The BET+ Original Series American Gangster: Trap Queens is back for its third season, chronicling the captivating, yet tragic rise and fall of some of the most notorious female criminals.
Rap legend Lil’ Kim returns to narrate this season of the true-crime series. Asked if the second time around is like riding a bike, she tells ABC Audio it’s not, “’cause there’s always so much to learn and there’s always new things to learn.”
“Child, I be falling’ off with the training wheels still — in a good way, though,” she jokingly adds.
The new season of American Gangster: Trap Queens features 10 new stories, one of which revolves around Lil’ Kim’s best friend, something the artist says was a “very emotional” experience.
“Narrating her story was very emotional and near and dear to my heart….It was really emotional for me. Very different than the first season too. Never did I have to do something like that,” she explains. “Narrating it when there’s somebody that is close to you and like near and dear to you, I never thought that that would even be a thought like I never did anything like that before, so, you know, it was different, very different.”
One thing that’s not different and has remained consistent throughout Lil’ Kim’s career, however, is her support for other women, which is why it was important for her to support a project like Trap Queens.
“That’s one thing that I’ve always been is in support of my women and, you know, making sure that, you know, in this season and narrating these women stories, getting their story and their message across was very important to me,” she shares. (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)
The first five episodes of American Gangster: Trap Queens are available to stream now.
(AUGUSTA, Ga.) — Golf great Tiger Woods is back Friday for day two at Augusta National Golf Club in his first competitive golf tournament since the SUV crash that almost took his life 14 months ago.
Many doubted if Woods would walk again after shattering his right leg in the devastating crash. Now the five-time Masters champ has finished his first tournament round Thursday, only four strokes off the lead, saying he’s right where he needs to be heading into round two.
“I was able to make a few putts and end up in the red like I am right now,” he said.
Watch the full report from ABC’s Good Morning America:
(AUGUSTA, Ga.) — Golf great Tiger Woods is back Friday for day two at Augusta National Golf Club in his first competitive golf tournament since the SUV crash that almost took his life 14 months ago.
Many doubted if Woods would walk again after shattering his right leg in the devastating crash. Now the five-time Masters champ has finished his first tournament round Thursday, only four strokes off the lead, saying he’s right where he needs to be heading into round two.
“I was able to make a few putts and end up in the red like I am right now,” he said.
Watch the full report from ABC’s Good Morning America:
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, paving the way for her to become the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court.
Just before the 53-47 bipartisan vote, during a rare occasion when senators announce their votes standing at their desks, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called it “an even greater moment for America as we rise to a more perfect union.”
The White House said President Joe Biden would mark Jackson’s Senate confirmation with a South Lawn ceremony Friday. Vice President Kamala Harris, presided over the Senate and announced the vote.
Spectators in the Senate gallery cheered and almost every senator rose in an extended standing ovation.
Jackson watched the Senate vote at the White House with Biden and her family, a pool report said.
With the Senate barreling toward a two-week Easter recess, the Senate had first voted to cut off debate on Jackson’s confirmation, around ahead of the final roll call vote. It’s been 42 days since Biden nominated Jackson.
While Democrats have the votes to confirm Biden’s nominee on their own, three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney — will break ranks from the GOP to join them, marking a solid, bipartisan win for the Biden White House in a hyper-partisan Washington. Former President Donald Trump’s last nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, received no votes from Democrats.
Jackson is not expected to be fully sworn in for duty until summer, once retiring Justice Stephen Breyer steps down.
With Jackson’s ascension to the bench, for the first time, white men won’t be the majority on the Supreme Court.
In marathon hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Jackson was given the opportunity to tell the panel — and the American people — what it would mean to her to serve on the nation’s highest court.
“I stand on the shoulders of so many who have come before me, including Judge Constance Baker Motley, who was the first African American woman to be appointed to the federal bench and with whom I share a birthday,” Jackson said. “And, like Judge Motley, I have dedicated my career to ensuring that the words engraved on the front of the Supreme Court building — ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ — are a reality and not just an ideal.”
Jackson endured nearly 24 hours of questioning from senators in the, at times, contentious and emotional, hearings.
“Not a single justice has been a Black woman. You, Judge Jackson, can be the first,” said chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “It’s not easy being the first. You have to be the best and in some ways the brightest. Your presence here today and your willingness to brave this process will give inspiration to millions of women who see themselves in you.”
