree, Bruhl said.
Mississippi
Ole Miss sues 2 ex-players who transferred to LSU, alleging they didn’t comply with financial deals
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — The University of Mississippi is suing two former football players who transferred to LSU, alleging they failed to compensate the university for their departure as required by a revenue-sharing agreement they both signed in early January.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Lafayette County (Mississippi) Circuit Court, stems in part from former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin’s high-profile departure for LSU late last season.
The lawsuits were filed against edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen and offensive lineman Devin Harper. LSU declined comment on Wednesday.
College athletes have been able to transfer far more freely in recent years without having to sit out a year, as was once required by the NCAA. There have been scattered disputes between players and their former schools over compensation agreements; earlier this year, Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. said he would return to the Huskies after his school was reportedly prepared to
pursue legal options to enforce Williams’ lucrative name, image and likeness contract.
In a statement released to reporters, Ole Miss said it “values its student-athletes and is committed to honoring all obligations made to them.
“In return, the university expects that same commitment from its student-athletes and their representatives in upholding their contracts,” the school said.
Ole Miss said revenue-sharing agreements signed by both players included a provision requiring them to compensate the university with a predetermined amount if they departed before fulfilling their commitment. The university has not released that financial figure.
“The University of Mississippi has a responsibility to enforce its contractual terms, and this position is consistent with the actions of other institutions in the current landscape of college athletics,” the Ole Miss statement said. “The university attempted to amicably resolve this matter prior to filing.”
Kiffin left Ole Miss following its regular-season finale against Mississippi State in late November. Kiffin initially asked to continue coaching the Rebels in the College Football Playoff after he’d accepted the position at LSU, but Ole Miss declined and appointed then-defensive coordinator Pete Golding as Kiffin’s replacement. Golding coached Ole Miss to the national semifinals.
After the Rebels’ playoff run ended, Umanmielen and Harper transferred to LSU.
California
Former Golden Globes owners sue Penske Media alleging fraud in acquisition of awards show
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, which founded and for decades owned the Golden Globe Awards, have sued Penske Media Corporation and others, alleging they engaged in fraud to acquire the valuable awards show in an attempt to create an entertainment industry monopoly.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in California on Tuesday alleges that Penske Media and owner Jay Penske colluded with holding company Eldridge Industries and its CEO Todd Boehly to fuel a backlash and boycott against the Globes to devalue it and acquire it, and to deceive the HFPA about a sale they were pressured into accepting.
“This case arises from a clandestine scheme to fraudulently acquire the prestigious and valuable 80-year-old Golden Globe Awards,” the lawsuit says, “and exert monopolistic control over the Hollywood trades, awards, and advertising markets, all in violation of state and federal unfair competition and antitrust laws.”
It alleges Boehly and Eldridge hid the involvement of Penske in the 2023 deal from the HFPA board, which never would have approved it if they had known of it. Penske Media’s assets include Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Billboard and Dick Clark Productions, which owns or produces several awards shows including the American Music Awards and is now part owner of the Globes.
The lawsuit says the HFPA members were promised lifetime Golden Globes tickets and voting privileges, along with other perks, which Penske reneged on by attaching unworkable conditions. And it says the buyers infiltrated the HFPA leadership to push through the deal.
A representative of the Golden Globes’ current owners said in a statement that the lawsuit “continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA.”
The Golden Globes, long treasured as a glitzy, champagne-soaked opening of Hollywood’s awards season, has had a turbulent 2020s full of lawsuits and public controversies. In 2021, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed the group had only one Black member.
That brought a public outcry and boycott that led to NBC refusing to air the awards in 2022. The lawsuit claims that Boehly and Penske “surreptitiously instigated” the boycott and used Penske’s publications to fuel it.
After the 2023 acquisition and reorganization of the Globes, the show got a new broadcast home on CBS.
Boehly, who is also part owner of sports franchises including Chelsea FC and the Los Angeles Dodgers, was not named as a defendant, nor was his Eldridge Industries. The reasons weren’t immediately clear, and the plaintiffs declined to comment. There was also no immediate reply to an email seeking comment from Boehly and his company.
