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Norfolk Southern revives plans for $20 million first responder training center near horrific East Palestine derailment site

2025-11-29 01:46:19 By Sarah Miller

Norfolk Southern railroad worked with the state of Ohio and Youngstown State University to revive plans for a $20 million first responder training center near the site of the worst derailment in a decade in East Palestine, Ohio.

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Retired professor’s legal campaign to block Trump presidential library set for August 2026 trial

A trial has been set for August 2026 in a lawsuit seeking to block the transfer of a parcel of prime Miami real estate to be used for President Donald Trump’s presidential library.Recommended VideoThe decision Monday by Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz in Miami will further delay Miami Dade College’s plans to formally transfer the sizable plot of land to the state of Florida, which intends to gift it to the foundation for the planned library.Miami activist Marvin Dunn, a retired professor and chronicler of local Black history, filed the lawsuit arguing that the college board violated Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law by not providing sufficient notice for its special meeting on Sept. 23, when it voted to give up the nearly 3-acre (1.2-hectare) property.Last month, Ruiz sided with Dunn and granted a temporary injunction that bars the transfer of the property, at least for now.Attorneys for the college had asked the judge to stay the trial proceedings pending an appellate court’s review. Instead, Ruiz scheduled the trial to begin Aug. 3, though she acknowledged that could change, depending on how the appeals court proceeds.The property is a developer’s dream and is valued at more than $67 million, according to a 2025 assessment by the Miami-Dade County property appraiser. One real estate expert wagered that the parcel — one of the last undeveloped lots on an iconic stretch of palm tree-lined Biscayne Boulevard — could sell for hundreds of millions of dollars more.___Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

25-year DEA veteran charged with helping Mexican drug cartel launder millions of dollars, secure guns and bombs

A former high-level agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and an associate have been charged with conspiring to launder millions of dollars and obtain military-grade firearms and explosives for a Mexican drug cartel, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in New York.Recommended VideoPaul Campo, 61, of Oakton, Virginia, who retired from the DEA in 2016 after a 25-year career, and Robert Sensi, 75, of Boca Raton, Florida, were caught in sting involving a law enforcement informant who posed as a member of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, prosecutors said.The cartel, also know as CJNG, was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. in February.U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Campo betrayed his DEA career by helping the cartel, which he said was responsible for “countless deaths through violence and drug trafficking in the United States and Mexico.”Campo and Sensi appeared Friday afternoon before a magistrate judge in New York, who ordered them detained without bail. Their lawyers entered not guilty pleas on their behalf.Campo’s lawyer, Mark Gombiner, called the indictment “somewhat sensationalized and somewhat incoherent.” He denied the two men had agreed to explore obtaining weapons for the cartel.Prosecutors say pair talked of laundering money, obtaining weaponsOver the past year, Campo and Sensi agreed to launder about $12 million in drug proceeds for the cartel and converted about $750,000 in cash to cryptocurrency, thinking it was going to the group when it really went to the U.S. government, the indictment said. They also provided a payment for about 220 kilograms of cocaine they were told would be sold in the U.S. for about $5 million, thinking they would get a cut of the proceeds, prosecutors said.The two men also said they would look into procuring commercial drones, AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, M4 carbines, grenade launchers and rocket-propelled grenades for the cartel, the indictment said.Campo boasted about his law enforcement experience during conversations with the informant and offered to be a “strategist” for the cartel, authorities said. He began his career as a DEA agent in New York and rose to become deputy chief of financial operations for the agency, the indictment said.Evidence in the case includes hours of recordings of the two men talking with the informant, as well as cellphone location data, emails and surveillance images, Assistant U.S. Attorney Varun Gumaste said in court Friday.Sensi’s attorney, Amanda Kramer, unsuccessfully argued that Sensi should be freed while he awaits trial, saying he wouldn’t flee partly because he has multiple health problems, including injuries from a fall two months ago, early-stage dementia and Type II diabetes.Sensi was convicted in the late 1980s and early 1990s of mail fraud, defrauding the government and stealing $2.5 million, said the prosecutor, Gumaste. He said evidence shows Sensi also was engaged in a scheme to procure military-grade helicopters for a Middle East country.Other criminal cases have roiled the DEADEA Administrator Terrance Cole said in a statement that while Campo is no longer employed by the DEA, the allegations undermine trust in law enforcement.The DEA has been roiled in recent years by several embarrassing instances of misconduct in its ranks. The Associated Press has tallied at least 16 agents over the past decade brought up on federal charges ranging from child pornography and drug trafficking to leaking intelligence to defense attorneys and selling firearms to cartel associates, revealing gaping holes in the agency’s supervision.Starting in 2021, the agency placed new controls on how DEA funds can be used in money laundering stings, and warned agents they can now be fired for a first offense of misconduct if serious enough, a departure from prior administrations.Campo and Sensi are charged with four conspiracy counts related to narcoterrorism, terrorism, narcotics distribution and money laundering.____Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writer Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report.