Meanwhile, several Republicans assailed Jackson with accusations that she’s a liberal activist and “soft on crime”– taking issue with nine child pornography sentences she handed down, criticizing her legal work for Guantanamo Bay detainees, and questioning support she received from progressive groups.
“In your nomination, did you notice that people from the left were pretty much cheering you on?” asked Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
“A lot of people were cheering me on, senator,” she replied.
Notably, Graham voted to confirm Jackson to a lifetime judicial appointment last year but said he’ll vote no this time — and warned that if Republicans had control of the Senate, Jackson wouldn’t have received hearings to begin with.
Others in the GOP pressed Jackson to explain critical race theory, say whether babies are racist, and to define “woman” — questions Democrats repeatedly criticized as they took to defending her record and applauding her character.
“You did not get there because of some left wing agenda,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., told her in a dramatic soliloquy, moving Jackson to tears. “You didn’t get here because of some dark money groups. You got here how every Black woman in America who has gotten anywhere has done. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Jackson’s performance, at times, “evasive and unclear,” scrutinizing her judicial philosophy, Jackson insisted “there is not a label” for her judiciary philosophy — because she says she doesn’t have one. She told the committee, “I am acutely aware that, as a judge in our system, I have limited power, and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane.”
At age 51, Jackson currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to which she was named by Biden and confirmed by the Senate last year in a bipartisan vote. She has also been Senate-confirmed on two other occasions.
She will replace Justice Breyer, whom she once clerked for, when he retires at the end of the term. Jackson said last month, “It is extremely humbling to be considered for Justice Breyer’s seat, and I know that I could never fill his shoes. But if confirmed, I would hope to carry on his spirit.”
When Biden formally announced Jackson’s nomination at the White House, he fulfilled a promise made on the 2020 presidential campaign ahead of the South Carolina primary when he relied heavily on support from the state’s Black voters.
“For too long our government, our courts haven’t looked like America,” he said on Feb. 25. “And I believe it is time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications.”
Jackson’s parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, Miami natives who grew up under segregation in the South, were on hand at the historic hearings to support their daughter — who they say was once told by a school guidance counselor to lower her sights.
Jackson, instead, soared.
Growing up, her mother was a public high school principal in Miami-Dade County, where Jackson attended public schools and was a “star student,” while her father was a teacher and, later on, county school board attorney. Jackson has fondly recalled memories of drawing in her coloring books next to her father studying his law school textbooks. Her younger brother, her only sibling, served in the U.S. military and did tours in combat. Two of her uncles have been law enforcement officers.
After graduating from Miami Palmetto Senior High School, Jackson went on to attend Harvard College and Harvard Law School. There she met her husband, Patrick, a general surgeon, at Harvard, and the couple share two daughters, Talia, 21, and Leila, 17.
Asked what her message to young Americans would be, Jackson recalled to the Senate Judiciary Committee that when she was feeling out of place at Harvard in her first semester — a stranger provided a remarkable lesson in resilience.
“I was really questioning: Do I belong here? Can I, can I make it in this environment?” she said. “And I was walking through the yard in the evening and a Black woman I did not know was passing me on the sidewalk, and she looked at me, and I guess she knew how I was feeling. And she leaned over as we crossed and said ‘persevere.'”
The new project, which dropped at midnight, is Camila’s third studio effort and taps deeper into her Cuban-American roots and culture. It features 12 songs, including the previously released “Don’t Go Yet” and the Ed Sheeran-assisted bop “Bam Bam.” She also has genre-bending collaborations with WILLOW and Maria Becerra on “psychofreak” and “Hasta Los Dientes,” respectively.
The 25-year-old singer also brings more Latin flavor to her junior album, singing the song “Celia” entirely in Spanish.
Familia is Camila’s first album since her breakup with Shawn Mendes, whom she dated for two years. To help her heal from the heartbreak, the Grammy winner told Entertainment Tonight she turned to her music for comfort.
“For me, my process is really cathartic,” she said of recording Familia. “It’s me kind of singing anything that I think about and feel into a microphone. I do, like, seven takes of that. I do that for, like, 25 minutes, and then me and my collaborators talk about it. Then we are like, ‘Oh, you said this, that was really cool.’ We brainstorm, we fill it in and then that becomes a song.”
