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New Orleans mayor pleads not guilty on corruption charges tied to alleged affair
Blog Updates |
2025/09/07 10:19
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New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell pleaded not guilty Wednesday to conspiracy, fraud and obstruction charges stemming from an alleged romantic relationship with her bodyguard.
The Democrat appeared in federal court for the first time since a grand jury last month returned an 18-count indictment against Cantrell and her bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie, outlining what prosecutors described as their yearslong scheme to conceal an affair while the two traveled, wined and dined together on taxpayers’ dime.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Wells Roby ordered the mayor to surrender her passport and restricted her travel, instructing her to seek approval from probation officers to leave southeast Louisiana. Roby also told Cantrell she was not allowed to be in contact with Vappie.
Vappie has already pleaded not guilty to charges of wire fraud and making false statements after he was indicted in July 2024. He is scheduled to appear in court Friday for the additional charges.
Cantrell, the first female mayor in New Orleans’ 300-year history, was elected twice but now becomes the city’s first mayor to be charged while in office in a state with a reputation for public corruption. She has only four months before she leaves office under term limits.
The mayor once known for her outspoken persona has kept quiet about the charges in the weeks since the 18-count indictment against her and Vappie was announced in mid-August. She did not acknowledge the indictment during public appearances to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina late last month.
While walking into the court building, Cantrell remained silent as a mob of reporters pressed her with questions. After the arraignment, her attorney, Eddie Castaing, declined to comment on the case but said it would not affect the mayor’s ability to govern the city.
“She can continue to work with city employees, she just couldn’t talk about the case so that’s not going to impede any of the city operations, so it’s business as usual,” Castaing said.
Cantrell, who exited court through a side door to avoid reporters, was already receding into the background of city affairs over the past year and offered no apparent resistance to President Donald Trump’s suggestion earlier this month to send the National Guard and federal agents to New Orleans even as other Democrats bristled.
She’s also been cast as a pariah by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, who announced on Sept. 3 that Cantrell was suspended from involvement in federal transactions with HUD. The City Council issued a statement last week saying it had reassured the Housing Authority of New Orleans and the Office of Community Development that other city officials could sign federal contracts instead.
At times, she and her allies have said the blowback she is experiencing is tinged by double standards she faces as a Black woman. Cantrell said earlier this year, before to the indictment, that she has faced “very disrespectful, insulting, in some cases kind of unimaginable” treatment.
Cantrell and Vappie used WhatsApp for more than 15,000 messages, where they professed their love and plotted to harass a citizen who helped expose their relationship, delete evidence, make false statements to FBI agents “and ultimately to commit perjury before a federal grand jury,” acting U.S. Attorney Michael Simpson said. Vappie’s 14 trips with Cantrell cost taxpayers $70,000, not including Cantrell’s own travel costs, according to the indictment.
In a WhatsApp exchange, the indictment says, Vappie recalled accompanying Cantrell to Scotland in October 2021 on a dreamy trip “where it all started.”
Cantrell, whose husband died in 2023, has denied having anything more than a professional relationship with Vappie. She lashed out at associates who raised questions about the amount of time she spent with her bodyguard, including on wine-tasting trips and in a city-owned apartment, court records show.
Cantrell joins the ranks of more than 100 people brought up on corruption charges in Louisiana in the past two decades, said Rafael Goyeneche, a former prosecutor who is president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a watchdog group. |
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Federal data website outage raises concerns among advocates
Blog Updates |
2025/08/22 07:40
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A federal website that informs the public about what information agencies are collecting and allows for public comment went down last weekend, and it has only been partially restored. The outage has raised concerns among advocates who already were troubled by the disappearance of data sets from government websites after President Donald Trump began his second term.
The https://www.reginfo.gov/public/ website went offline at the end of last week and was partially restored this week. Data was missing after Aug. 1, according to dataindex,us, a collective of data scientists and advocates who monitor changes in federal data sets.
As of Thursday, the website’s landing page said, it was “currently undergoing revisions.” Emailed inquiries to the Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration weren’t returned on Thursday.
