NYC deputy mayor for public safety resigns, latest in Adams admin to leave
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(NEW YORK) — New York City’s deputy mayor for public safety, Phil Banks III, resigned Monday in the latest fallout from the corruption scandal engulfing the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.
“We spoke yesterday and we spoke again this morning and he stated he wants to move on to other things in his life,” Adams told NY1. “I wish my good friend well.”
Banks’ brother, David Banks, resigned as schools chancellor. First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, David Banks’ wife, is arranging her departure from the administration.
Phil Banks had his phones seized last month as part of a federal investigation into city contracts of how the police department enforced nightlife regulations. David Banks and Sheena Wright had their phones seized as well.
Phil Banks, at one point the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the NYPD, resigned from the department in 2014 amid a different corruption scandal during the prior administration. Federal prosecutors at the time named Banks an unindicted coconspirator.
Adams has pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment charging him with bribery and fraud. He is resisting calls for his resignation.
“New Yorkers are saying keep doing the job you’ve been doing,” Adams told NY1.
(NEW YORK) — Universities across the country have transformed at the command of anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) legislation. At the University of Texas-Austin, the legislation led to resource cancellations, office closures, and staff firings — pushing some students to create alternatives to their school’s defunct diversity programs.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 17 into law in 2023, barring public institutions of higher education from having diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, as well as programs, activities, and training conducted by those offices. The law also restricts training or hiring policies based on race, gender identity or sexual orientation.
His office told ABC News in a recent statement that the legislation was intended to ensure people “advance based on talent and merit at public colleges and universities in Texas.”
Abbott’s office criticized universities for using DEI offices to “advance political agendas and exclude conservative viewpoints on college campuses. These efforts adversely affect our students, limit exposure to diverse thought, and destroy our education system,” read the statement from Abbott’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris.
ABC News spoke to UT Austin students and a terminated faculty member about the compounding impact the loss of diversity programs has had on campus.
The Monarch Program
The long list of potential college life logistics – like how to pay for school, open an independent bank account or get a job – is even longer for undocumented students and those with temporary status.
These students are not eligible for federal student aid, federal work-study, are limited in their access to grants and scholarships and, in some cases, cannot accept paying jobs while in school.
With limited guidance and limited options, Arely, a student at UT Austin who asked to be referenced by only her first name out of privacy concerns, said her status created many unknowns and uncertainties for her future when applying to colleges. As a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, Martinez told ABC News she worked hard to be at the top of her high school class so she could get into a good school.
DACA is a U.S. government policy that allows some undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States temporarily and work. Recipients must have entered the United States illegally before their 16th birthday and be younger than 31 years old on June 15, 2012, according to the U.S. Citizens and Immigration Services website.
“It was always kind of told to me, like, your education is going to be the only way you’re going to be able to kind of push forward and build something out for yourself – it’s through your education,” said Arely.
At UT Austin, students like Arely had a place to turn to for answers. Monarch, an on-campus student program for undocumented and temporary status students, hosted workshops on those logistical concerns, mental health resources at little to no cost, career fairs specifically geared toward undocumented students, panel discussions with undocumented grads, and a donor-based scholarship.
“Those are the things that I would help students navigate,” said Alicia Moreno, the former Monarch Student Program Coordinator. “Like working with campus partners to create resources and help students understand what their options were because many students that I heard – before they ran into Monarch – they believed their options were really slim.”
Monarch was a way for the university to ensure students could succeed despite the barriers they face due to their status, Moreno said.
“A lot of my college experience would have definitely been way more different had Monarch not been there,” said Arely. “I can’t imagine in what situation I would have been had I not had that support system.”
Arely, who worked at the center, said the Monarch team also would get requests from faculty and staff asking to hold trainings regarding the challenges undocumented students face.
“A lot of these students had gone their whole college career having access to these resources, and now they were suddenly taken away and ripped out of their hands,” said Arely. “Especially for, like, incoming freshmen who had maybe specifically applied to UT Austin because of this program, and now they’re going to get to the UT campus and they’re going to realize that program that was supposed to support them and acknowledge them is no longer there.”
