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Judge blocks plan to allow immigration agents in New York City jail
Headline Legal News |
2025/06/15 10:54
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A judge blocked New York City’s mayor from letting federal immigration authorities reopen an office at the city’s main jail, in part because of concerns the mayor invited them back in as part of a deal with the Trump administration to end his corruption case.
New York Judge Mary Rosado’s decision Friday is a setback for Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, who issued an executive order permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the Rikers Island jail complex. City lawmakers filed a lawsuit in April accusing Adams of entering into a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain” with the Trump administration in exchange for the U.S. Justice Department dropping criminal charges against him.
Rosado temporarily blocked the executive order in April. In granting a preliminary injunction, she said city council members have “shown a likelihood of success in demonstrating, at minimum, the appearance of a quid pro quo whereby Mayor Adams publicly agreed to bring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (”ICE”) back to Rikers Island in exchange for dismissal of his criminal charges.”
Rosado cited a number of factors, including U.S. border czar Tom Homan’s televised comments in February that if Adams did not come through, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’ ”
Adams has repeatedly denied making a deal with the administration over the criminal case. He has said he deputized his first deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, to handle decision-making on the return of ICE to Rikers Island to make sure there was no appearance of any conflict of interest.
Rosado said that Mastro reports to Adams and “cannot be considered impartial and free from Mayor Adams’ conflicts.”
Mastro said in a prepared statement Friday the administration was confident they will prevail in the case. “Let’s be crystal clear: This executive order is about the criminal prosecution of violent transnational gangs committing crimes in our city. Our administration has never, and will never, do anything to jeopardize the safety of law-abiding immigrants, and this executive order ensures their safety as well,” Mastro said.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who is running in the Democratic primary for mayor, called the decision a victory for public safety.
“New Yorkers are counting on our city to protect their civil rights, and yet, Mayor Adams has attempted to betray this obligation by handing power over our city to Trump’s ICE because he is compromised,” she said in a prepared statement.
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Supreme Court makes it harder for EPA to police sewage discharges
Headline Legal News |
2025/03/07 07:23
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A divided Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for environmental regulators to limit water pollution, ruling for San Francisco in a case about the discharge of raw sewage that sometimes occurs during heavy rains.
By a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservative majority ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority under the Clean Water Act with water pollution permits that contain vague requirements for maintaining water quality.
The decision is the latest in which conservative justices have reined in pollution control efforts.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that EPA can set specific limits that tell cities and counties what can be discharged. But the agency lacks the authority “to include ‘end-result’ provisions,” Alito wrote, that make cities and counties responsible for maintaining the quality of the water, the Pacific Ocean in this case, into which wastewater is discharged.
“When a permit contains such requirements, a permittee that punctiliously follows every specific requirement in its permit may nevertheless face crushing penalties if the quality of the water in its receiving waters falls below the applicable standards,” he wrote.
One conservative justice, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the court’s three liberals in dissent. Limits on discharges sometimes still don’t insure water quality standards are met, Barrett wrote.
“The concern that the technology-based effluent limitations may fall short is on display in this case,” Barrett wrote, adding that “discharges from components of San Francisco’s sewer system have allegedly led to serious breaches of the water quality standards, such as ‘discoloration, scum, and floating material, including toilet paper, in Mission Creek.’”
The case produced an unusual alliance of the liberal northern California city, energy companies and business groups.
The EPA has issued thousands of the permits, known as narrative permits, over several decades, former acting general counsel Kevin Minoli said.
The narrative permits have operated almost as a backstop in case permits that quantify what can be discharged still result in unacceptable water quality, Minoli said.
With the new restrictions imposed by the court, “the question is what comes in place of those limits,” Minoli said.
Alito downplayed the impact of the decision, writing that the agency has “the tools needed” to insure water quality standards are met.
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will fill Marco Rubio’s Senate seat
Headline Legal News |
2025/01/18 09:34
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will take Marco Rubio ’s seat in the U.S. Senate, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday, making Moody only the second woman to represent Florida in the chamber.
Elected as the state’s top law enforcement officer in 2018, Moody campaigned on a pledge to voters that she’d be a prosecutor, not a politician. But along with DeSantis, she boosted her political profile during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on the federal government to “hold China responsible” for the outbreak.
In elevating her to the post, DeSantis praised Moody as a key player in his political battles, a law and order prosecutor who’s prepared to help President-elect Donald Trump “secure and shut the border,” rein in inflation, and overhaul what he described as a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”
“I’m ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Trump to deliver the America First agenda on Day 1,” Moody said during Thursday’s announcement at a hotel in Orlando.
“The only way to return this country to the people, the people who govern it, is to make sure we have a strong Congress doing its job, passing laws and actually approving the regulations that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to cram down on the American people,” she added.
Before running for statewide office, Moody worked as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, she was elected to the post of circuit judge in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa. A fifth generation native of Plant City, Florida, Moody was once named queen of the city’s famed strawberry festival. She’s a three-time graduate of the University of Florida and she and her husband, a law enforcement officer, have two sons.
As the state’s attorney general, Moody has been instrumental in defending DeSantis’ conservative agenda in court and has joined other Republican-led states in challenging the Biden administration’s policies, suing over changes to immigration enforcement, student loan forgiveness and vaccine mandates for federal contractors.
