Alexander brothers found guilty on all counts in sex trafficking trial
A poster of celebrity real estate agents Tal and Oren Alexander along with their brother Alon (Barry Williams/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A jury has found the Alexander brothers guilty on all counts in their federal sex trafficking trial in New York City.
Jury deliberations began Thursday for the former real estate titans, Oren and Alon Alexander, 38-year-old twins, along with their brother, Tal Alexander, 39, who have denied sexually assaulting anyone or running a sex trafficking conspiracy, as prosecutors have charged. They pleaded not guilty.
Throughout the five-week trial, 11 women testified that they were sexually assaulted by one or more of the brothers. At least eight of the women claimed they were drugged by one of the Alexanders.
“These are chilling, reprehensible, and unacceptable acts,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, whose office prosecuted the case, said in a statement following the verdict. “We commend the victims for their courage in coming forward and testifying at the trial. They bravely overcame the pain of reliving the abuses inflicted upon them and, as a result, prevented others from becoming victims.”
A spokesperson for the Alexander family called the verdict “deeply disappointing.”
“We believe there are substantial problems with the evidence and the way this case was presented,” the spokesperson, Juda S. Engelmayer, said in a statement. “The legal process does not end here. We will continue fighting every day until justice is done and the three brothers regain their freedom.”
An attorney for one of the brothers also vowed to keep fighting.
“There are a lot of avenues open to us. We’re not gonna stop,” Marc Agnifilo, who represented Oren Alexander, said outside court on Monday. “We believe in our client’s innocence and we’re not gonna stop fighting until we prevail. And we believe that we will one day prevail.”
The brothers’ federal sentencing has been set for Aug. 6.
Oren and Tal Alexander gained notoriety in New York’s luxury real estate market through their company, Alexander Group, and have been under federal investigation alongside Alon since late 2024.
They have been accused of luring women to nightclubs and parties, then drugging and sexually assaulting them.
In his closing statement, federal prosecutor Andrew Jones said there is “crushing evidence” that the brothers “masqueraded as party boys when really they were predators” who committed an “array of federal sex offenses.”
Jones recounted the graphic accounts of the alleged victims and said the wealthy brothers had a “playbook” luring women with exclusive parties, yachts and luxury travel so they could assault them.
“Once they had their victims where they wanted them, the defendants assaulted them using force, using drugs, or using both,” Jones said.
Then, the brothers allegedly bragged about their exploits in blog posts with titles like “It’s not rape if… you use her tears as lube” and “It’s not rape if… she secretly wants it.”
Jones told the jury the allegations are corroborated “by the sheer number of other victims who testified here — women who never met each other, who have each led different lives, in different professions, sometimes in different cities. But they had one horrific thing in common — they were each raped by these men. And they described near identical experiences of their assaults.”
During closing arguments, defense attorney Howard Srebnick conceded the brothers could be “obnoxious” and their conduct “inappropriate,” but he told the jury, “Nobody was being assaulted, nobody had been trafficked.”
Srebnick urged jurors to reject the government’s case against his client, Alon Alexander, insisting prosecutors failed to meet their burden of proof.
In her closing argument, Deanna Paul said the brothers “are not mobsters,” though sometimes they acted like “entitled a——-.”
A defense attorney for Tal Alexander, Paul argued that prosecutors have asked the jury to “connect dots that really aren’t there.”
In his summations, Agnifilo suggested to the jury that the victims in this case were dissatisfied with their encounters with the Alexanders, which motivated them to testify in this trial.
Signage at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Environmental Protection Agency is walking back a landmark environmental decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
For more than 16 years, the EPA’s endangerment finding served as the scientific and legal foundation for federal regulations on carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The 2009 decision found that certain greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The regulations that resulted cover everything from vehicle tailpipe emissions to the release of greenhouse gases from power plants and other significant emission sources.
President Donald Trump, joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, is expected to announce the decision on Thursday.
In a statement to ABC News, the EPA said it’s “actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people. Sixteen years ago, the Obama Administration made one of the most damaging decisions in modern history – the 2009 Endangerment Finding. In the intervening years, hardworking families and small businesses have paid the price as a result.”