Camila said “there was no barrier of pressure, of anxiety” when making her new album. “It was very unfiltered,” she noted, adding, “[I]t was literally what I was feeling that day. And I think that comes through in the music.”
(BOSTON) — A Massachusetts toddler who weighed just over one pound when she was born at 25 weeks is home after spending the first 19 months of her life hospitalized.
Bradi Foster, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, was greeted with cheers and bubbles from her doctors and nurses when she left Franciscan Children’s, a hospital in Boston, this month with her parents, Darlene and James Foster.
The toddler was born on Aug. 9, 2020, in an emergency cesarean section after Darlene Foster suffered a placenta abruption, which is when the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
Bradi spent her first several months fighting for her life in the neonatal intensive care unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where she was born.
“I think they said it was around 40% chance of survival,” James Foster said of his daughter’s condition at birth. “Her lungs were not fully developed so she needed a lot of assistance just breathing and regulating her oxygen.”
The Fosters, also the parents to three older daughters, ages 6, 4 and 3, recalled having to wait nine days after she was born to even hold Bradi.
“It was scary,” Darlene Foster said. “She was smaller than our hands.”
In Bradi’s first months of life, she underwent heart surgery and battled a number of infections and lung and gastrointestinal issues, according to her parents.
Because Bradi was born early on in the coronavirus pandemic, the Fosters said they were typically allowed to have just one person with her at the hospital, an approximately 75-minute commute from their home.
“It was the toughest thing leaving our house to go to Boston to go see her and then have her sisters be like, ‘We want to go too. We want to see our sister,'” Darlene Foster said. “And some of the times I would just watch her in her little isolette and just look because she was sometimes too sick to hold.”
In January 2021, at just 5 months old, Bradi became so sick she had to be placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, machine, which removes carbon dioxide from the blood and sends back blood with oxygen to the body, giving the heart and lungs time to heal.
That same week, in a hospital across the street, Darlene Foster’s dad died after battling COVID-19.
“We had to say goodbye to him … and we were so sure that it was it for her,” she said, referring to Bradi’s critical condition.
Darlene Foster said that while she was at her dad’s funeral, she was notified by the hospital that Bradi had taken a turn for the better and would be taken off the ECMO machine.
From there, according to the Fosters, Bradi’s condition began to improve.
In July 2021, she was transferred to Franciscan Children’s, a post-acute rehabilitation hospital, where she continued her recovery.
After a tracheostomy was performed and Bradi no longer had to be on sedatives to keep her breathing tube in place, the Fosters said they saw their daughter come alive.
“We finally got to see her smile. Her eyes opened and she wanted to play,” Darlene Foster said. “We completely got our baby as soon as she got her trach.”
In the 19 months she spent hospitalized, Bradi underwent around 10 major surgeries and a dozen smaller ones, according to the Fosters.
Now that she is home, Bradi still has a tracheostomy tube and a gastrostomy tube (g-tube) for nutrition, but her parents said they expect both will be removed in the near future.
“We definitely have high hopes that she will be a normal kid, but it’s just going to take a little bit longer for us to get all those things out and progress her to where she should be for her age,” said James Foster. “But we definitely believe that she will be fully capable.”
Describing Bradi’s personality, he added, “We can’t believe how happy she is. After all of this experience that she’s had in life, she’s remained such a happy soul.”
When she arrived home for the first time, Bradi got to see her sisters for just the second time in her life.
“It is the best feeling in the world,” Darlene Foster said of having their family of six home together. “We just want to give hope to any other NICU parents, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”
(NEW YORK) — Valerie Bertinelli is opening up about mental health.
In a first-person essay published by New Beauty magazine on April 4, the actress and Food Network host revealed that her “mental health has improved immensely” since she ditched the scale.
“I stopped weighing myself when I finished writing my book, which was a big thing for me, and I haven’t gotten on a scale since,” Bertinelli wrote. “My clothes still fit; my jeans still zip up. I guess I was afraid that if I didn’t see what number I was and if I wasn’t able to keep an eye on it, that I would balloon up … but that hasn’t happened.”
“I feel like once that gets on its full journey, then maybe my body will follow. Maybe I’ll want to eat more fruits and vegetables, and drink less alcohol, and eat less sugar, and put things in my body that make both my body and my mind feel better,” she added. “It’s all a test and we’ll see how it works, but I do know that my mental health has improved immensely because I stopped looking at the scale every morning — and that’s the first big step for me.”