Moreno was one of about 60 people whose positions were terminated following the closure of DEI offices and related initiatives, according to a joint letter from the Texas NAACP & Texas Conference of American Association of University Professors.
The university initially stated that some programs would be shifted to other divisions or renamed to complement ongoing operations. Monarch, according to students and former staff, was also initially not targeted by SB 17 since it does not specifically refer to any race or ethnicity.
However, university officials later stated that the law changed the scope of some programs, making them broader and creating overlap between existing programs.
“We know these programs and the dedicated staff who run them will continue to have positive impacts on our campus and community,” read the university’s letter referring to the programs that remained.
The terminations came shortly after state Sen. Brandon Creighton, who introduced the legislation, warned universities against simply renaming their DEI programs, threatening to freeze funding.
“I was getting ready to prepare for the next year. My office was just painted. I had just gotten that Exemplary Service Award, and then – boom! – we were all terminated,” Moreno said.
Students say they have been left to pick up the pieces without the dedicated resources to support them. Victoria Uriostegui-Garcia, a member of a student-run group called Rooted, said her organization has become a substitute for the services once provided by Monarch. It is one of several student-run organizations to take on the responsibilities of the now-shuttered offices.
“It falls on students again to provide their own resources, which is a very heavy burden,” said Uriostegui-Garcia. “We’re going to try our best.”
Students lead the charge
Among the centers and programs shut down by UT Austin were Multicultural Engagement Center, the Gender and Sexuality Center, and the Fearless Leadership Institute – a professional development program for African American & Hispanic women.
However, UT Austin is not the only school facing these restrictions. Schools across the state — and in some states across the country — have seen similar mass closures and firings following the implementation of anti-DEI legislation.
At least nine states have implemented legislation restricting DEI in education: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, lowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.
Supporters of anti-DEI legislation, like Creighton, have applauded the changes made by SB 17. Creighton argued that it returned the university to “a merit-based operational framework, ensuring that every student, faculty, and staff member is afforded equal opportunities and not silenced by DEI-oriented policies,” he said in a March 2024 statement.
UT Austin states that it remains vigilant in ongoing efforts to ensure the university’s compliance with the state law, defining DEI offices as any office that implements programs or training with reference to race, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation, “influences hiring or employment practices” with respect to those identities or promotes “differential treatment of or providing special benefits to individuals” on the basis of identity.
I recognize that strong feelings have surrounded SB 17 from the beginning and will shape many Longhorns’ perceptions of these measures,” said university president Jay Hartzell. “It is important that we respect the perspectives and experiences of our fellow Longhorns as the changes we are announcing today take effect. It is also important that this continues to be a welcoming, supportive community for all.”
UT Austin did not respond to ABC News’ requests for further comment.
Alex and Sophia, members of Texas Students for DEI who asked to be referenced by only their first names out of privacy concerns, say the services were targeted for specific groups who have historically faced discrimination or barriers to success, but were open to all students.
Alex noted, for example, that a closet of free clothes located in the gender center was open to all: “If it meant that you got kicked out of the home, or if it meant that you needed clothes for a job — hey, there’s clothes available, no questions asked.”
Alex and Sophia say many students they have spoken to did not know about SB 17 until it passed and they started seeing their centers close on campus.
Student organizations have stepped up to the plate, hoping to foster community in a time when resources backed by the university have shrunk. They say schools across the state have “over-complied” with the law — leading to a chilling effect of classroom curriculum and discussion concerning race, gender and sexual orientation.
“Even now, if you read some of the syllabi for some classes, they’ll have a disclaimer at the end saying no material in this class is pertaining to SB 17 or falls under the guidelines of SB 17,” said Sophia, despite the UT Austin website stating explicitly that academic instruction and research is not to be impacted by the law. “They’re expecting to be censored. They’re expecting the state to want to do things against them, and so they’re, they feel less comfortable talking about these topics openly, which ultimately affects our education.”
