(CHICAGO) — A lawsuit filed against Northwestern University’s law school claims that its hiring practices give preference to less-qualified women and applicants of color, taking away opportunities from better qualified white men.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Chicago, alleges that faculty hiring practices at universities in the United States are a “cesspool of corruption and lawlessness.”
The suit alleges that Northwestern Pritzker School of Law has instituted a mandate to hire more women and people of color, which the suit claims is a violation of federal law that prohibits discriminating against applicants on the basis of race and sex.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action programs in college admissions.
“Northwestern Pritzker School of Law is among the top law schools in the country, and we are proud of their outstanding faculty,” Northwestern University spokesperson Jon Yates said in a statement to ABC News. “We intend to vigorously defend this case.”
Jonathan Mitchell, the lead attorney behind the suit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mitchell is known for his work as the lawyer behind S.B. 8, the Texas abortion law passed in 2021. He has also represented former President Donald Trump at the Supreme Court for his right to appear on the Colorado presidential primary ballot this year.
The plaintiff, Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP) describes themselves as a voluntary, nonprofit membership organization “formed for the purpose of restoring meritocracy in academia and fighting race and sex preferences that subordinate academic merit to so-called diversity considerations.”
The lawsuit alleges that the law school hires women and people of color “with mediocre and undistinguished records over white men who have better credentials, better scholarship and better teaching ability.”
It says that three of 21 job offers from the law school over the past three years have gone to white men.
FASORP previously tried to sue both New York University and Harvard Law Reviews in 2018 for similar claims of discrimination against white men. In both cases they were unsuccessful, with a judge ruling that the organization and its members lacked standing to sue.
(PHOENIX) — A 10-year-old boy has died after he suffered a “heat-related medical emergency” during a hike in Arizona on Tuesday.
Firefighters from the Phoenix, Tempe and Chandler fire departments were called to South Mountain Park and Preserve around 2 p.m. local time, according to a release from Phoenix Fire. Phoenix Police Department said officers were called shortly later to Mormon Trailhead.
The boy had reportedly been hiking with relatives when he began to suffer the medical emergency.
Firefighters, technical rescue team members and police officers reached the boy, who was up about one mile on the trail, according to Phoenix Fire and Phoenix PD. The boy was airlifted from the trail to a waiting ambulance, where he was transported to the hospital in “extremely critical condition” before dying.
Phoenix Fire officials told local ABC News affiliate KNXV-TV that the boy’s family may have been from out of town, but where is unclear.
Phoenix PD detectives are currently investigating the incident. The department did not immediately return ABC News’ request for comment.
Temperatures in Phoenix reached a high of 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, according to National Weather Service Phoenix in a post on X, about six degrees above the average temperature.
Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, even though most are preventable, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. About 1,220 people die in the U.S. from heat-related illnesses every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Normally during extreme heat — meaning temperatures that are hotter and/or more humid than average — the body tries to cool itself by sweating.
If a person does not replenish with fluids, it can lead to dehydration. The body temperature can then continue to rise and mild symptoms emerge such as sunburn, heat rash or heat cramps.
This can progress to heat exhaustion — which includes symptoms of headaches, dizziness, muscle cramps, nausea and vomiting — and, if the body reaches extremely high temperatures, heat stroke.
Anyone can be impacted by heat-related illness but some populations — including the elderly, infants and young children, outdoor workers and people with low socioeconomic status — are at higher risk.
To lower the risk of heat-related illness, the CDC recommends staying hydrated and remaining in an air-conditioned space as much as possible. If you go outside, the CDC recommends waring lightweight, loose-fitting clothing.
(NEW YORK) — Heat alerts have been issued for 21 states from Washington to Florida on Wednesday, with more than 90 million on alert for extreme weather.
Several wildfires also exploded in the West on Tuesday due to dry conditions and ongoing heat.
The dangerous heat is just beginning in the West, but it has already claimed the life of a 10-year-old boy who was hiking in Phoenix on Tuesday.
This prolonged heat could be for the record books, and could be one of the worst in 18 years for parts of California.