The lawsuit also alleges that Penske and Boehly manipulated and misused California’s nonprofit laws. It says the Golden Globe Foundation, established as the successor to the HFPA’s philanthropic arm, was used to drive down the price of the acquisition, and that it functions a de facto extension of the for-profit entity established by Penske and Boehly, Globes LLC.
“This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA,” the Golden Globes statement said in response. “The attempt by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globes tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes.”
The lawsuit seeks at least $150 million in damages and asks the court to cancel the agreement to dissolve the HFPA.
New York
Ex-Citigroup managing director sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex crimes
NEW YORK (AP) — A Harvard-educated former managing director at Citigroup Inc. who blamed autism for his actions was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison for sex crimes that prosecutors say occurred over a 10-year period.
Edward Gene Smith, 50, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer after he pleaded guilty to sex crimes, receiving child pornography and obstructing justice.
His lawyers wrote in a presentencing submission to the judge that autism spectrum disorder was the “primary driver” of his crimes.
The lawyers said Smith has been “devastated to learn that his understanding of his relationships with the women he thought of as his girlfriends was wrong and that they experienced their encounters with him as non-consensual sexual abuse and even rape.”
But prosecutors, who requested a 30-year sentence, wrote that Smith’s “purported autism” was “inflammatory nonsense.”
“It is an offensive smear to those in the autistic community. And it is utterly irreconcilable with what the defendant did, and how he did it,” they said.
Prosecutors said that in pleading guilty, Smith admitted drugging a woman with the intent to rape her and enticing another woman to travel to New York where he drugged and sexually assaulted her.
Smith “committed these heinous crimes hiding behind a facade of a well-educated bank executive, using his outward appearance to draw in victims and evade detection,” prosecutors said.
They said he also obtained and maintained tens of thousands of files of “horrifying” child sexual abuse material depicting toddlers and even infants.
Smith used promises of financial security to lure young women from foreign countries or faraway U.S. states who were vulnerable and needed income to his New York Central Park residence, where he used drugs to incapacitate them before raping and sexually abusing them, prosecutors said.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a release that Smith carried out his crimes from 2015 to 2024, subjecting numerous women to attacks in which “he would torture and punish his victims, and surreptitiously photograph them, while they were nude and unconscious.”
Smith, who worked at Citigroup Inc. from 2021 until his 2024 arrest, said in a letter to the judge that it was “obvious to all that I have fallen from the pinnacle of success to the pit of destitution and disgrace.”
He said, though, that he should be viewed as someone who has “long put his errors behind him” and reconnected with his loving family.
“The man I used to be embarrasses me. I don’t want to be him ever again,” he wrote.
Prosecutors also noted that he knew the harms he inflicted on women because he had written in the Harvard Crimson in 1998, a year after his college graduation, that “there is something particularly traumatic about being raped by someone a victim knows and had even liked or trusted. The right to say no to sex is a human right, a basic right of control over one’s body.”
In a statement, Citigroup said: “We moved to terminate Mr. Smith immediately upon learning about law enforcement’s initial investigation, well before the allegations of this depraved behavior came to light. We cooperated with law enforcement as they sought justice for the victims of these heinous crimes.”
Deadline passes for Trump to ask Supreme Court to reconsider birthright citizenship ruling
WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadline passed Tuesday for the Trump administration to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its rejection of the president’s birthright citizenship restrictions, with no new filing on the docket.
President Donald Trump vowed to seek a rehearing shortly after the opinion handed him a loss on a signature issue, but by Tuesday the 25-day window had elapsed with no new activity.
A petition would face long odds: The court has not agreed to rehear an argued case in more than 50 years.
The high court’s 6-3 decision in June struck down Trump’s executive order that would have denied automatic citizenship to children born in the United States whose parents are in the U.S. illegally or temporarily.
The Republican president’s restrictions on birthright citizenship had been blocked by several lower courts before reaching the justices, and they did not take effect anywhere in the U.S.
