Former Olympian David Hearn’s attorneys want Reflecting Pool vandalism case permanently dismissed
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for David Hearn, who was alleged to have vandalized the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, filed a motion in D.C. Superior Court, citing “exceptional facts and circumstances” to have the indictment against him dismissed with prejudice.
The Justice Department moved last week to dismiss the criminal case against Hearn, a former Olympian, acknowledging the damage to the pool “was the result of flawed installation by the contractor.”
The filing by Hearn’s attorneys follows U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s motion on Friday seeking to dismiss the case without prejudice, which could still leave Mr. Hearn exposed to a future indictment.
If the motion filed by Hearn’s attorneys is granted, it would block the government from trying to charge him again for the same alleged crime in the future.
“Here, amid extraordinary political pressure and public pronouncements from President Trump demanding action, and in apparent disregard for their special duties as prosecutors, USAO-DC rushed to obtain a public felony indictment,” the filing states, using an acronym for the United States Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia.
“Defying both decency and common sense, the government proceeded to indict Mr. Hearn before it had obtained or evaluated the information necessary to establish a good-faith basis for the charge,” the filing continued.
“The Court should not leave the defendant subject to the possibility of renewed prosecution,” the filing states.
Hearn pleaded not guilty to a felony destruction of property charge last month after Pirro’s office accused him of allegedly “forcefully and violently” ripping up parts of the pool floor.
Citing President Donald Trump’s comments on the matter in recent days, the attorneys representing Hearns added, “That is particularly true when the President of the United States has already voiced his vigorous disagreement with USAO-DC’s dismissal of the case against Mr. Hearn — saying that the U.S. Attorney “choked,” “folded like an umbrella,” and “made a mistake,” and doubling down on the false claim that the damage was caused by vandalism — and has previously not hesitated to insinuate himself into cases that historically have been the exclusive province of the DOJ.”
Should the court deny the motion to dismiss the indictment with prejudice, Hearn’s attorneys asked the court to disclose grand jury materials or to conduct a review in chambers of those materials before granting the government’s motion to dismiss the case without prejudice.
Law enforcement at the scene of a shooting in San, Jose, Calif., June 8, 2026. (KGO)
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — Two people suffered life-threatening injuries in a shooting at the Kaiser medical offices in San Jose, California, authorities said.
The San Jose Police Department described the victims as a man and a woman and said both have been taken to the hospital.
Police said the shooting is believed to be an isolated incident and said there’s no threat to the public.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents patrol the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on June 24, 2026, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has overturned the temporary pause on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement traffic stops, according to a source familiar with the discussion, allowing the traffic stops to resume.
This comes after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gave the directive to halt the traffic stops, a law enforcement source told ABC News on Tuesday.
In an email sent to ICE deportation officers, a senior ICE official wrote that the vehicle stops were paused “immediately,” according to the email reviewed by ABC News.
“All personnel are instructed to prioritize other existing operational methods, outside of vehicle stops, to conduct immigration enforcement activities,” the official wrote.
Multiple sources said the pause was temporary and that ICE officers would receive new training on vehicle stops.
Additionally, one source said that ICE officers can conduct some vehicle stops during the pause but only in the presence of a local law enforcement officer trained to make vehicle stops that partners with ICE under the agency’s 287(g) program.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told ABC News that the agency won’t “disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics,” but added that it’s “always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets.”
In an interview on Fox News, border czar Tom Homan confirmed the temporary pause and said DHS will review the past few incidents.
“It is not a policy change, it is a temporary pause,” Homan said. “Look – last couple of shootings, ICE leadership along with DHS wants to look at these last couple incidents and look, is there something that could have been done better? Is there any training that could be improved? Or simply is ICE doing their job and bad things happen when people don’t comply with law enforcement officers? I think it going to be a short pause and I am confident that ICE is well trained in vehicle stops and you’re going to see us keep moving forward.”
On Monday, 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, after agents tried to stop the car he was driving, according to Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.
Guerrero, a Colombian national, was not the target of the operation and ICE agents had been given a final order for another man they were targeting to be removed from the U.S., King told ABC News.
An ICE spokesperson said that the agency was “conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal,” and when an “illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle,” ICE agents “attempted to conduct a vehicle stop.”
“The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon,” ICE said.
The Maine Attorney General’s Office said “the suspect attempted to flee in the vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot.”
Witness Daniel Boucher told ABC News that he watched agents pull the shooting victim from his car and put him on the ground.
“I heard the young man say, ‘I tried to stop.’ I clearly heard him say that,” said Boucher, adding that he overheard one of the ICE agents allegedly say the driver tried to run him over.