The One Day At A Time actress has been vocal about her struggles with her weight and body image. Last year, Bertinelli took a stand against body-shamers in an Instagram video after a follower told her that she needed to lose weight.
Bertinelli’s post resonated with many who then started sharing some of their own struggles. Celebrities also commended her for being open about her experience.
“For me, the big thing is my weight — it’s the thing that holds me back,” Bertinelli wrote in her essay for New Beauty. “But I want to start feeling the same about myself — no matter what weight I am. I don’t have to wait until I’ve lost weight to be kind to myself and to be kind to others.”
“It shouldn’t matter what I look like,” she added. “I’m trying to make that a reality in my life, and then, hopefully, my body will follow.”
(NEW YORK) — Television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, has a considerable financial stake in major pharmaceutical firms and Silicon Valley giants, newly released records show — despite railing against “Big Pharma” and “Big Tech” on the campaign trail.
The disclosures, released late Wednesday, indicate that the GOP candidate and celebrity television doctor has poured millions of dollars into companies like Amazon and CVS — a revelation seemingly at odds with a central tenet of his message to voters.
“I’ve taken on Big Pharma, I’ve gone to battle with Big Tech,” Oz said on Fox News in December. “I cannot be bought.”
A political newcomer, Oz is facing off against David McCormick, a longtime hedge fund executive, in a competitive Republican primary. Both men have immense wealth, and some observers say Oz’s investments could complicate his bid to connect with the Keystone State’s blue-collar voting base.
According to the disclosure report, Oz, together with his wife, owns between $6 million and $27 million in Amazon stocks, between $1.7 million and $6.6 million in Microsoft, and between $1.3 million and $5.7 million each in Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.
Oz and his wife also have between $615,000 and $1.3 million in shares of Thermo Fisher Scientific, between $15,001 and $50,000 in Johnson & Johnson, and between $50,001 and $100,000 each in CVS and the pharmaceutical company AbbVie.
Notably, one of Oz’s campaign ads denouncing Big Tech includes Oz saying that he took on Facebook — and indeed his disclosures do not show him owning any stock in the popular social media company.
In all, Oz’s disclosure shows that he and his spouse together own between $104 and $422 million in various assets and holdings.
Among his other investments, Oz and his wife together own between $11 million and $51 million in shares of Asplundh Tree Trimming, a company co-founded by Oz’s wife’s family.
Other assets include between $6 million and $30 million in shares of the convenient store company Wawa, as well as between $5 million and $25 million in shares of the online health engagement platform Sharecare, where Oz sat on the board of directors until last year.
Oz and his spouse also own between $1.5 million and $6 million shares in the fertility clinic network Prelude Fertility, and between $500,000 and $1 million in shares of Pantheryx, a biotechnology company that specializes in bovine colostrum products. Oz has served as a director of both companies, the disclosure report shows.
According to the report, Oz and his spouse also own between $11 million and $47 million in commercial and residential real estate properties.
Over the past year and a half, Oz reported earning between $20 million and $50 million, including more than $2 million in salary as the host of “The Dr. Oz Show,” more than $7 million in profit from his company Oz Media, LLC, and millions of dollars in capital gains, dividends and interest from his various financial investments.
Yulii Zozulia/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
(MARIUPOL, Ukraine) — In one of the creepiest allegations to emerge from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is being accused by Ukrainian officials of using “mobile crematoriums” to incinerate dead civilians in a deliberate effort to cover-up alleged war crimes in the hard-hit city of Mariupol.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko made the charge this week, saying he heard eyewitness accounts of Russian soldiers driving around Mariupol with crematoriums on lorries and collecting bodies of civilians while at the same time barring the International Committee of the Red Cross from entering the city with humanitarian aid.
“The world has not seen the scale of the tragedy in Mariupol since the existence of Nazis concentration camps,” Boychenko said on Tuesday. “The Russians have turned our entire city into a death camp. Unfortunately, the creepy analogy is getting more and more confirmation.”
In a statement released on its Facebook account, the Mariupol City Council said, “witnesses have seen evidence Russia is operating mobile crematoria in Mariupol, burning the bodies of dead civilians and covering up evidence of war crimes.”
The statement added “this is why Russia is not in a hurry” to let the ICRC and other human rights watch groups into Mariupol to rescue civilians still trapped there.