Still, three justices — Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – would have upheld them. A fourth justice, Brett Kavanaugh, found the Constitution wouldn’t block the president’s plan, though he found it did violate a federal law.
A week after the decision came down, Trump said in a social media post he would “be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY.”
The last time the Supreme Court granted any petition to change an opinion was in 1965, and the last time it reversed a decision was almost a decade earlier, in a case from 1956, said Aaron-Andrew Bruhl, a law professor at William & Mary Law School.
The bar to grant a petition for rehearing is high. It would require at least one justice who ruled against Trump to change their mind and a majority of the court would have to agree, Bruhl said.
Mississippi
Ole Miss sues 2 ex-players who transferred to LSU, alleging they didn’t comply with financial deals
OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — The University of Mississippi is suing two former football players who transferred to LSU, alleging they failed to compensate the university for their departure as required by a revenue-sharing agreement they both signed in early January.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Lafayette County (Mississippi) Circuit Court, stems in part from former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin’s high-profile departure for LSU late last season.
The lawsuits were filed against edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen and offensive lineman Devin Harper. LSU declined comment on Wednesday.
College athletes have been able to transfer far more freely in recent years without having to sit out a year, as was once required by the NCAA. There have been scattered disputes between players and their former schools over compensation agreements; earlier this year, Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. said he would return to the Huskies after his school was reportedly prepared to
pursue legal options to enforce Williams’ lucrative name, image and likeness contract.
In a statement released to reporters, Ole Miss said it “values its student-athletes and is committed to honoring all obligations made to them.
“In return, the university expects that same commitment from its student-athletes and their representatives in upholding their contracts,” the school said.
Ole Miss said revenue-sharing agreements signed by both players included a provision requiring them to compensate the university with a predetermined amount if they departed before fulfilling their commitment. The university has not released that financial figure.
“The University of Mississippi has a responsibility to enforce its contractual terms, and this position is consistent with the actions of other institutions in the current landscape of college athletics,” the Ole Miss statement said. “The university attempted to amicably resolve this matter prior to filing.”
Kiffin left Ole Miss following its regular-season finale against Mississippi State in late November. Kiffin initially asked to continue coaching the Rebels in the College Football Playoff after he’d accepted the position at LSU, but Ole Miss declined and appointed then-defensive coordinator Pete Golding as Kiffin’s replacement. Golding coached Ole Miss to the national semifinals.
After the Rebels’ playoff run ended, Umanmielen and Harper transferred to LSU.
California
Former Golden Globes owners sue Penske Media alleging fraud in acquisition of awards show
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Members of the Hollywood Foreign Press, which founded and for decades owned the Golden Globe Awards, have sued Penske Media Corporation and others, alleging they engaged in fraud to acquire the valuable awards show in an attempt to create an entertainment industry monopoly.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in California on Tuesday alleges that Penske Media and owner Jay Penske colluded with holding company Eldridge Industries and its CEO Todd Boehly to fuel a backlash and boycott against the Globes to devalue it and acquire it, and to deceive the HFPA about a sale they were pressured into accepting.
“This case arises from a clandestine scheme to fraudulently acquire the prestigious and valuable 80-year-old Golden Globe Awards,” the lawsuit says, “and exert monopolistic control over the Hollywood trades, awards, and advertising markets, all in violation of state and federal unfair competition and antitrust laws.”
It alleges Boehly and Eldridge hid the involvement of Penske in the 2023 deal from the HFPA board, which never would have approved it if they had known of it. Penske Media’s assets include Variety, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, Billboard and Dick Clark Productions, which owns or produces several awards shows including the American Music Awards and is now part owner of the Globes.
The lawsuit says the HFPA members were promised lifetime Golden Globes tickets and voting privileges, along with other perks, which Penske reneged on by attaching unworkable conditions. And it says the buyers infiltrated the HFPA leadership to push through the deal.
A representative of the Golden Globes’ current owners said in a statement that the lawsuit “continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA.”