In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official public portal for health data, data.cdc.gov, was taken down entirely but subsequently went back up. Around the same time, when a query was made to access certain public data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s most comprehensive survey of American life, users for several days got a response that said the area was “unavailable due to maintenance” before access was restored.
Researchers Janet Freilich and Aaron Kesselheim examined 232 federal public health data sets that had been modified in the first quarter of this year and found that almost half had been “substantially altered,” with the majority having the word “gender” switched to “sex,” they wrote last month in The Lancet medical journal.
Former Census Bureau official Chris Dick, who is part of the dataindex.us team, said Thursday that no one is quite sure what is going on with the regulatory affairs website, whether there was an update with technical difficulties because of staffing shortages from job cuts or something more nefarious.
“This is key infrastructure that needs to come back,” Dick said. “Usually, you can fix this quickly. It’s not super normal for this to go on for days.”
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Trump formally asks Congress to claw back approved spending targeted by DOGE
Blog Updates |
2025/06/02 11:49
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The White House on Tuesday officially asked Congress to claw back $9.4 billion in already approved spending, taking funding away from programs targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
It’s a process known as “rescission,” which requires President Donald Trump to get approval from Congress to return money that had previously been appropriated. Trump’s aides say the funding cuts target programs that promote liberal ideologies.
The request, if it passes the House and Senate, would formally enshrine many of the spending cuts and freezes sought by DOGE. It comes at a time when Musk is extremely unhappy with the tax cut and spending plan making its way through Congress, calling it on Tuesday a “disgusting abomination” for increasing the federal deficit.
White House budget director Russ Vought said more rescission packages and other efforts to cut spending could follow if the current effort succeeds.
“We are certainly willing and able to send up additional packages if the congressional will is there,” Vought told reporters.
Here’s what to know about the rescissions request:
Will the rescissions make a dent in the national debt?
The request to Congress is unlikely to meaningfully change the troublesome increase in the U.S. national debt. Tax revenues have been insufficient to cover the growing costs of Social Security, Medicare and other programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the government is on track to spend roughly $7 trillion this year, with the rescission request equaling just 0.1% of that total.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing that Vought — a “well-respected fiscal hawk,” she called him — would continue to cut spending, hinting that there could be additional efforts to return funds.
“He has tools at his disposal to produce even more savings,” Leavitt said.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.
“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.
“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
Vought said he can send up additional rescissions at the end of the fiscal year in September “and if Congress does not act on it, that funding expires.”
“It’s one of the reasons why we are not putting all of our expectations in a typical rescissions process,” he added.
What programs are targeted by the rescissions?
A spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview some of the items that would lose funding, said that $8.3 billion was being cut from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. NPR and PBS would also lose federal funding, as would the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, also known as PEPFAR.
The spokesperson listed specific programs that the Trump administration considered wasteful, including $750,000 to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela, $67,000 for feeding insect powder to children in Madagascar and $3 million for circumcision, vasectomies and condoms in Zambia.
Is the rescissions package likely to get passed?
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., complimented the planned cuts and pledged to pass them.
“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson said. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”
Members of the House Freedom Caucus, among the chamber’s most conservative lawmakers, said they would like to see additional rescission packages from the administration.
“We will support as many more rescissions packages the White House can send us in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in a press release. “Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda.”
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, gave the package a less optimistic greeting.
“Despite this fast track, the Senate Appropriations Committee will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations,” the Maine lawmaker said in a statement.
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World financial markets welcome court ruling against Trump's tariffs
Blog Updates |
2025/05/29 07:41
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Financial markets welcomed a U.S. court ruling that blocks President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency-powers law.
U.S. futures jumped early Thursday and oil prices rose more than $1. The U.S. dollar rose against the yen and euro.
The court found the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which Trump has cited as his basis for ordering massive increases in import duties, does not authorize the use of tariffs.
The White House immediately appealed and it was unclear if Trump would abide by the ruling in the interim. The long term outcome of legal disputes over tariffs remains uncertain. But investors appeared to take heart after the months of turmoil brought on by Trump's trade war.
The future for the S&P 500 was up 1.5% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%.