Some climate scientists and policy experts say the agency’s decision to repeal the finding, even just for cars and trucks, could significantly affect U.S. efforts to address human-amplified climate change. The EPA calculates that the transportation sector is the largest contributor of direct greenhouse gas emissions in the country, with cars and trucks accounting for more 75% of those emissions.
“This is taking away the principal federal authority to regulate greenhouse gases. All of the federal regulations under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases depend on the endangerment finding. If it’s wiped out, none of those regulations exist,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School and the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
Gerrard said the immediate impact of the EPA’s decision will be somewhat muted by the fact that the Trump administration has already revoked most regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.These include greenhouse gas emission limits on passenger vehicles, emission controls on fossil fuel-powered power plants, and controls on methane leakage from oil and gas wells.
“But this action attempts to be the nail in the coffin of all those regulations, at least for the balance of the Trump administration,” Gerrard added.
Saying the decision “amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” the Trump administration estimates the move will save Americans $1.3 trillion, primarily by reducing the cost of cars and trucks. The EPA said consumers will save more than $2,400 on the purchase of a new vehicle.
But Lou Leonard, dean of Clark University’s School of Climate, Environment, and Society, says the repeal could also result in companies facing more financial and legal challenges.
“It’s going to expose, particularly businesses that are very fossil fuel intensive, to legal claims that they might not have otherwise been exposed to,” said Leonard.
“When the EPA vacates the space legally and says we’re not going to regulate, we’re out of this game, then that not only creates room for other state and local governments to do their regulation, but it also creates room for legal claims against companies for not acting on climate, because they can’t say, well, we’re just following the regulations that the federal government has created,” he added.
“The EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding triggered a trillion-dollar regulatory cascade that Congress never authorized,” the conservative nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation said in a statement to ABC News. “What began as authority to address regional smog and acid rain has been stretched to vehicle emissions, power plants, oil and gas operations, and federal lands – reshaping America’s entire energy economy and ability to harness natural resources through administrative fiat.”
The EPA’s expected repeal of the 2009 finding “restores the principle that decisions of this magnitude require clear congressional authorization, not bureaucratic improvisation,” the statement continued.
A widely anticipated decision
The announcement from the administration was widely anticipated; the Trump administration has made the endangerment finding’s review a priority since the first day of Trump’s second term.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump signed an executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” that required the head of the EPA to work with other agencies to “submit joint recommendations to the Director of OMB on the legality and continuing applicability of the Administrator’s findings” regarding the endangerment finding. The order gave them 30 days to respond.
Then, in March, the EPA announced more than two dozen policy recommendations aimed at rolling back environmental protections and eliminating a series of climate change regulations, including plans to “formally reconsider the endangerment finding.”
In a statement at the time, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote, “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas. We will follow the science, the law, and common sense wherever it leads, and we will do so while advancing our commitment towards helping to deliver cleaner, healthier, and safer air, land, and water.”
As part of the March announcement, the agency released a fact sheet about the endangerment finding, describing it as “the first step in the Obama-Biden Administration’s (and later the Biden-Harris Administration’s) overreaching climate agenda” and stating that it has cost the country trillions of dollars.
The EPA announced its proposal to rescind the endangerment finding in late July 2025, citing recent Supreme Court decisions that limited the regulatory power of executive agencies and arguing that the Obama administration misinterpreted Congress’s intent when it passed the Clean Air Act.
The Supreme Court case that led to the endangerment finding
The endangerment finding stems from the 2007 Supreme Court decision Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases from motor vehicles under the 1970 Clean Air Act because those gases are air pollutants.
That ruling became the legal foundation for many of the federal government’s greenhouse gas emissions regulations for vehicles, fossil-fuel power plants, and other sources of pollution responsible for climate change.
Writing for the court at the time, Justice John Paul Stevens said, “If EPA makes a finding of endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires the agency to regulate emissions of the deleterious pollutant from new motor vehicles.”
“Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do,” Stevens added.