A heat advisory has been issued for coastal cities, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, where temperatures could get close to 90 degrees on Wednesday. Inland temperatures could rise into the 110s.
Dozens of record highs are expected over the next week in the West, even all the way to Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
In the South and Mississippi River Valley, the combination of heat and humidity could push the heat index over 110 degrees.
(NEW YORK) — With Donald Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush money case delayed until September following Tuesday’s decision by Judge Juan Merchan, the judge now faces the task of applying the Supreme Court’s new test for the limits of presidential immunity to the former president’s criminal conviction.
Trump in May was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that the judge should “set aside” the jury’s verdict in the case because the jury heard evidence during the trial that would have been protected by presidential immunity, based on Monday’s ruling by the Supreme Court that Trump is entitled to “at least presumptive immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
To rule on the defense’s request — which Judge Merchan plans to do by Sept. 6 — he will likely have to answer two key questions, according to former federal prosecutor Jarrod Schaeffer.
The first question is, would the Supreme Court’s decision have limited some of the evidence and testimony at trial?
Rather than argue that Trump’s conduct related to Daniels’ hush money payment constituted official acts of the presidency — an argument a federal judge rejected last year — Trump’s lawyers have focused on what they have called “official-acts evidence.”
Evidence including Trump’s social media posts in 2018, a government ethics disclosure, and phone records were cited as examples of evidence related to official acts that prosecutors emphasized during their closing arguments to the jury.
Prosecutors introduced some of Trump’s tweets about his former lawyer Michael Cohen to emphasize what they called a “pressure campaign” to prevent him from cooperating with investigators in 2018.
“Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if it means lying or making up stories,” Trump wrote in an April 2018 tweet.
The Supreme Court’s decision on immunity included some protections for Trump’s communications — including tweets — because they “fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities”; however, the ruling added that lower courts would need to determine if Trump was speaking in his official capacity as president or in an unofficial function such as a candidate for office or party leader.
Merchan declined to consider Trump’s last-minute challenge to some evidence, including the tweets, ahead of trial, determining that Trump’s request to exclude the evidence was “untimely.”
Defense lawyers also suggested that some testimony from Trump’s former White House communications director Hope Hicks would have been protected by immunity.
“I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks testified during the trial regarding a 2018 conversation with then-President Trump about Stormy Daniels’ accusation of a long-denied 2006 sexual encounter with Trump.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass later described that testimony to the jury as “devastating,” saying that it “puts the nail in Mr. Trump’s coffin.”
According to Schaeffer, Hicks’ testimony poses a novel question to Merchan, who will need to weigh the Supreme Court’s limit on using “testimony or private records of the President or his advisers” as evidence at trial.
“Even if these are conversations about unofficial acts or purely private conduct, the President is having these conversations with official advisers or people who perform an official role in connection with the presidency,” Schaeffer said. “Would intruding on these conversations or allowing these records to be used cause the next president to hesitate before having these kinds of candid conversations with people that they need to rely on in order to execute their duties?”
In addition to prohibiting prosecution for official acts of a president, the Supreme Court’s ruling restricted the use of evidence related to official acts in cases related to a president’s private actions, including limiting evidence and testimony from a president’s advisers.
According to Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School, the ambiguity of the Supreme Court’s decision about the use of such evidence presents an opportunity for Trump’s lawyers, despite a federal judge already determining that the hush money payment was “purely a personal item of the President.”
“It’s not entirely clear what they meant by the prohibition on the use of evidence,” Levitt said. “For as long and prominent an opinion as it was, it’s not very careful, and so it doesn’t provide a lot of guidance.”
Schaeffer said the second question Merchan will have to consider is, did the jury rely on that evidence and testimony when it reached a guilty verdict?
If Merchan determines that the evidence cited by prosecutors was protected by presidential immunity, he then needs to weigh if the introduction of the evidence at trial was harmless or if it created a “structural error that rendered this trial utterly unfair,” according to Schaeffer.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” said Schaeffer. “I don’t know that anyone does, because I’m not sure that I’ve seen a situation where the Supreme Court has eliminated an entire class of otherwise permissible evidence from a prosecution after a trial has taken place and before sentencing.”