In early European trading, Germany's DAX gained 0.5% to 24,160.75. The CAC 40 in Paris jumped 0.9% to 7,860.67. Britain's FTSE was nearly unchanged at 8,722.63.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.9% to 38,432.98. American's largest ally in Asia has been appealing to Trump to cancel the tariffs he has ordered on imports from Japan and to also stop 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection technician examines overseas parcels after they were scanned at the agency's overseas mail inspection facility at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport on Feb. 23, 2024.
The ruling also pushed the dollar sharply higher against the Japanese yen. It was trading at 145.40 yen early Thursday, up from 144.87 yen late Wednesday.
A three-judge panel ruled on several lawsuits arguing Trump exceeded his authority, casting doubt on trade policies that have jolted global financial markets, frustrated trade partners and raised uncertainty over the outlook for inflation and the global economy.
Many of Trump's double-digit tariff hikes are paused for up to 90 days to allow time for trade negotiations, but the uncertainty they cast over global commerce has stymied businesses and left consumers wary about what lies ahead.
"Just when traders thought they'd seen every twist in the tariff saga, the gavel dropped like a lightning bolt over the Pacific," Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.
The ruling was, at the least, "a brief respite before the next thunderclap," he said.
Elsewhere in Asia, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.3% to 23,561.86, while the Shanghai Composite index gained 0.7% to 3,363.45.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,409.80.
In South Korea, which like Japan relies heavily on exports to the U.S., the Kospi surged 1.9% to 2,720.64. Shares also were helped by the Bank of Korea's decision to cut its key interest rate to 2.5% from 2.75%, to ease pressure on the economy.
Taiwan's Taiex edged 0.1% lower, and India's Sensex lost 0.2%.
On Wednesday, U.S. stocks cooled, with the S&P 500 down 0.6% but still within 4.2% of its record after charging higher amid hopes that the worst of the turmoil caused by Trump's trade war may have passed. It had been roughly 20% below the mark last month.
The Dow industrials lost 0.6% and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.5%.
Trading was relatively quiet ahead of a quarterly earnings release for Nvidia, which came after markets closed.
The bellwether for artificial intelligence overcame a wave of tariff-driven turbulence to deliver another quarter of robust growth thanks to feverish demand for its high-powered chips that are making computers seem more human. Nvidia's shares jumped 6.6% in afterhours trading.
Like Nvidia, Macy's stock also swung up and down through much of the day, even though it reported milder drops in revenue and profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its stock ended the day down 0.3%.
The bond market showed relatively little reaction after the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its latest meeting earlier this month, when it left its benchmark lending rate alone for the third straight time. The central bank has been holding off on cuts to interest rates, which would give the economy a boost, amid worries about inflation staying higher than hoped because of Trump's sweeping tariffs. |
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Budget airline begins deportation flights for ICE with start of Arizona operations
Blog Updates |
2025/05/12 10:48
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A budget airline that serves mostly small U.S. cities began federal deportation flights Monday out of Arizona, a move that’s inspired an online boycott petition and sharp criticism from the union representing the carrier’s flight attendants.
Avelo Airlines announced in April it had signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to make charter deportation flights from Mesa Gateway Airport outside Phoenix. It said it will use three Boeing 737-800 planes for the flights.
The Houston-based airline is among a host of companies seeking to cash in on President Donald Trump’s campaign for mass deportations.
Congressional deliberations began last month on a tax bill with a goal of funding, in part, the removal of 1 million immigrants annually and housing 100,000 people in U.S. detention centers. The GOP plan calls for hiring 10,000 more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and investigators.
Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.
Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline’s work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs.
“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic,” said Levy, an airline industry veteran with previous stints as a senior executive at United and Allegiant airlines.
Financial and other details of the Avelo agreement — including destinations of the deportation flights — haven’t publicly surfaced. The AP asked Avelo and ICE for a copy of the agreement, but neither provided the document. The airline said it wasn’t authorized to release the contract.
Several consumer brands have shunned being associated with deportations, a highly volatile issue that could drive away customers. During Trump’s first term, authorities housed migrant children in hotels, prompting some hotel chains to say that they wouldn’t participate.