“I’m happy to say we’ve had an Attorney General that is somebody that has acted time and time again to support the values that we all share,” DeSantis said. “We in Florida established our state as a beachhead of liberty, as the free state of Florida. And she was with us every step of the way.”
Moody isn’t the state’s only AG to use the office as a stepping stone to a national post. Her predecessor, Pam Bondi, is Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department and is testifying Thursday in the Senate.
Moody will be the second woman to represent the state in the Senate, and the first in nearly 40 years; Republican Paula Hawkins served in the chamber from 1981-1987.
With the appointment announced, Moody is poised to take office once the vacancy occurs. Rubio is expected to have broad support from Republicans as well as Democrats, and his confirmation vote could come as soon as Monday evening.
Under Florida law, it was up to the Republican governor to choose Rubio’s replacement after Trump picked the three-term senator to be his next secretary of state. Moody will serve in the Senate until the next general election in 2026, when the seat will be back on the ballot.
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Supreme Court will weigh Mexico’s $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun makers
Headline Legal News |
2024/10/04 10:38
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The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether to block a $10 billion lawsuit Mexico filed against leading U.S. gun manufacturers over allegations their commercial practices have helped caused much bloodshed there.
The gun makers asked the justices to undo an appeals court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to go forward despite broad legal protections for the firearm industry.
A federal judge has since tossed out the bulk of the lawsuit on other legal grounds, but Mexico could appeal that dismissal. Mexico argues the companies knew weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to cash in on that market. The government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the United States.
The defendants include big-name manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt and Glock. They say Mexico has not shown the industry has purposely done anything to allow the weapons to be used by cartels and is trying to “bully” gunmakers into adopting gun-control measures.
Originally filed in 2021, the lawsuit was initially tossed out by a district court who cited legal protections for gun makers from damages resulting from criminal use of firearms. But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the case under an exception to that law. The gunmakers appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, arguing they have followed lawful practices and the case has no business in American courts.
U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor in Boston again dismissed the case against six of the eight companies in August, ruling Mexico had not provided concrete evidence that any those companies’ activities in Massachusetts were connected to any suffering caused in Mexico by guns.
Still, with some claims remaining and an appeal possible, the gun makers argue the 1st Circuit ruling could hang over the industry for years if allowed to stand.
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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs jailed by judge after sex trafficking indictment
Headline Legal News |
2024/09/18 06:28
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Sean “Diddy” Combs headed to jail Tuesday to await trial in a federal sex trafficking case that accuses him of presiding over a sordid empire of sexual crimes protected by blackmail and shocking acts of violence.
The music mogul is charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. The indictment against him lists allegations that go back to 2008.
He’s accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes dayslong sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs.” The indictment also refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.
“Not guilty,” Combs told a court, standing to speak after expressionlessly listening to the allegations with his uncuffed hands folded in his lap.
After U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky declined to grant him bail, Combs took a long swig from a water bottle, then was led out of court, turning toward family members in the audience as he went.
“Mr. Combs is a fighter. He’s going to fight this to the end. He’s innocent,” his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said after court. He plans to appeal the bail decision.
The Bad Boy Records founder is accused of sexually abusing and using physical force toward women and getting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all. Prosecutors say he also tried to bribe and intimidate witnesses and victims to keep them quiet.
“Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson told a court.
Agnifilo acknowledged Combs was “not a perfect person,” saying he’d used drugs and had been in “toxic relationships” but was getting treatment and therapy.
“The evidence in this case is extremely problematic,” the attorney told the court.
He maintained that the case stemmed from one long-term, consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. He didn’t name the woman, but the details matched those of Combs’ decade-long involvement with Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura.
The “Freak Offs,” Agnifilo contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.
“Is it sex trafficking? Not if everybody wants to be there,” Agnifilo said, arguing that authorities were intruding on his client’s private life.
Prosecutors said in court papers that they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses and expect the number to grow. They said they would use financial, travel and billing records, electronic data and communications and videos of the “Freak Offs” to prove their case.
Combs was arrested Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami.
A conviction on every charge would require at least 15 years in prison, with the possibility of a life sentence.
The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
Combs and his associates wielded his “power and prestige” to intimidate and lure women into his orbit, “often under the pretense of a romantic relationship,” according to the indictment.
It says he then would use force, threats and coercion to get the women to engage with male sex workers in the “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs arranged and recorded, creating dozens of videos. He ensured their participation by procuring and providing drugs, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support and using intimidation and violence, according to the indictment. It said his employees facilitated “Freak Offs” by taking care of tasks like travel and hotel arrangements and stocking them with such supplies as drugs and baby oil.
The events could last for days, and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover from the exertion and drug use, the indictment said.
During the searches of Combs’ homes earlier this year, law enforcement seized narcotics, videos of the performances and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, according to prosecutors. They said agents also seized firearms and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers in his bedroom closet in Miami.
Combs’ lawyer said his client didn’t own the guns, noting that he employs a security company.
The indictment says Combs choked, shoved, hit and kicked people, causing injuries that often took days or weeks to heal. His employees and associates sometimes kept victims from leaving or tracked down those who tried, the indictment said.
It alleges that Combs used explicit recordings as “collateral” to ensure the women’s continued obedience and silence. He also exerted control over victims by promising career opportunities, providing and threatening to withhold financial support, dictating how they looked, monitoring their health records and controlling where they lived, according to the indictment. |
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