Some experts suggested that the evidence highlighted by Trump in a March pretrial motion — such as tweets about Cohen — were unlikely to have influenced the verdict.
“There’s just a mountain of other evidence that would support the jury’s verdict, so I don’t see it really having any appreciable impact, if any impact, on the New York case,” Pace University School of Law professor Bennett L. Gershman told ABC News.
However, prosecutors themselves placed emphasis on Hicks’ testimony when urging jurors to convict the former president — potentially creating an issue if the testimony is deemed to be protected by immunity.
“She basically burst into tears a few minutes — a few seconds after that because she realized how much this testimony puts the nail in Mr. Trump’s coffin,” Steinglass said in his closing arguments to jurors about Hicks’ testimony.
If Merchan opts to set aside the verdict, he could order a new trial without any of the contested evidence related to official acts, according to Levitt.
Law enforcement members watch as the Thompson fire burns over Lake Oroville in Oroville, California on July 2, 2024. (Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Three firefighters sustained heat-related injuries while battling the Thompson Fire in Butte County, California, as red flag conditions persist in the area, according to Cal Fire.
The state on Tuesday secured federal assistance to support the response to the fire, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
“We’re working proactively to bring in additional funding to help ensure the availability of vital resources to suppress the fire burning in Butte County,” he said in a statement.
About 13,000 people remain under evacuation order near Oroville, California, the Butte County Sheriff said.
The blaze has burned about 3,002 acres since it was ignited on Tuesday morning, fire officials said. It was zero percent contained, Cal Fire said.
Newsom said California had been approved for a Fire Management Assistance Grant, a federal program that can reimburse up to 75% of eligible firefighting costs.
About 510 fire personnel were battling the “well established” blaze on Tuesday night, Cal Fire said in a fact sheet.
“The fire has jumped the diversion pool of the Feather River and is making runs toward Olive Highway in the Kelly Ridge area,” the agency said.
(LAFAYETTE, Wis.) — A house in Lafayette, Wisconsin exploded Tuesday afternoon, officials said.
One man who was in the home at the time was taken to the hospital by helicopter, according to Elkhorn Fire Chief Trent Eichmann.
It took 30 to 40 minutes for firefighters to get to the man, who was rescued from the basement of the house.
His identity and condition are not yet known.
According to the man’s family, he was the only person inside the home when it exploded, Walworth County Sheriff Dave Gerber said.
Emergency responders are continuing to search the area for more victims.
Preliminary information suggests that the incident may have been a propane gas explosion, Eichmann said. Since the area is rural, it is not serviced by natural gas.
“I’ve talked to a couple other fire departments locally, and they heard the boom, felt the boom,” Eichmann said.
Officials do not believe there is a continued risk to the area at this time.
(TULSA, Okla.) — Two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre are calling on President Joe Biden to open an investigation into the deadly attack following the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision last month to dismiss the survivors’ lawsuit that sought reparations.
Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, and Viola Ford Fletcher, 110, made a plea to the Biden administration on Tuesday to invoke the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, which allows for cold cases of violent crimes against Black people committed before 1970 to be reopened and investigated.
“We must face it, and we must give respect to our survivors and descendants in this community by demanding that the Department of Justice immediately investigate what happened here, on this sacred ground, over 100 years ago,” Tiffany Crutcher, a descendant of massacre survivors and the executive director of the Terence Crutcher Foundation, said. “This community is watching, President Biden. This nation is watching.”
Randle and Fletcher have also filed a petition for a rehearing to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, asking the court to consider the case again following its June 12 decision to dismiss the survivors’ lawsuit against defendants, which include the city of Tulsa. They were seeking reparations and wanting to hold someone accountable for the massacre and its long-term effects on the local and national Black community.
In an 8-1 decision, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the survivors against the city of Tulsa, the Board of County Commissioners for Tulsa County, the Tulsa Regional Chamber and the Oklahoma Military Department, affirming a July 2023 decision by Tulsa District Court Judge Caroline Wall to dismiss the suit with prejudice, meaning that the case cannot be refiled.