The Golden Globes, long treasured as a glitzy, champagne-soaked opening of Hollywood’s awards season, has had a turbulent 2020s full of lawsuits and public controversies. In 2021, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed the group had only one Black member.
That brought a public outcry and boycott that led to NBC refusing to air the awards in 2022. The lawsuit claims that Boehly and Penske “surreptitiously instigated” the boycott and used Penske’s publications to fuel it.
After the 2023 acquisition and reorganization of the Globes, the show got a new broadcast home on CBS.
Boehly, who is also part owner of sports franchises including Chelsea FC and the Los Angeles Dodgers, was not named as a defendant, nor was his Eldridge Industries. The reasons weren’t immediately clear, and the plaintiffs declined to comment. There was also no immediate reply to an email seeking comment from Boehly and his company.
The lawsuit also alleges that Penske and Boehly manipulated and misused California’s nonprofit laws. It says the Golden Globe Foundation, established as the successor to the HFPA’s philanthropic arm, was used to drive down the price of the acquisition, and that it functions a de facto extension of the for-profit entity established by Penske and Boehly, Globes LLC.
“This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA,” the Golden Globes statement said in response. “The attempt by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globes tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes.”
The lawsuit seeks at least $150 million in damages and asks the court to cancel the agreement to dissolve the HFPA.
New York
Ex-Citigroup managing director sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex crimes
NEW YORK (AP) — A Harvard-educated former managing director at Citigroup Inc. who blamed autism for his actions was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison for sex crimes that prosecutors say occurred over a 10-year period.
Edward Gene Smith, 50, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer after he pleaded guilty to sex crimes, receiving child pornography and obstructing justice.
His lawyers wrote in a presentencing submission to the judge that autism spectrum disorder was the “primary driver” of his crimes.
The lawyers said Smith has been “devastated to learn that his understanding of his relationships with the women he thought of as his girlfriends was wrong and that they experienced their encounters with him as non-consensual sexual abuse and even rape.”
But prosecutors, who requested a 30-year sentence, wrote that Smith’s “purported autism” was “inflammatory nonsense.”
“It is an offensive smear to those in the autistic community. And it is utterly irreconcilable with what the defendant did, and how he did it,” they said.
Prosecutors said that in pleading guilty, Smith admitted drugging a woman with the intent to rape her and enticing another woman to travel to New York where he drugged and sexually assaulted her.
Smith “committed these heinous crimes hiding behind a facade of a well-educated bank executive, using his outward appearance to draw in victims and evade detection,” prosecutors said.
They said he also obtained and maintained tens of thousands of files of “horrifying” child sexual abuse material depicting toddlers and even infants.
Smith used promises of financial security to lure young women from foreign countries or faraway U.S. states who were vulnerable and needed income to his New York Central Park residence, where he used drugs to incapacitate them before raping and sexually abusing them, prosecutors said.
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a release that Smith carried out his crimes from 2015 to 2024, subjecting numerous women to attacks in which “he would torture and punish his victims, and surreptitiously photograph them, while they were nude and unconscious.”
Smith, who worked at Citigroup Inc. from 2021 until his 2024 arrest, said in a letter to the judge that it was “obvious to all that I have fallen from the pinnacle of success to the pit of destitution and disgrace.”
He said, though, that he should be viewed as someone who has “long put his errors behind him” and reconnected with his loving family.
“The man I used to be embarrasses me. I don’t want to be him ever again,” he wrote.
Prosecutors also noted that he knew the harms he inflicted on women because he had written in the Harvard Crimson in 1998, a year after his college graduation, that “there is something particularly traumatic about being raped by someone a victim knows and had even liked or trusted. The right to say no to sex is a human right, a basic right of control over one’s body.”
In a statement, Citigroup said: “We moved to terminate Mr. Smith immediately upon learning about law enforcement’s initial investigation, well before the allegations of this depraved behavior came to light. We cooperated with law enforcement as they sought justice for the victims of these heinous crimes.”