In 2009, the head of the EPA made a landmark environmental decision. Lisa P. Jackson, appointed by President Barack Obama to lead the agency, determined that the current and projected concentrations of six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.” Her decision, based on a nearly 200-page EPA analysis of the science, more than 380,000 public comments and two public hearings, became what is now known as the “endangerment finding.”
Critics of decision say the underlying science is even stronger today
Critics of the administration’s plan to rescind the finding argue that the science linking greenhouse gas emissions to climate change is even stronger today than when the endangerment finding was established in 2009. They argue that the repeal lacks both a scientific basis and a legal foundation and will exacerbate the harmful impacts of climate change. Some are already promising to fight the decision in court.
“The Trump administration justifies this assault on science and our health by falsely claiming that U.S. climate-heating pollution doesn’t matter and that it lacks the authority to cut it. That’s a lie, and any 6-year-old knows it’s wrong to lie,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign, in a statement to ABC News.
“The United States is the second-largest carbon polluter in the world after China, and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. The U.S. emitted 11% of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2021, and during Trump’s first term his administration admitted that emissions in excess of 3% were ‘significant,’” he added.
“EPA’s own settled science shows that managing greenhouse gases is fundamental to protecting Americans. Rolling back these safeguards is a dangerous breach of responsibility to protect people, the environment, and our economy, benefitting polluters at the expense of all people,” said World Resources Institute (WRI) U.S. Director David Widawsky in a statement.
Overwhelming scientific evidence
In the more than 16 years since the EPA issued its 2009 endangerment finding, the science on how greenhouse gases impact human health has become more robust.
In response to the EPA’s request for public input, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conducted a comprehensive independent assessment of the science behind the endangerment finding to help inform the agency’s final decision. They released their report in September, concluding the EPA’s 2009 determination was accurate and is now supported by stronger scientific evidence, with many uncertainties that existed at the time now resolved.
“[T]he evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute,” the report stated.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation on such issues. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Abraham Lincoln.
Similarly, the United Nations concluded that “health and the climate are inextricably linked, and today the health of billions is endangered by the climate crisis.” The U.N. cited severe weather events, toxic air pollution, an increased risk of infectious disease outbreaks, and extreme heat as evidence that human-amplified climate change poses a significant danger to people.
In 2021, 200 leading medical journals issued a joint editorial stating that “the science is unequivocal: a global increase of 1.5° C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.”
And in 2023, the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a report that the federal government describes as providing “authoritative scientific information about climate change risks, impacts, and responses in the U.S.,” found that “climate changes are making it harder to maintain safe homes and healthy families; reliable public services; a sustainable economy; thriving ecosystems, cultures, and traditions; and strong communities.”
“This is another setback in the fight against climate change. We’re already seeing climate change having very negative impacts. It worsens flooding, heat waves, wildfires and other impacts. We’ve seen catastrophes already in the United States for all of these. We will see more,” Gerrard said.
What happens next?
A coalition of state attorneys general, including those from California, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, along with environmental groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, has indicated they will challenge the EPA’s decision. They argue the action is unlawful because it ignores the agency’s obligations under the Clean Air Act to regulate pollutants that endanger public health and welfare.
“This action is unlawful, ignores basic science, and denies reality. We know greenhouse gases cause climate change and endanger our communities and our health – and we will not stop fighting to protect the American people from pollution,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who are also the co-chairs of the U.S. Climate Alliance.
While the courts could overturn the repeal, Gerrard said they could also rule that the EPA needs congressional authorization for significant regulatory actions.
“If the Supreme Court says that, that would tie the hands of another president in reinstating the endangerment finding and in using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. It would not block another president from rejoining the Paris Agreement or doing lots of other things to fight climate change, but it would greatly hurt their ability to use the Clean Air Act,” said Gerrard.
Previous lawsuits challenged the endangerment finding itself, but the courts have consistently rejected those efforts. In 2012, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the endangerment finding after fossil fuel industry groups challenged the EPA’s use of scientific assessments. The court ruled that the EPA’s findings were supported by substantial evidence and that the agency had considered the scientific evidence in “a rational manner.” The following year, the Supreme Court declined to hear petitions specifically contesting the finding.