She continued, “We are a university, we’re a place of learning, and learning requires people to be open about information in a way that isn’t censored, and when a state tries to censor that, they ultimately harm themselves.”
With SB 17 passed, students are worried the state will continue to embrace other anti-DEI initiatives. They hope to safeguard from further efforts by educating the college community about what DEI is and what it means.
“It isn’t just one university. It’s all of us. And silence isn’t really the way out,” said Alex.
(SPRINGFIELD, Ill.) — The Illinois Supreme Court has thrown out former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction for lying about a 2019 hate crime.
Smollett was found guilty in 2021 for faking a racist and homophobic attack and lying to the police. His lawyers said this violated his Fifth Amendment rights because, in 2019, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had already agreed to drop the charges if Smollett paid $10,000 and did community service. A special prosecutor later charged him again, leading to his trial and conviction.
In its decision, filed on Thursday, the court stated they are resolving a “question about the State’s responsibility to honor the agreements it makes with defendants.”
The court stated it did not find that the state could bring a second prosecution against Smollett after the initial charges were dismissed as part of an agreement and the actor performed the terms of the agreement, noting that Illinois case law establishes that it is “fundamentally unfair to allow the prosecution to renege on a deal with a defendant when the defendant has relied on the agreement to his detriment.”
“We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust. Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied,” it said.
Among the cases cited in the court’s decision is Bill Cosby’s, whose conviction on sexual assault charges was overturned in 2021 by Pennsylvania’s highest court.
Cosby was sentenced in 2018 to three to 10 years in state prison for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting former Temple University employee Andrea Constand in 2004. After hearing Cosby’s appeal, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concluded that his prosecution should never have occurred due to a deal the comedian cut with former Montgomery County prosecutor Bruce Castor, who agreed not to criminally prosecute Cosby if he gave a deposition in a civil case brought against him by Constand.
While citing the Cosby case, the Illinois Supreme Court said the state “reneging on a fully executed agreement” after Smollett forfeited a $10,000 bond “would be arbitrary, unreasonable, fundamentally unfair, and a violation of the defendant’s due process rights.”
The Illinois Supreme Court’s decision cancels earlier rulings by Cook County and appellate courts. The court has now sent the case back to the lower court to officially dismiss the charges.
A jury convicted him in December 2021 on five of six felony counts of disorderly conduct stemming from him filing a false police report and lying to police, who spent more than $130,000 investigating his allegations.
He was sentenced to 150 days in county jail, ordered to pay $120,000 in restitution to the city of Chicago, fined $25,000 and ordered to serve 30 months of felony probation.
The case began after the openly gay actor told police that he was set upon by two men while walking on a street near his Chicago apartment early on Jan. 29, 2019. The attackers allegedly shouted racist and homophobic slurs before hitting him, pouring “an unknown chemical substance” on him and wrapping a rope around his neck.
Chicago police said Smollett’s story of being the victim of an attack began to unravel when investigators tracked down two men, brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, who they said were seen in a security video near where Smollett claimed he was assaulted and around the same time it supposedly occurred. The Osundairo brothers told police the actor paid them $3,500 to help him orchestrate and stage the crime.
In March 2019, a grand jury indicted Smollett on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report. In a stunning move, Foxx’s office dropped the charges later that month despite acknowledging Smollet fabricated the street attack on himself in an attempt to get a pay raise for his role on “Empire.” As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Smollett forfeited 10% of a $100,000 bond and preemptively completed community service prior to the charges being dropped.
The case was reopened in June 2019, when a Cook County judge appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the decision to dismiss all charges against Smollett. The actor was subsequently indicted again in February 2020 on six felony counts of disorderly conduct for making false reports to police.
(NEW YORK) — The co-founder and former CEO of OceanGate said the company originally never planned to build its own submersibles while testifying during a hearing on the deadly implosion of its Titan sub.
Guillermo Sohnlein co-founded OceanGate in 2009 with Stockton Rush, who was one of the five people killed in a catastrophic implosion while on a deep-sea voyage to see the Titanic wreckage in June 2023. He left the company in 2013, years before OceanGate began conducting dives to the Titanic with the Titan, an experimental, unclassified vessel.