Judge tosses DOJ lawsuits against James Comey, Letitia James as Trump’s revenge tour falters

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, concluding that the prosecutor who brought the charges at President Donald Trump’s urging was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.Recommended VideoThe rulings from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie halt at least for now a pair of prosecutions that had hastened concerns that the Justice Department was being weaponized to pursue the president’s political adversaries and amount to a stunning rebuke of the Trump administration’s legal maneuvering to install a loyal, and inexperienced, prosecutor willing to file the cases.The orders make Lindsey Halligan the latest Trump administration prosecutor to be disqualified because of the manner in which they were appointed. Both defendants had asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning that the Justice Department would not be able to bring them again. But the judge instead dismissed them without prejudice, though it was not immediately clear if or how the Justice Department might attempt to revive the prosecutions.The challenge to Halligan’s appointment was one piece of a multiprong assault on the indictments by both Comey and James, who had each sought to have their cases dismissed on grounds that the prosecutions were vindictive. Comey’s lawyers had also seized on irregularities in the grand jury process in seeking to get the prosecution thrown out. Each of those requests remains pending.Monday’s order deals exclusively with the mechanism the Trump administration employed to appoint Halligan, a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience, to lead one of the Justice Department’s most elite and important offices.Halligan was named to the job in September after a different interim U.S. attorney, Erik Siebert, was effectively forced out amid pressure from the Trump administration to file charges against Comey and James.After Siebert resigned, Comey’s lawyers argued, the judges of the federal court district should have had exclusive say over who got to fill the vacancy. Instead, Trump nominated Halligan while publicly imploring Bondi in a social media post to take action against his political opponents, saying in a Truth Social post that “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”Comey was indicted days later on charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and James was charged soon after that in a mortgage fraud investigation.In a statement, James said, “I am heartened by today’s victory and grateful for the prayers and support I have received from around the country.”“I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day,” the New York attorney general, a Democrat, said.Judges have separately disqualified interim U.S. attorneys in New Jersey, Los Angeles and Nevada, but have permitted cases brought under their watch to move forward. But lawyers for Comey and James had argued that Currie’s ruling needed to go even further because Halligan was the sole signer of the indictments and the driving force behind them.Comey has for years been one of Trump’s chief antagonists. Appointed to the job in 2013 by President Barack Obama, Comey, at the time of Trump’s 2016 election, was overseeing an investigation into whether his presidential campaign had conspired with Russia to sway the outcome of the race. Furious over that investigation, Trump fired Comey in May 2017 and the two officials have verbally sparred in the years since.James has also been a frequent target of Trump’s ire, especially since she won a staggering judgment against him and the Trump Organization in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.____Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak in New York and Lindsay Whitehurst and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

‘Its own research shows they encourage addiction’: Highest court in Mass. hears case about Instagram, Facebook effect on kids

Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users.Recommended VideoThe lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms.“We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state’s claim has nothing to do the company’s algorithms or failure to moderate content.Meta said Friday that it strongly disagrees with the allegations and is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.” Its attorney, Mark Mosier, argued in court that the lawsuit “would impose liabilities for performing traditional publishing functions” and that its actions are protected by the First Amendment.“The Commonwealth would have a better chance of getting around the First Amendment if they alleged that the speech was false or fraudulent,” Mosier said. “But when they acknowledge that its truthful that brings it in the heart of the First Amendment.”Several of the judges, though, seem to more concerned about Meta’s functions such as notifications than the content on its platforms.“I didn’t understand the claims to be that Meta is relaying false information vis-a-vis the notifications but that it has created an algorithm of incessant notifications … designed so as to feed into the fear of missing out, fomo, that teenagers generally have,” Justice Dalila Wendland said. “That is the basis of the claim.”Justice Scott Kafker challenged the notion that this was all about a choose to publish certain information by Meta.“It’s not how to publish but how to attract you to the information,” he said. “It’s about how to attract the eyeballs. It’s indifferent the content, right. It doesn’t care if it’s Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ or nonsense. It’s totally focused on getting you to look at it.”Meta is facing federal and state lawsuits claiming it knowingly designed features — such as constant notifications and the ability to scroll endlessly — that addict children.In 2023, 33 states filed a joint lawsuit against the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant claiming that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law. In addition, states including Massachusetts filed their own lawsuits in state courts over addictive features and other harms to children.Newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.Critics say Meta hasn’t done enough to address concerns about teen safety and mental health on its platforms. A report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups this year said Meta has chosen not to take “real steps” to address safety concerns, “opting instead for splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users.”Meta said the report misrepresented its efforts on teen safety.___Associated Press reporter Barbara Ortutay in Oakland, California, contributed to this report.