Leonard warns that it will be a “long road” to learn out how the decision plays out.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty, and we’re gonna have even more starting tomorrow or the next day, and that’s not good. It’s not good for the public health of Americans, it’s not good for the welfare of our communities, and it’s not good for the business climate and the economy in America,” said Leonard.
World News Tonight anchor David Muir speaks with Alessandro Vigilante who lost his Pacific Palisades home in the 2025 wildfires. ABC News
(CALIFORNIA) — A year ago, the deadly wildfires in Southern California left behind a trail of destruction and forced desperate families to flee for their lives.
Charred vehicles filled the streets in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where the flames reduced houses to ash-covered shells.
The embers are gone and the dust has settled a year later, but most of those houses are still vacant lots and families remain stuck in limbo.
“World News Tonight” anchor David Muir returned to the neighborhood to mark the anniversary of the disaster and reunited with some of the residents he met in January 2025. Many said they are still struggling to pick up the pieces and some are making the tough decision to leave their the neighborhood they once called home.
Nearly 24,000 acres burned in the Palisades fire alone, with nearly 7,000 structures — most of them homes — going up in smoke. The blaze erupted on Jan. 7, 2025, along with the Eaton fire that destroyed more than 9,000 buildings. Together, the fires claimed the lives of at least 31 people.
A year ago in Pacific Palisades, Alessandro Vigilante raced to his two boys’ school to pick them and flee the fires, while his wife stayed behind to grab their most important documents before their house burned down.
Hours later, Muir met the father of two as he returned to see what was left of his home for the first time. Vigilante and his family lost everything, but were thankful to still have each other.
“We’ll figure out the rest,” he told Muir last year.
Today, the site of Vigilante’s home is an empty grass-covered lot surrounded by a white picket fence — the only thing that remains of his old home. Speaking with Muir again, he said getting insurance money was not an easy process.
“Literally, we had the last check, like, two weeks ago,” he told Muir, nearly a year after the fires.
Pointing to the lot, Vigilante reflected on that process.
“You don’t expect to have to discuss anything. It’s a total loss,” he said. “Basically looking at every single detail that they can think of from the handles that you had on the doors to the type of countertops. And again, that was mind-blowing, because I’m like, well, when we signed the policy, that’s the moment you should have decided whether my house was worth that much or not. Now it’s too late.”
Vigilante decided to sell the lot rather than rebuild, he noted, even though he said the land is now half the value it was when he moved in four years before.
“It’s OK. It was a chapter of our life,” he said, with a sigh.
Down the street from Vigilante, Liz Jones showed Muir the empty lot where she now plans to rebuild her family’s home from the ground up.
Last year, she saw the charred remains of her daughter’s car in one of Muir’s reports. That’s when she knew her home was gone.
“Is that when reality set in?” Muir asked her last year.
“One hundred percent,” Jones said.
Jones said she and her husband were determined to rebuild, and they are among the lucky few who were able to get some insurance money. Jones continued to carry her pride for the community around her neck, with a necklace that spelled out “Palisades.”
Preston and Kelsey Hayes had just broken ground on their new home when Muir met them at the site.
A year ago, the couple, who have two children, donned protective gear and masks to survey the damage and wondered if they would ever come back.
“Were you concerned at all about the soil and what might be contaminated from the fires?” Muir asked the couple at the construction site.
“Yeah for sure,” Preston Hayes said.
“And you felt reassured by the tests?” Muir asked.
“Yes,” Kelsey Hayes said.
As they looked out across their neighborhood a year after the fires, they knew that their neighbors would not all be as fortunate.
“We want the community to be the same. I don’t think it will be, unfortunately,” Preston Hayes said.
Luigi Mangione appears at a hearing for the murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson at Manhattan Criminal Court, Feb. 21, 2025, in New York. (Curtis Means/Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — One year after prosecutors say Luigi Mangione brazenly assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan, the 27-year-old is back in court Monday for a multi-day hearing that could determine the balance of evidence in his state murder trial.
Mangione’s attorneys are trying to limit prosecutors from using key evidence — including a 3D-printed gun and purported journal writings — police say they obtained when they arrested him in Pennsylvania last year.