Boychenko and the city council said the portable human furnaces showed up in Mariupol after reports of alleged atrocities at the hands of Russian troops emerged in Bucha, a suburb of the capital city Kyiv. Ukrainian officials reported that at least 410 civilians were killed in Bucha, including many found with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head.
Boychenko said his once-thriving port city of 400,000 people has been completely decimated by bombing raids and estimated that around 5,000 people there have been killed.
U.S. defense officials told ABC News they have not confirmed the allegations that Russia is using mobile crematoriums to hide evidence of war crimes.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Massachusetts, told ABC News on Thursday that he is not surprised by the reports.
Moulton, a former Marine and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said that during a 2015 fact-finding mission in Ukraine that he went on with other House members, “credible sources” informed him that the Russian Army was using mobile crematoriums on its own soldiers in the Russian occupied Crimea, Ukraine. He said the sources told him Russia was using the devices to cover up the number of its soldiers killed in Crimea.
“We heard this from a variety of sources over there, enough that I was confident in the veracity of the information,” Moulton said. “None of that has changed. That is absolutely what was going on back then and I’m now hearing reports, unsurprisingly, that it’s happening again.”
Moulton said he has no reason to discounts reports from Ukrainian officials that Russia is using the incinerators to hide new war crimes.
“The bottom line is this is nothing new for the Russian Army and Vladimir Putin,” Moulton said.
In an interview with Turkish media this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alleged that Russian soldiers were “cleaning up” before allowing aid workers into the heavily bombed Mariupol.
Pressure has been mounting from the international community to bring war crimes against Putin and other Russian officials. The international criminal court in The Hague has launched an investigation into the atrocities allegedly committed against Ukrainian civilians by Russian troops since the invasion started on Feb. 24.
A report released Thursday by Amnesty International claims Russian forces have committed numerous war crimes throughout Ukraine. The organization said its crisis response investigators interviewed more than 20 people from villages and towns near Kyiv and many claimed to have witnessed civilian executions.
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday voted to pass a resolution to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council in response to Russian forces’ alleged killings of civilians in Ukraine.
“I’m not sure who needs more proof that Russia is committing war crimes,” Moulton told ABC News. “They’re trying to cover their tracks.”
Russia has denied committing atrocities and targeting civilians.
(WASHINGTON) — When the Supreme Court struck down the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s federal eviction moratorium in August 2021, experts and politicians predicted that expulsions would soar.
But eviction filings overall remained well below the historical average through 2021, according to the White House and housing experts.
“[Eviction filings] increased after the CDC moratorium ended, but they still aren’t anywhere near back to normal,” said Peter Hepburn, Princeton Eviction Lab statistician and quantitative analyst. “So we’re still at 60% of the historical average.”
Hepburn credited the influx of state and federal resources and ramped up legal assistance implemented during the coronavirus pandemic for the downward trend.
While some financial resources started during the pandemic outlasted the eviction moratorium, Attorney General Merrick Garland on Aug. 30, 2021, also called upon lawyers and law students to help fill the gap after the moratorium ended by helping with Emergency Rental Assistance applications, volunteering with legal aid providers and assisting courts with implementing eviction diversion programs, among other initiatives aimed at increasing housing stability.
Heeding that call were 99 law schools in 35 states and Puerto Rico, according to the White House.
“Over the past five months, over 2,100 law students dedicated over 81,000 hours to serve over 10,000 households,” said a statement released by the Biden administration.
Gene Sperling, the senior adviser to President Joe Biden who is spearheading the implementation of the American Rescue Plan, said the partnership with the legal community has been an “extraordinary national experiment.” The project — part of an “whole-of-government approach” — contributed to eviction diversion programs as well as rental assistance programs that kept eviction filings significantly below historic averages.
Funding worth $46 billion for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program — provided for households economically impacted by COVID-19 — also flooded the system at the same time these partnerships were emerging.
David Daix, a 45-year-old immigrant from the Ivory Coast and father of two residing in Henrico Country, Virginia, is one beneficiary of a newly beefed-up partnership between the Virginia Poverty Law Center’s eviction legal helpline and the University of Richmond School of Law.
After being let go from his customer service job in March 2020, Daix was unable to pay rent after his unemployment benefits expired a year later. His landlord filed for eviction in January 2022, he said. The helpline put him in touch with Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, which got his case dismissed in early February.