Trump orders new immigration curbs as FBI probes guard shooting

President Donald Trump’s administration is expanding its immigration crackdown in the aftermath of the shooting of a pair of National Guard members in Washington.The two guard members remained in critical condition on Thursday after they were shot in an ambush Wednesday near the White House. The suspect is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who was subdued and taken into custody shortly after.Federal authorities have launched a sprawling, nationwide terrorism investigation into what Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for DC, called a “brazen and targeted” attack. Police scoured the scene of the shooting, while authorities searched homes in Washington state and California. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and others in the administration quickly blamed the Biden administration for letting Lakanwal into the US and seized on the case to push for deeper immigration curbs, including halting reviews of Afghan immigration proceedings and ordering a review of those already in the US. That raises the prospect that settlement rights for Afghan allies of US forces may be curtailed.“We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump said in a recorded video address published by the White House Wednesday.On Thursday, Joseph Edlow, the head of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a social media post that his agency, under Trump’s orders, is conducting “a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.” He didn’t name specific countries.Even before Wednesday’s shooting, the Trump administration had moved to slash legal migration to the US. Trump’s second term has seen the administration severely lower its refugee cap, end temporary protected status for migrants from numerous countries, impose a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas heavily used by tech companies and universities to bring over high-skilled workers and revoke thousands of visas. It also plans to review the cases of all refugees resettled under the Biden administration, according to an internal Nov. 21 memo seen by Bloomberg News.Read More: Trump to Review Refugees Admitted Under Biden in New CrackdownThe calls for further steps came swiftly after Wednesday’s shooting, even as the investigation is in its early stages. Authorities are treating it as a terror case but haven’t publicly described his specific motive. On Thursday morning, they said that interviews and search warrants were still being carried out.Lakanwal lived in Washington state with his wife and, authorities believe, five children. They say he drove to Washington, DC — a cross-country trip of nearly 3,000 miles — with the intent of carrying out the attack. He then drew a revolver and fired at two national Guard Members from West Virginia, blocks from the White House. The two victims are Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24; both remained in critical condition Thursday. Lakanwal was evacuated from Afghanistan in 2021 around the time of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal. AfghanEvac, a nonprofit group dedicated to supporting resettlement of US allies in Afghanistan, said he served in an elite Afghan counterterrorism unit operated by the CIA with direct U.S. intelligence and military support to support their fight against the Taliban.Lakanwal arrived in the US in September of that year “due to his prior work with the U.S. government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement. Lakanwal arrived under humanitarian parole and was granted asylum earlier this year by the Trump administration, according to AfghanEvac.But the administration’s response raises the prospect that it will seek to block or even revoke status of Afghan nationals who helped US forces fight the Taliban.The US immediately suspended processing of immigration requests related to Afghan nationals and is reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration, according to Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary of homeland security.Trump called for reviewing every person who came to the US from Afghanistan under the Biden administration, while Vance said they will “redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country.”And several top aides said that Lakanwal’s work with the CIA and other American agencies should not have meant that he was afforded residency or status in the US.Ratcliffe said “this individual — and so many others — should have never been allowed to come here” while Attorney General Pam Bondi called Lakanwal a “monster who should not have been in our country” during a Fox News interview Thursday. FBI Director Kash Patel said at the Thursday press conference that “you miss all the signs when you do absolutely zero vetting” and Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for Washington, DC, said “this is what happens in this country when people are allowed in who are not properly vetted.”But while the Trump administration said it was a failure of vetting, the Afghan settlement rights group said there is vetting and that Lakanwal was a bad apple. “Afghan immigrants and wartime allies who resettle in the United States undergo some of the most extensive security vetting of any population entering the country,” AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver said in a written statement. The group supports “fully supports the perpetrator facing full accountability” and “rejects any attempt to leverage this tragedy as a political ploy to isolate or harm Afghans who have resettled in the United States,” VanDiver added.The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, said the anger over the crime must be directed at the perpetrator and not every Afghan national in the US or seeking to move to the US. “Using this horrific attack as an excuse to smear and punish every Afghan, every refugee, or every immigrant rips at something very basic in our Constitution and many faiths: the idea that guilt is personal, not inherited or collective,” the group said in a written statement.Aside from immigration reform, the political fallout from the attack could widen. Bondi also signaled that the administration may scrutinize Democrats who had criticized the deployments.Speaking on Fox News on Thursday morning, Bondi criticized Democratic lawmakers, without naming any, and media figures who have criticized Trump’s use of the National Guard. “They should be praising our men and women in law enforcement. And we are looking at everything they have said, and why they said it, and if they encouraged acts of violence,” she said, without elaborating.The administration is already seeking to court-martial Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, after a video in which Democratic lawmakers told US service members that they can refuse unlawful orders. Trump has called the video “seditious” and reposted calls for the lawmakers to be killed.Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, meanwhile, condemned the shooting and pledged that the suspect will be prosecuted, but also hinted at her unease with the deployment. “These young people should be at home in West Virginia with their families,” she said. She didn’t elaborate.Pirro, separately, declined to discuss the issue. “I don’t even want to talk about whether they should have been there” she said. “We ought to kiss the ground and thank god that the president said it’s time to bring in more law enforcement.”