“We are profoundly disappointed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to reject our lawsuit. And we are deeply sad that we may not live long enough to see the state of Oklahoma or the United States of America honestly confront and right the wrongs of one of the darkest days of history,” Randle and Fletcher said in a joint statement.
Fletcher’s younger brother, Hughes Van Ellis, was the third plaintiff when the suit was originally filed in 2020. He died last fall at age 102. The suit now names Muriel Watson, personal representative for his estate, as the third plaintiff.
The lawsuit included a claim of public nuisance, alleging that as a result of the massacre, the survivors “continue to face racially disparate treatment and city-created barriers to basic human needs, including jobs, financial security, education, housing, justice and health, that annoy, injure, or endanger their comfort, repose, health, or safety and render them insecure in life, or in the use of their property.”
According to the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision, though the plaintiffs’ grievances are legitimate, they do not fall within the scope of the state’s statute for public nuisance.
Besides the allegations of public nuisance, attorneys for the survivors argued that the city of Tulsa has used the historic reputation of Black Wall Street for their own financial benefit. Attorneys argued that any money the city receives from promoting Black Wall Street, the site of the massacre, should be put into a compensation fund for victims and their descendants.
Between May 31 and June 1, 1921, white Tulsa residents set fire to and bombed several square blocks of the city, killing an estimated 300 Black residents and leaving thousands homeless, according to historians. The area affected by the massacre included the Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, because of its successful shops and businesses owned by Tulsa’s Black residents.
Though the massacre deeply affected the Greenwood community, it was largely omitted from local, state and national histories for years. In 1997, the Oklahoma State Legislature authorized the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. The commission released its final report in February 2001. In more recent years, the massacre has gotten more attention from the media due to the survivors’ ongoing fight for reparations. Still, there has been no government investigation and no parties have been held accountable for the massacre.
“But now that we have been failed by the courts, now that we’ve been failed by the Congress, we’re calling upon President Biden to fulfill his promise to these survivors, to this community and for Black people throughout this nation,” DaMario Solomon-Simmons, lead attorney for the survivors, said. “We hurt as a community, a national Black community, for the destruction of Greenwood.”
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.
(CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y.) — The New Jersey man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie on stage at a speaking event in 2022 rejected a plea deal that involved state and potential federal charges, attorneys said Tuesday.
Rushdie was stabbed multiple times on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in southwestern New York in August 2022 in what prosecutors said was a “preplanned” attack.
Hadi Matar was charged with second-degree attempted murder and assault in connection with the attack. He has pleaded not guilty.
During a court appearance in Chautauqua County on Tuesday, Matar declined the plea deal that covered both state and any potential federal charges, the Chautauqua County District Attorney’s Office said.
The deal required a guilty plea to the top state count of second-degree attempted murder for a sentence of 20 years — down from a maximum of 25 years for the charge, the district attorney’s office said.
Under the deal, state and federal prosecutors agreed to the 20-year sentence “with the understanding that Mr. Matar would also plea to a charge in federal court and receive an additional 10-20 years in a federal facility,” the Chautauqua County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to ABC News.
The federal sentence would have run consecutive to his state sentence, for 30 to 40 years of total incarceration plus lifetime supervision upon release, the office said.
The defense had made a counteroffer on Tuesday that proposed a 15-year sentence for the second-degree attempted murder charge, which was rejected by the state, his public defender, Nathaniel Barone II, told ABC News.
“At that point, it was determined that he was not going to accept the state’s offer,” Barone said.
Barone said the proposed federal charge was attempting to provide material support to a designated terrorist organization, which had yet to be filed.
ABC News reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York for comment.
Jury selection in the state case is scheduled for Sept. 10, online court records show.
Matar remains in custody at the Chautauqua County Jail.
The indictment alleged that he “attempted to cause the death of Salman Rushdie by stabbing him multiple times with a knife.”
Rushdie is now blind in his right eye from the attack, which he recounted in a new book, “Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.”
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The state trial was postponed from January so that manuscripts related to the memoir could be subpoenaed by the defense.
A hearing regarding a motion to quash defense discovery subpoenas regarding the book is scheduled for July 18, Barone said.