Daix is not alone. Richmond, Virginia, and its surrounding counties — Henrico and Chesterfield — have some of the highest eviction rates in the country, according to Princeton’s Eviction Lab.
These regions had a stark “access to justice” gap between represented and unrepresented individuals in court. From 2015 to 2019, only 1% of tenants in Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield were represented in local general district courts, according to the 2017 Virginia Self-Represented Litigant Study.
In 2020, tenant representation in housing court increased by 11% while 30% fewer landlords were awarded judgments, according to the RVA Eviction Lab. Four years ago, the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society didn’t have a single attorney who was practicing full-time housing law; now it has six.
“A new generation of housing advocates have been born out of this time,” Erika Poethig, White House adviser on Urban Planning and Policy, said at an eviction prevention event at the end of January.
The program began after the Biden administration reached out to Georgetown Law School Dean Bill Treanor, who spearheaded the partnership between law schools and the White House along with NYU Law School Dean Trevor Morrison.
Treanor said one of the most important legacies of the project is a renewed commitment to eviction prevention, and the White House and Department of Justice have said they intend to maintain the law school partnerships after the pandemic ends.
“Even after the pandemic is over, the underlying housing crisis will endure. This has helped make us all conscious [of] the importance of finding ways in which law students can help people facing housing crises,” Treanor said.
As part of the program, the University of South Carolina School of Law — located in Columbia, the city with the eighth-highest eviction rate in the country — helped fund Veterans Legal Clinics that serve indigent veterans with housing issues. The school also partnered with the NAACP housing navigators program.
“We’ve made the case to the General Assembly of South Carolina that these access to justice initiatives are vital to the public interest of South Carolina,” said William Hubbard, dean of the University of South Carolina School of Law.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston University School of Law, said tenants often do not have access to legal assistance and don’t know how to fight an illegal eviction, especially during a pandemic.
“[Tenants] have no way of getting it back, they have no way of fighting against a landlord who has used something that’s improper,” Onwuachi-Willig said. “And imagine and during all of that, during a pandemic, when you’re also trying not to get sick.”
Onwuachi-Willig partnered with Naomi Mann, clinical associate professor, and Jade Brown, clinical instructor in the Civil Litigation and Justice Program, last spring. Brown helped develop the MA Defense for Eviction (MADE) for students to help tenants respond to initial complaints filed by landlords against them and generate pleas based on tenants’ answers.
“Hopefully, the pandemic has sort of revealed the cracks in our system, and where they are. It has certainly shown us how enormous the unmet need is, when it comes to housing law, the unmet legal need, in particular, is what we obviously are working on,” Mann said.
Students did not need to have a background in housing law to participate and, according to Brown, the project had a “profound” impact on many of them.
“Being able to work with Naomi and Jade on this definitely solidifies this is something that will be a part of my career for a long time,” said Julian Burlando-Salazar, a Boston University law student who was not previously planning to pursue housing law.
Burlando-Salazar partnered with another BU law student, Marie Tashima, to solve tenants’ disputes with landlords through mediation.
The movement toward getting tenants better representation in court was already underway in many states before the pandemic began.
Three states — Washington, Maryland and Connecticut — have enacted laws that require no necessary qualifications for tenants facing eviction to be eligible for free legal representation.
Eleven states have established a qualified right to counsel, including New York, where the state’s eviction moratorium ended on Jan. 15, 2022. That same day, Ciji Stewart was scheduled to appear in court and requested a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society.
Stewart, a mother of three living in Rockaway Beach in Queens, received a call from Sateesh Nori, the attorney in charge of the Queens Neighborhood Office of the Legal Aid Society.
“I was just telling Nori everything that was happening in my home and he got me an adjournment, which I didn’t know what was or could happen,” Stewart said. “He helped me file a suit for repairs against the landlord.”
Because she lived in New York, Stewart may have already qualified for legal representation. But since the federal program was developed, many more like her in other states have now begun to feel the same relief.
But while University of Richmond Law School Dean Wendy Perdue said the program represents progress in that it has helped show the necessity of legal representation, she said it’s still just a “drop in the bucket.”
“The Association of American law schools has collected the data nationwide — literally millions of hours of service that law students around the country provide,” she said. “It’s still only a drop in the bucket, but the only way you fill up the bucket is with a series of drops and so law students are having an important impact in filling some of the gaps that exist in legal services.”