Lawyer blasts UPS for favoring profits over safety after fiery, deadly crash in Kentucky

A deadly UPS cargo plane crash in Kentucky stemmed from corporate choices that favored profits over safety, according to a lawyer who filed two wrongful death lawsuits Wednesday, which allege the company kept flying older aircraft without increasing maintenance beyond what’s regularly scheduled.Recommended VideoFederal officials said last month’s fiery crash of the MD-11 jet happened during takeoff after the engine on the left wing detached and flew off. Cracks were found where the engine connected to the wing, according to the National Transportation Safety Board report.The cracks show the now-grounded MD-11s, which average more than 30 years old, are too dangerous for package delivery companies to keep in the air, said Robert Clifford, a lawyer who has represented victims in plane crashes for more than 45 years.The plane that crashed “was old, tired and should have been never taken out of mothballs,” Clifford said. Saving money by keeping older planes in the air and not increasing the number of inspections “is putting profits over safety,” Clifford added.UPS and GE, which made the plane’s engines and is also being sued, said in a statements that safety is a top priority as they assist the federal investigation, and extended their heartfelt sympathies to the families of those killed. They said they do not comment on pending lawsuits.The suit by Clifford Law Offices of Chicago and Sam Aguiar Injury Lawyers are names Boeing, which acquired the original manufacturer of the plane McDonell Douglas, and VT San Antonio Aerospace, Inc., which inspected and maintained the plane. The two companies did not immediately respond to email and phone messages seeking comment.The crash killed 3 pilots and 11 people on the groundClifford and other lawyers filed the wrongful death suits in state court on behalf of the families of Angela Anderson, 45, who was shopping at a business by the airport and Trinadette “Trina” Chavez, 37, who was working at Grade A Auto Parts. Both died in the fire caused by the 38,000 gallons (144,00 liters) of jet fuel on board the plane as it headed for Hawaii, the attorneys wrote in court papers.The three pilots and 11 others on the ground were killed in the Nov. 4 crash near Muhammad Ali International Airport.The legal battles stemming from the crash are likely just beginning. UPS was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed last month accusing it of negligence and wanton conduct. The crash “acted like a bomb” and the plaintiffs had their lives and businesses “turned upside down” as a result, the suit said.Plane had just finished six weeks of extensive maintenanceThe plane that crashed underwent more than six weeks of extensive maintenance that ended on Oct. 18. Crews repaired significant structural issues, including a crack in the center wing fuel tank and corrosion on structural components. Some of the parts involved in attaching the engine to the wing were also lubricated during the work that VT San Antonio performed, according to the lawsuits.The engine mount hadn’t undergone a detailed inspection since 2021. And the plane wasn’t due for another detailed inspection of that part for another 7,000 takeoffs and landingsWhen Clifford saw the video of the Nov. 4 crash, his mind immediately went back to the 1979 crash of an American Airlines DC-10 which killed 273 people. The DC-10 was the predecessor of the MD-11.The left engine fell off in the 1979 crash too. But back then, a forklift driver damaged the engine mounts. In this year’s crash, it appears to be a function of age.“When you extend the life of the plane, it keeps it in service. It saves money. It saves downtime. It saves maintenance and inspection costs but there is an exponential increase in the risk of fatigue fractures and that’s what you got here,” Clifford said.Federal investigators ground all similar planesFederal investigators grounded all MD-11s used by UPS, FedEx and Western Global after the crash for inspections and repairs, but the Federal Aviation Administration hasn’t said what will be required.UPS announced last week it didn’t expect the MD-11s to be back in the sky until at least after the holiday season.The 109 remaining MD-11 airliners, averaging more than 30 years old, are exclusively used to haul cargo for package delivery companies. MD-11s make up about 9% of the UPS airline fleet and 4% of FedEx’s fleet.If massive repairs or overhauls are ordered, experts said package delivery companies may find replacing them the better option.___Associated Press reporter Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.