Mangione entered the courtroom and took a seat next to his attorneys, Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Marc Agnifilo, as nearly two dozen Mangione supporters seated in the back row of the courtroom craned their necks to get a look at the accused killer. Some were dressed in T-shirts displaying slogans about the case, including one saying “Justice is not a spectacle.”
Though no trial date has been set for either Mangione’s state or federal criminal cases, the outcome of this week’s hearing will determine the shape of the case Mangione and his lawyers will face at trial. If they succeed in limiting key evidence, prosecutors could lose the ability to use Mangione’s writings — which prosecutors say paint a clear motive for the crime — and the alleged murder weapon.
“I finally feel confident about what I will do,” Mangione allegedly wrote in a notebook seized from his backpack, later included in court filings. “The target is insurance. It checks every box.”
This week’s hearing in New York’s State Supreme Court — where Mangione is charged with second-degree murder — follows a legal victory for Mangione’s defense when the judge in September tossed two murder charges related to an act of terrorism. He is still charged with second-degree murder and other offenses, as well as a separate criminal case in federal court. If convicted in state court, Mangione faces a potential life sentence, and he could face the death penalty in his federal case.
Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson — a father of two who spent two decades working for UnitedHealthcare before being named its CEO — last December outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel before allegedly fleeing the city. He was arrested five days later in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after someone reported seeing a “suspicious male that looked like the shooter from New York City.”
Mangione’s arrest is expected to be at the center of this week’s hearing, with defense lawyers arguing that police extensively questioned him without reading him his rights and searched his backpack without a warrant.
Defense lawyers are trying to bar prosecutors from using any of the evidence recovered from the backpack — including electronic devices, a 3D-printed gun, silencer, and a journal — as well as referencing any statements Mangione made to police. Lawyers with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office have defended the lawfulness of the arrest and search and are expected to argue that the evidence would have inevitably been recovered during the discovery process ahead of trial.
“Despite the gravest of consequences for Mr. Mangione, law enforcement has methodically and purposefully trampled his constitutional rights,” Mangione’s attorney argued in their motion.
Defense lawyers argue the constitutional issues began almost immediately after officers approached Mangione, who was seated in the McDonald’s to have breakfast. After Mangione allegedly provided officers with a fake driver’s license, they immediately began questioning Mangione about whether he was recently in New York and why he lied about his identity, defense lawyers say. As he was questioned, defense lawyers say officers filled the restaurant to form an “armed human wall trapping Mr. Mangione at the back of the restaurant.”
Citing time-stamped police body camera footage, Mangione’s attorneys allege police waited 20 minutes to read his Miranda Rights and extensively questioned him without informing him he was under investigation or that he had the right to remain silent. They have asked New York State Supreme Court Judge Gregory Carro to prohibit prosecutors from introducing any evidence or testimony related to what they say was an illegal interrogation at the McDonald’s.
Defense lawyers also contend that an officer illegally searched Mangione’s bag while he was being interrogated, eventually discovering a loaded magazine and handgun. Despite another officer commenting, “at this point we probably need a search warrant” for the bag, Mangione’s attorneys argue that the officer continued searching the bag and claimed she was trying to make sure there “wasn’t a bomb or anything” in the bag.
“[The officer] did not search the bag because she reasonably thought there might be a bomb, but rather this was an excuse designed to cover up an illegal warrantless search of the backpack,” they argue. “This made-up bomb claim further shows that even she believed at the time that there were constitutional issues with her search, forcing her to attempt to salvage this debacle by making this spurious claim.”
Mangione’s attorneys argue that any of the items recovered from the backpack, including his alleged writings and weapon, should be limited as “fruit” of an illegal search.
Ahead of the hearing, Mangione’s attorneys have previewed plans to call at least two witnesses from the Altoona Police Department. During an unrelated court hearing last week, one of Mangione’s attorneys claimed that the hearing could include more than two dozen witnesses and hours of body camera footage.
Judge Carro has set aside several days beginning Monday to hear arguments about whether the testimony and evidence can be suppressed.