While testifying on Monday during the U.S. Coast Guard’s two-week hearing on the implosion, Sohnlein said when they founded the company, “developing our own subs was not in the original plans.”
He said their vision was to acquire a fleet of deep-diving submersibles that could carry five people up to 6,000 meters that would be available for charter. They didn’t want the subs to require a dedicated mothership or support ship so that they could easily go anywhere in the world and operate off any ship.
He said most active commercial submersibles dive relatively shallow — less than 1,000 meters — limiting how much of the ocean can be explored.
“We wanted to change that,” Sohnlein said. “We wanted to give humanity greater access to the ocean — and specifically the deep ocean, anything deeper than 1,000 meters.”
OceanGate pivots to building own submersible using carbon fiber
Sohnlein said they eventually realized they would need to build their own submersible to achieve that business model.
“If you think about our business requirements of being able to carry five people 6,000 meters without a dedicated mothership deployable anywhere in the world — none of the sub builders could really do that,” he said. “Then, if you did factor in the cost, yeah, it was going to be ridiculously expensive.”
Sohnlein said Rush “convinced ourselves that it’d be possible to build a sub that would meet all of our business requirements.”
Sohnlein said they started looking at carbon fiber as a potential alternative for a pressure hull.
“That’s not a novel idea,” he said. “It wasn’t innovative, it was just something that we started looking at while I was still there.”
Roy Thomas — an engineer with the American Bureau of Shipping, which classifies submersibles — testified during the hearing on Monday that under ABS underwater rules, carbon fiber pressure hulls are “not acceptable materials for submersibles.”
“They have very low resistance to impact loads, and the hull is susceptible to deformation under applied external loading,” he said.
Rush became CEO of OceanGate in 2013, as the company shifted to developing its own submersibles.
“We were transitioning from an operations phase to an engineering phase, and that was really his strength and not mine,” Sohnlein said of Rush. “It made sense for him to take the reins of the company.”
Sohnlein said he made the “difficult decision” to leave the company at that point because there wasn’t going to be much for him to do in terms of operations.
Sohnlein said he still retains approximately 500,000 common shares in OceanGate but has “basically resigned myself to the fact that I’m probably never going to see anything out of that equity stake.”
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.
OceanGate co-founder never went on Titan
Sohnlein said he was offered “many times” to go on dives on the Titan, though he never did.
“As a shareholder, I didn’t want to take up room in the sub. I wanted to make that available for the people that the dive was intended for,” he said, people for whom seeing the Titanic was their “life dream.”
He also said he just wasn’t interested in going to the Titanic.
“Neither Stockton nor I were ever driven by tourism,” he said. “We were never motivated by going somewhere that people had already been before. The reason we got into this was because we both wanted to explore. We wanted to not only explore ourselves, but create the technologies that would allow us to explore the ocean.”
“So going to see a shipwreck that had already been well-documented, and that a bunch of people had already gone to, that didn’t excite me. It didn’t excite Stockton,” he continued.
Sohnlein reflected on a conversation when Rush told him he did want to conduct the first test dive of Titan down to 4,000 meters solo. He said Rush told him, “I don’t want anybody else in the sub. If anything happens, I want it to only impact me. It’s my design. I believe in it. I trust it. I don’t want to risk anybody else, and I’m going to go by myself.”
In addition to Rush, those killed in the Titan implosion included French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
The hearing into the implosion is scheduled to run through Friday.
In his closing remarks, Sohnlein said he doesn’t know what happened but he hopes they find “valuable lessons learned.”
“This was not supposed to happen,” he said. “This shouldn’t have happened, five people should not have lost their lives.”
He also said he hopes others are inspired by his and Rush’s mission.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles, and I don’t believe that it will be,” he said. “But I hope that someday, in the near future, we’ll look back on this time as a major turning point in human history — when the global, general public finally took an active interest in all of our efforts, everything that all of us do to explore the deep oceans, to study them and to preserve them.”