Avelo was launched in 2021 as COVID-19 still raged and billions of taxpayer dollars were propping up big airlines. It saves money mainly by flying older Boeing 737 jets that can be bought at relatively low prices. And it operates out of less-crowded and less-costly secondary airports, flying routes that are ignored by the big airlines. It said it had its first profitable quarter in late 2023.
Andrew Levy, Avelo’s founder and chief executive, said in announcing the agreement last month that the airline’s work for ICE would help the company expand and protect jobs. |
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US immigration officials look to expand social media data collection
Blog Updates |
2025/03/30 08:52
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U.S. immigration officials are asking the public and federal agencies to comment on a proposal to collect social media handles from people applying for benefits such as green cards or citizenship, to comply with an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The March 5 notice raised alarms from immigration and free speech advocates because it appears to expand the government’s reach in social media surveillance to people already vetted and in the U.S. legally, such as asylum seekers, green card and citizenship applicants -- and not just those applying to enter the country. That said, social media monitoring by immigration officials has been a practice for over a decade, since at least the second Obama administration and ramping up under Trump’s first term.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a 60-day notice asking for public commentary on its plan to comply with Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats.” The plan calls for “uniform vetting standards” and screening people for grounds of inadmissibility to the U.S., as well as identify verification and “national security screening.” It seeks to collect social media handles and the names of platforms, although not passwords.
The policy seeks to require people to share their social media handles when applying for U.S. citizenship, green card, asylum and other immigration benefits. The proposal is open to feedback from the public until May 5.
“The basic requirements that are in place right now is that people who are applying for immigrant and non-immigrant visas have to provide their social media handles,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, managing director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program at New York University. “Where I could see this impacting is someone who came into the country before visa-related social media handle collection started, so they wouldn’t have provided it before and now they’re being required to. Or maybe they did before, but their social media use has changed.”
“This fairly widely expanded policy to collect them for everyone applying for any kind of immigration benefit, including people who have already been vetted quite extensively,” she added.
What this points to — along with other signals the administration is sending such as detaining people and revoking student visas for participating in campus protests that the government deems antisemitic and sympathetic to the militant Palestinian group Hamas — Levinson-Waldman added, is the increased use of social media to “make these very high-stakes determinations about people.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service said the agency seeks to “strengthen fraud detection, prevent identity theft, and support the enforcement of rigorous screening and vetting measures to the fullest extent possible.”
“These efforts ensure that those seeking immigration benefits to live and work in the United States do not threaten public safety, undermine national security, or promote harmful anti-American ideologies,” the statement continued. USCIS estimates that the proposed policy change will affect about 3.6 million people.
How are social media accounts used now?
The U.S. government began ramping up the use of social media for immigration vetting in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In late 2015, the Department of Homeland Security began both “manual and automatic screening of the social media accounts of a limited number of individuals applying to travel to the United States, through various non-public pilot programs,” the nonpartisan law and policy institute explains on its website.
In May 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued an emergency notice to increase the screening of visa applicants. Brennan, along with other civil and human rights groups, opposed the move, arguing that it is “excessively burdensome and vague, is apt to chill speech, is discriminatory against Muslims, and has no security benefit.”
Two years later, the State Department began collecting social media handles from “nearly all foreigners” applying for visas to travel to the U.S. — about 15 million people a year.
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Why Biden pardoned Milley, Fauci and family members? [Q&A]
Blog Updates |
2025/01/21 08:53
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President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in an extraordinary use of the powers of the presidency in his final hours to guard against potential “revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.
Dr. Fauci, who served as the nation's top infectious disease expert, and General Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have both faced criticism from Trump and his allies. Members of the January 6 committee have also been targets of political attacks. By granting these pardons, Biden seeks to shield them from what he perceives as unjustified
It's important to note that these pardons are preemptive, meaning they were issued before any charges were filed, and do not imply that the individuals committed any crimes. This move underscores the deep political divisions in the country and highlights concerns about the potential use of the justice system for political retribution.
by lawfirm-network.com
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