(NEW YORK) — The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case in New York has postponed sentencing to Sept. 18, according to a letter sent to the parties.
The move came after the Manhattan district attorney’s office said earlier Tuesday it would not oppose Trump’s request to file a motion arguing that his hush money conviction should be tossed based on Monday’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity.
“Although we believe defendant’s arguments to be without merit, we do not oppose his request for leave to file and his putative request to adjourn sentencing pending determination of his motion,” assistant district attorney Josh Steinglass wrote in a letter to Judge Juan Merchan.
On Monday, just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling that Trump has some presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken to overturn results of the 2020 election, Trump’s attorneys sent a letter to Judge Merchan asking to him to “set aside the jury’s verdict” in his hush money case.
Judge Merchan, in his response, signaled to the parties that he would rule on Trump’s motion to set aside his conviction on Sept. 6.
He gave Trump until July 10 to submit papers and the DA’s office until July 24 to respond.
Sentencing had originally been scheduled for July 11, just days before Trump will claim the Republican nomination. Merchan has now set sentencing for Sept. 18 at 10 a.m. ET.
Trump in May was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a 2016 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
In the defense’s letter to Judge Merchan, which was made public Tuesday, defense attorneys argued Trump’s conviction should be thrown out because prosecutors relied on evidence and testimony they believe should have been protected by presidential immunity, including several of Trump’s tweets, a government ethics form, and the testimony of former Trump aide Hope Hicks.
“The verdicts in this case violate the presidential immunity doctrine and create grave risks of ‘an Executive Branch that cannibalizes itself,'” defense attorney Todd Blanche wrote. “After further briefing on these issues beginning on July 10, 2024, it will be manifest that the trial result cannot stand.”
Defense lawyers highlighted testimony from Hicks, who said Trump preferred the story of his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels — which he denies — come out after the 2016 election.
“I think Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks testified. Prosecutor Josh Steinglass called the testimony “devastating.”
“She basically burst into tears a few minutes — a few seconds after that because she realized how much this testimony puts the nail in Mr. Trump’s coffin,” Steinglass said during his closing argument.
The defense appears to be relying on a portion of the Supreme Court opinion that said, “Testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial.”
Trump’s lawyers also argued that Trump’s social media posts about his former lawyer Michael Cohen, a 2018 filing from the Office of Government Ethics, and phone records from Trump’s time in office should have not been allowed.
During Trump’s effort to remove the state case to federal court in 2023, Judge Alvin Hellerstein determined that Trump’s alleged conduct in the case was “purely a personal item” outside of Trump’s official duties.
“The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the matter was purely a personal item of the President — a cover-up of an embarrassing event,” Hellerstein wrote in a July 2023 decision denying Trump’s effort to remove the case to federal court. “Hush money paid to an adult film star is not related to a President’s official acts. It does not reflect in any way the color of the President’s official duties.”
Monday’s Supreme Court ruling determined that Trump is entitled to “at least presumptive immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
Trump’s hush money case is the second of his four criminal cases to be impacted by the ruling, which sent Trump’s federal election interference case back to the U.S. district court to determine which acts alleged in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment constitute official duties that could be protected from liability and which are not.
(FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.) — The husband of a missing Arizona woman has been arrested for assault as the search for her continues, police said.
Kelly Paduchowski, 45, was reported missing Sunday evening, according to the Flagstaff Police Department. Paduchowski had gone for a run and swim at Campbell Mesa Trail at about 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to authorities.
Her white Mazda CX-5 was located at the trailhead, Flagstaff police said.
The Flagstaff Police Department said they arrested her husband, 58-year-old Daniel Paduchowski, after interviewing family members and witnesses and reviewing evidence.
He faces aggravated assault charges, according to police.
Details about what led to the husband’s arrest have not yet been disclosed, and police are continuing to search for the missing woman.
Kelly Paduchowski, who is about 5-foot-8 and 138 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes, was wearing black shorts, a gray shirt and running shoes, authorities said. Flagstaff police asked members of the public who might have information to call at 928-774-1414.
“The investigation is ongoing and the number one priority is to locate Kelly,” police said.