Aidan Keys is a fourth-year PhD student studying African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. (Courtesy Aidan Keys)
(NEW YORK) — At a time when Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts face local and federal backlash, some academics say that Black studies programs — several of which have been scaled back at colleges and universities across the nation — are more crucial than ever.
“The Trump administration has made clear to colleges and universities that they don’t want them doing anything that is race conscious. So, institutions are very cowardly defunding and eliminating these academic programs and departments that have enriched the campus for decades,” Dr. Shaun Harper, a professor at University of Southern California that specializes in racial equity, told ABC News.
According to Harper, President Donald Trump’s executive order in January 2025 targeting DEI initiatives in the private sector has fueled nationwide anti-DEI sentiment.
The executive order instructed the Departments of Justice and Education to investigate DEI programs at institutions of higher education.
Trump’s order doesn’t explicitly mention Black studies programs at colleges and universities, but it criticizes institutions of higher education that use “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences.”
Following his order, the Department of Education sent a letter to colleges and universities, notifying them that they will investigate and sever federal funding if they maintain DEI programs that the administration considers illegal.
“Many institutions haphazardly scrubbed their websites of everything related to race,” Harper said.
The politicization of DEI at the federal level has created a “trickle-down effect” at institutions where Black history and experiences have been undervalued, according to Harper.
‘We’re not going anywhere. We won’t be erased’
The University of Texas at Austin is one of the institutions that has consolidated their department this year.
Dr. Danielle Clealand, an associate professor at UT Austin that researches Black politics, told ABC News that there was “shock” among faculty and students when they were notified about the consolidation.
“We were the largest Black Studies department in the nation, so it was devastating,” she said.
“It hurts really bad. I really don’t like that I don’t have a department anymore,” Aidan Keys, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in African and African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin, told ABC News.
In a letter to the campus community obtained by ABC News, UT Austin President Jim Davis announced that the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies would merge into the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis.
Other departments, such as Mexican American & Latina/o Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, were also brought under the single academic unit.
The university said it examined several factors to determine which programs should be merged like their size, student-to-faculty ratio and resource allocation.
“The University of Texas at Austin is committed to providing all of our students access to a world-class education,” Davis stated. “How we choose to organize ourselves and allocate the resources we steward impacts this important commitment.”
The announcement came after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s 2023 passage of SB 17, banning public colleges and universities from having DEI offices and offering training or hiring policies based on race, gender and sexual orientation.
A UT Austin spokesperson told ABC News that the bill didn’t apply to their curricula changes.
But Keys said that the university’s decision to merge Black Studies is still politically motivated.
“I think that the [Abbott] administration is trying their hardest to silence us and erase more leftist ideas from the campus,” she said.
According to Harper — the University of Southern California professor — recent cuts to Black studies programs appear to be more prevalent in institutions located in the U.S. Midwest and the South, based on his analysis.
“With the exception of historically Black colleges and universities, and perhaps a handful of other higher education institutions across the country, most predominantly white institutions have chronically failed to demonstrate their care for Black people,” he said.
While students at UT Austin can still major in Black studies, Indiana University Bloomington no longer offers a degree in African American and African Diaspora Studies (AAADS).
Instead, undergraduate and graduate students earn a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a subfield in AAADS.
“We are totally against it,” Professor Jakobi Williams, the chair of the AAADS department, told ABC News regarding the policy, adding that the department is advocating to reverse the degree title change.
“We’re not going anywhere. We won’t be erased,” he added.
The university’s decision to discontinue the AAADS major followed an Indiana state budget mandate — introduced by the Republican majority — requiring public institutions to graduate 15 students in a bachelor’s degree program, seven students in a master’s program and three students in a doctorate program over a three-year period to retain the degree.
Indiana University didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment on criticisms regarding the degree title change.
Williams explained that the AAADS department graduates about seven to 10 students annually across all degree programs.
‘What we do is so important’
Proponents of Black studies argue that the discipline is valuable because it encourages students to develop cultural knowledge.
“The nature of our discipline is to speak truth to power and train students and the public at large regarding issues like discrimination and socio-economic relations, especially in the larger African diaspora,” Williams said.
“Black Studies is experiencing a moment where we have to remind students why what we do is so important, not only to their academic experience but also to their training as citizens of this country,” Cleadland, the associate professor at UT Austin, explained.
Harper, the USC professor, said that reductions to these programs can produce significant consequences, especially for non-Black racial groups.
“If we have millions of college-educated white Americans who go into the world not knowing anything about any other population besides white people, they are going to make lots of costly, very embarrassing mistakes,” he said.
Harper also argued that Black studies and other disciplines have been challenged before, yet prevailed.
“Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women’s Studies are incredibly resilient fields that have encountered politicized resistance,” he said. “We have seen and lived through this particular moment before, and those very important academic fields and disciplines survived.”