Epstein grand jury documents from Florida can be released by DOJ, judge rules

A federal judge on Friday gave the Justice Department permission to release transcripts of a grand jury investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls in Florida — a case that ultimately ended without any federal charges being filed against the millionaire sex offender.Recommended VideoU.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to Epstein overrode the usual rules about grand jury secrecy.The law signed in November by President Donald Trump compels the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to release later this month the vast troves of material they have amassed during investigations into Epstein that date back at least two decades.Friday’s court ruling dealt with the earliest known federal inquiry.In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a mansion, began interviewing teenage girls who told of being hired to give the financier sexualized massages. The FBI later joined the investigation.Federal prosecutors in Florida prepared an indictment in 2007, but Epstein’s lawyers attacked the credibility of his accusers publicly while secretly negotiating a plea bargain that would let him avoid serious jail time.In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to relatively minor state charges of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18. He served most of his 18-month sentence in a work release program that let him spend his days in his office.The U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alex Acosta, agreed not to prosecute Epstein on federal charges — a decision that outraged Epstein’s accusers. After the Miami Herald reexamined the unusual plea bargain in a series of stories in 2018, public outrage over Epstein’s light sentence led to Acosta’s resignation as Trump’s labor secretary.A Justice Department report in 2020 found that Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in handling the investigation, but it also said he did not engage in professional misconduct.A different federal prosecutor, in New York, brought a sex trafficking indictment against Epstein in 2019, mirroring some of the same allegations involving underage girls that had been the subject of the aborted investigation. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial. His longtime confidant and ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was then tried on similar charges, convicted and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison.Transcripts of the grand jury proceedings from the aborted federal case in Florida could shed more light on federal prosecutors’ decision not to go forward with it. Records related to state grand jury proceedings have already been made public.When the documents will be released is unknown. The Justice Department asked the court to unseal them so they could be released with other records required to be disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Justice Department hasn’t set a timetable for when it plans to start releasing information, but the law set a deadline of Dec. 19.The law also allows the Justice Department to withhold files that it says could jeopardize an active federal investigation. Files can also be withheld if they’re found to be classified or if they pertain to national defense or foreign policy.One of the federal prosecutors on the Florida case did not answer a phone call Friday and the other declined to answer questions.A judge had previously declined to release the grand jury records, citing the usual rules about grand jury secrecy, but Smith said the new federal law allowed public disclosure.The Justice Department has separate requests pending for the release of grand jury records related to the sex trafficking cases against Epstein and Maxwell in New York. The judges in those matters have said they plan to rule expeditiously.___Sisak reported from New York.

Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders visit striking Starbucks baristas on picket line as union demands contract after nearly 4 years

Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday, hours before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited striking baristas on a picket line.Recommended VideoThe development came amid a continuing strike by Starbucks’ union that began last month at dozens of locations around the country.The workers want better hours and increased staffing, and they are angry that Starbucks hasn’t agreed on a contract nearly four years after workers voted to unionize at a Buffalo store. Union votes at other locations followed, and about 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned stores are now unionized. The coffee giant also has around 7,000 licensed locations at airports, grocery stores and other locales.Workers and the company dispute the extent and impact of the strike, but Mamdani, Sanders and some state and city officials sought to amplify the baristas’ message by mingling with scores of strikers and supporters outside a Starbucks shop in Brooklyn.“These are not demands of greed — these are demands of decency,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran on pledges to aid working-class people, told the crowd. Some workers carried giant mock-ups of Starbucks takeout cups, bearing the union’s logo instead of the coffee chain’s insignia.Four years after the first shop’s union vote, “Starbucks has refused to sit down and negotiate a fair contract,” said Sanders, a Vermont independent who supported Mamdani’s campaign.Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson said the company was “ready to talk when the union is ready to return to negotiations.” While the union picketed, Starbucks “focused on continuing to offer the best job in retail,” where more than 1 million applicants seek jobs annually, Anderson said in a statement.“The facts speak for themselves,” she said.Striking baristas described a harried workplace with chronic short-staffing, online orders so complex that the ticket is sometimes longer than the cup, and last-minute calls to come in.“It is the company’s issue to give us the labor amount to schedule partners fairly, and they are not scheduling us fairly, no matter how much money we are making them,” said Gabriel Pierre, 26, a shift supervisor at a store in suburban Bellmore.Starbucks has been trying to bounce back from a period of lagging sales as inflation-conscious U.S. customers questioned whether its coffee concoctions were worth the money. The Seattle-based company recently reported the first increase in nearly two years in same-store sales — a term for sales at locations open at least a year — but restructuring costs, store redesigns and other changes took a bite out of profits in its July-September quarter.Under the agreement announced Monday with New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, Starbucks will pay $3.4 million in civil penalties, in addition to the $35 million it is paying workers. The company also agreed to comply with the city’s Fair Workweek law going forward.The company said it’s committed to operating responsibly and complying with all applicable local laws and regulations everywhere it does business, but Starbucks also noted the complexities of the city’s law.“This is notoriously challenging to manage,” Anderson said.Most of the affected employees who held hourly positions will receive $50 for each week worked from July 2021 through July 2024, the department said. Workers who experienced a violation after that may be eligible for compensation by filing a complaint with the department.“I sure hope that it gives Starbucks an awakening,” said Kaari Harsila, 21, a Brooklyn store shift supervisor who was picketing Monday.The settlement also guarantees that employees laid off during recent store closings in the city will get an opportunity for reinstatement at other Starbucks locations.The city began investigating in 2022 after receiving dozens of worker complaints against several Starbucks locations. The investigation eventually expanded to hundreds of stores. The city said the probe found, among other things, that most Starbucks employees never got regular schedules, making it difficult for staffers to plan other commitments, such as child care, education or other jobs.The company also denied workers the chance to pick up extra shifts, so they remained part-timers even when they wanted to work more, according to the city.___Associated Press writer Bruce Shipkowski contributed from Toms River, New Jersey.

‘Ohio shouldn’t have done it’: Republican governor ‘absolutely’ regrets legalizing sports gambling

If Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine could turn back time, he would not have signed the law that legalized sports betting in his state.Recommended VideoWith two Cleveland Guardians pitchers and an Ohio-born guard for the Miami Heat snared in separate betting-related criminal probes, the second-term Republican says he now “absolutely” regrets unleashing this unbridled new industry on Ohioans with his 2021 signature.“Look, we’ve always had gambling, we’re always going to have gambling,” DeWine told The Associated Press last week. “But just the power of these companies and the deep, deep, deep pockets they have to advertise and do everything they can to get someone to place that bet is really different once you have legalization of them.”His comments reflect a reckoning that’s unfolding across sports and politics as sports betting becomes more ingrained across much of the U.S. The wave of legalization in recent years unleashed a massive industry centered around betting and, more recently, a wave of investigations and arrests tied to allegations of rigged games. It’s a dynamic that DeWine says he doesn’t think lawmakers fully anticipated.“Ohio shouldn’t have done it,” he said.DeWine prompted a rare move to limit prop betsDeWine recently emerged as a key player in the negotiations between Major League Baseball and its authorized gaming operators that resulted in the capping of prop bets on individual pitches at $200 and excluding them from parlays. The deal was announced earlier this month, a day after Guardians pitchers Luis Ortiz and Emmanuel Clase were indicted and accused of rigging pitches at the behest of gamblers. Both have pleaded not guilty.“Gov. DeWine really did a huge service, I think — to us, certainly, I can’t speak for any of the other sports — in terms of kind of bringing forward the need to do something in this area,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters last week.And DeWine doesn’t plan to stop there. Shortly after Ortiz and Clase were first placed on paid leave this summer, he announced he’d be asking the commissioners and players’ unions of all the major U.S. sports leagues to ban prop bets — sometimes called micro-betting — like those implicated in the Guardians scandal. While that goal has not yet been achieved — micro-betting is critical to the business strategy in an industry with over $11 billion in revenue in the U.S. this year — DeWine said limits put in place for baseball are a good first step.“It needs to be holistic, it needs to be universal,” he told the AP. “They’re just playing with fire. I mean, they are just asking for more and more trouble, their failure to address this.”The gambling industry’s investments in Ohio politicsDeWine’s recent sentiments mark a notable position shift after he pledged to — and then did — sign a legalization law that was sweeping in scope. The legislation allowed adults 21 and older to place sports bets online, at casinos, at racinos and at stand-alone betting kiosks in bars, restaurants and professional sports facilities. Wagering was permitted under the bill on professional sports teams, motor sports, Olympic events, golf, tennis and even major college sports, including Ohio State football.It was clear in the run-up to DeWine’s re-election in 2022 that the gambling industry was intensely interested in what was transpiring in the state.An AP investigation that year found that casino operators, slot machine makers, gaming technology companies, sports interests or their lobbyists donated nearly $1 million in 2021 and 2022 to the nonprofit Republican Governors Association, which supported pro-DeWine committees through its campaign arm. Entities and individuals with ties to the industry also donated more than $22,000 directly to DeWine’s campaign, according to campaign finance reports.A review of more recent campaign filings finds that industry largesse has continued to flow to Ohio politicians with sway over gaming’s future.Lobbyists and a PAC with ties to Jack Casino, DraftKings, FanDuel, MGM, Gamewise, Hard Rock, Underdog, Rush Street or Caesars have donated about $130,000 to Ohio state legislators in the past three years, records show — about a third of that directed to top House and Senate leaders. Then-Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who was positioning as DeWine’s likely gubernatorial successor, had received about $9,000 from industry-connected entities and individuals before being appointed to the U.S. Senate.At least one powerful state lawmaker, Republican House Finance Chairman Brian Stewart, had vowed to introduce legislation protecting prop bets prior to professional baseball’s crackdown.“I think that prop bets are a significant part of sports betting in the state of Ohio,” Stewart told cleveland.com in August. “It’s something that clearly a lot of Ohioans have taken part in and enjoy, and I don’t think there’s something that we should eliminate entirely.”Amid such pushback, DeWine and others now view voluntary buy-in from leagues, players’ unions and sportsbooks as a superior approach to pursuing gambling restrictions on a state-by-state basis, where the authority lies.Matt Schuler, executive director of the Ohio Casino Control Commission, said the baseball deal DeWine helped broker has shown it can be done.“He’s using the bully pulpit and he’s able to connect with the right people in that way,” Schuler said of DeWine. “No one thought that everyone could get on the same page, but now they did because everyone realizes the risk. The bets are small, but the risk is big, and so, having observed gaming and regulated it for about 14 years, this is impressive.”Harassment and scandal in Ohio changed DeWine’s mindDeWine said his concerns with sports gambling began almost as soon as Ohio’s law took effect in 2023. Very quickly, his office began receiving reports that gamblers were threatening members of the University of Dayton basketball team.So he contacted NCAA President Charlie Baker, whom he knew from Baker’s time as governor of Massachusetts, and learned that he shared DeWine’s concern. He got Baker to write a letter requesting the removal of collegiate prop bets from the list of legal wagers that sportsbooks operating in Ohio could place, which allowed DeWine to usher the change through the casino commission.After the Guardians case emerged this summer, DeWine approached Manfred with the same idea. They hadn’t both been governors, but DeWine did have one cache going in: his family’s long-time ownership of North Carolina’s Asheville Tourists. DeWine said Manfred asked him to hold off on pushing unilateral action in Ohio, in hopes of getting the parties to agree to a new national rule.“I would have preferred to have completely done away with the micro-prop bets, but this is the area that he was able to settle on with them, and I was pleased with that,” DeWine said. “And so, I think that’s progress.”DeWine, who faces term limits next year, said he would be happy to sign a repeal of Ohio’s sports betting law at this point, but he’s certain there’s not enough support for that at the Ohio Statehouse.“There’s not the votes for that. I can count,” he said. “I’m not always right, but I can pretty much guarantee you that they’re not ready to do this.”Instead, he’ll continue to make his case in other ways.DeWine, an avid baseball fan, particularly of his hometown Cincinnati Reds, said he believes “these sports are playing with dynamite here and the integrity of the sports is at stake.”“So, you try to do what you can do, and you try and warn people, and try to take action like we did with collegiate, and you try take action like what we’re doing with baseball,” he said. “But we’ve got to keep pushing these other sports to do it, too.”___AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum contributed to this report.

Nearly half of U.S. truck-driving schools face closure in crackdown on ‘poorly trained drivers’

Nearly 44% of the 16,000 truck driving programs listed nationwide by the government may be forced to close if they lose their students after a review by the federal Transportation Department found they may not be complying with minimum requirements.Recommended VideoThe Transportation Department said Monday that it plans to revoke the certification of nearly 3,000 schools unless they can comply with training requirements in the next 30 days. The targeted schools must notify students that their certification is in jeopardy. Another 4,500 schools are being warned they may face similar action.Schools that lose certification will no longer be able to issue the certificates showing a driver completed training that’s required to get a license, so students are likely to abandon those schools. It’s not clear how many of those schools have been actively teaching students.Separately, the Department of Homeland Security is auditing trucking firms in California owned by immigrants to verify the status of their drivers and whether they are qualified to hold a commercial driver’s license.This crackdown on trucking schools and companies is the latest step in the government’s effort to ensure that truck drivers are qualified and eligible to hold a commercial license. This began after a truck driver that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people.The action reins in “illegal and reckless practices that let poorly trained drivers get behind the wheel of semi-trucks and school buses,” Duffy said.Duffy has threatened to pull federal funding from California and Pennsylvania over the issue, and he proposed significant new restrictions on which immigrants can get a commercial driver’s license but a court put those new rules on hold. On Monday, he threatened to withhold $30.4 million from Minnesota if that state doesn’t address shortcomings in its commercial driver’s license program and revoke any licenses that never should have been issued either because they were valid beyond a driver’s work permit or because the state never verified a driver’s immigration status.So far, every state Duffy has threatened has been a Democratic state, but he has said the department is auditing a number of other states, including Texas and South Dakota.Claire Lancaster, a spokesperson for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said: “We take safety on our roads seriously and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety has already worked to ensure we are in compliance with federal law.”Trucking schools fail to meet standardsIt’s not clear how action against these trucking schools could affect the existing shortage of drivers, but the executive director of the largest association of trucking schools, Andrew Poliakoff, said many of the schools being decertified were questionable “CDL mills” that would advertise being able to train drivers in just a few days.In established training schools, students normally spend at least a month and get lessons both behind the wheel and in the classroom.He said those questionable schools were really just “fleecing people out of money” without teaching them the skills they need to get hired or pass the test.“Trucking is an outstanding career. And the people who are not familiar with the industry might see someone charging $1,000 in $2,000 for a long weekend or quick training. And they may think that that’s desirable, but that’s really not,” said Poliakoff, who leads the Commercial Vehicle Training Association that includes 100 schools with 400 locations nationwide. None of those schools were decertified.The Transportation Department said the 3,000 schools it is taking action against failed to meet training standards and didn’t maintain accurate and complete records. The schools are also accused of falsifying or manipulating training data.Some of them were inactive before this action.Yogi Sanwal, the owner, said his company closed its truck driving school in 2022. It did so after it made some changes to comply with federal accreditation requirements, which then triggered a county government demand for upgrades like replacing sand and gravel with asphalt. The company didn’t have the $150,000 it would have needed to do that at the time so it closed the school. It had trained about 500 truckers in the four to five years the school was open, Sanwal said.Trucking industry groups have praised the effort to tighten up licensing standards and ensure that drivers can meet basic English proficiency requirements the Trump administration began enforcing this summer. But groups that represent immigrant truck drivers say they believe many qualified drivers and companies are being targeted simply because of their citizenship status.“Bad actors who exploit loopholes in our regulatory systems are putting everyone at risk. This is unacceptable,” said Paul J. Enos, CEO of the Nevada Trucking Association. “We are focused on solutions and resolute on seeing them implemented.”Todd Spencer, President of the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association, said the industry has long warned about the potential for problems if trucking schools are allowed to certify themselves.“When training standards are weak, or in some instances totally non-existent, drivers are unprepared, and everyone on the road pays the price,” Spencer said.Immigrant drivers say they are being unfairly targetedTruck drivers of the Sikh faith have been caught in the crossfire and faced harassment because the drivers in the Florida crash and another deadly crash in California this fall were both Sikhs. The North American Punjabi Truckers Association estimates that the Sikh workforce makes up about 40% of truck driving on the West Coast and about 20% nationwide. Advocacy groups estimate about 150,000 Sikh truck drivers work in the U.S.The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond immediately to questions about the effort to verify the immigration status of truck drivers, but the UNITED SIKHS advocacy group said they have heard directly from Punjabi company owners about these aggressive audits of immigration records.“Sikh and immigrant truckers with spotless records are being treated like suspects while they keep America’s freight moving,” the UNITED SIKHS group said. “When federal agencies frame lawful, licensed drivers as risks, it doesn’t improve safety — it fuels xenophobia, harassment, and even violence on the road. Any policy built on fear instead of facts endangers families, civil rights, and the national supply chain.”California moved to revoke 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses after federal officials raised concerns that they had been issued improperly to immigrants or allowed to remain valid long after a driver’s work permit expired.___AP writer Audrey McAvoy contributed to this story.