NYC Mayor Eric Adams to stand trial in April 2025 on federal corruption charges
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams will stand trial on federal corruption charges starting on April 21, 2025, a judge said Friday.
The date upset the defense, which argued for a schedule that could end the trial no later than early April to accommodate “grave, grave Democratic concerns,” namely the mayor’s reelection campaign.
The defense argued Adams needed resolution of the criminal case by the time the New York City ballot is set in the spring.
“There is a point in early April when people know who is on the ballot,” defense attorney Alex Spiro said during a hearing on Friday. “He’s either running with this hanging over his head or he’s running with this over.”
Judge Dale Ho said he appreciated the interest in a speedy trial “that any defendant has, but particularly that Mayor Adams has given the election cycle.”
“But I also have to be realistic about what I think can get done,” he continued.
Adams has pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment that accused him of accepting years of luxury travel gifts in exchange for, among other things, persuading the fire department to approve the opening of the new Turkish consulate in Manhattan despite the lingering safety concerns of inspectors.
Defense tries to get bribery charge dismissed
The defense argued during the hearing Friday that a bribery charge should be dismissed because the alleged conduct does not meet the legal definition of bribery.
With Adams silently looking on in court, defense attorney John Bash argued federal prosecutors failed to show Adams did anything more than broker meetings and set up phone calls.
“The agreement has to relate to something specific and it has to relate to government power,” Bash said. “They had no agreement for a specific action.”
The defense argued Adams could not take an official action on behalf of his Turkish patrons because, at the time, he was in a largely ceremonial job of Brooklyn borough president and not the mayor with authority over the New York City Fire Department.
“The pressure must in some sense arise from the official’s governmental authority,” Bash said.
Federal prosecutors disagreed. They argued that even if Adams had no authority over the fire department, his position still gave him access.
“You don’t have to have a supervisory role to pressure,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten said, calling the alleged bribery “as clear as day.”
The prosecutor argued Adams knew when he accepted the travel gifts “he is entering a transactional relationship.”
Scotten said, at most, Adams is entitled to a clarifying jury instruction and not an outright dismissal of the charge.
The judge has not issued a ruling yet on the defense’s request.
(WASHINGTON) — Outgoing West Virginia Independent Sen. Joe Manchin said Tuesday he won’t back Vice President Kamala Harris’ White House bid after she came out in favor of changing Senate rules to pass abortion protection laws.
“I’m not endorsing her,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday.
Earlier, Manchin was more vociferous about Harris’ announcement that she’d be in favor of scrapping the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster to pass a law reviving the abortion protections that existed under Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that was scrapped in 2022.
“Shame on her,” Manchin, who is retiring and left the Democratic Party earlier this year, told CNN. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together.”
Outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., another retiring Democrat-turned-independent and filibuster defender, also panned the idea, saying it would open the door to further restrictions by a future Republican Senate majority.
“To state the supremely obvious, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide,” Sinema posted on X. “What an absolutely terrible, shortsighted idea.”
Harris, who along with President Joe Biden, had supported changing Senate rules to help restore Roe v. Wade’s protections, which allow abortions until a fetus is viable. She reiterated her stance in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio.
“I’ve been very clear: I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,’ Harris said. “Fifty-one votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
Harris’ comments come as she pivots to the center to win over undecided voters, but abortion remains a key issue that fires up the Democratic base and helped the vice president find her footing in office. She has been particularly vocal on the issue after reports of two Georgia women’s deaths seemingly due to delayed treatment after undergoing medication abortions.
Still, it’s unclear if Democrats would have the votes to pass any abortion protections, as their 51-49 majority hangs by a thread this November due to a formidable map that has them defending seats in several purple states and the red states of Montana and Ohio.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was circumspect on what kind of legislation Democrats would push, only saying Tuesday that “it’s something our caucus will discuss in the next session of Congress.”
Former President Donald Trump celebrated Manchin’s saying he wouldn’t endorse Harris.
“Congratulations to Senator Joe Manchin for not endorsing Radical Kamala Harris because of her DEATH WISH for the Filibuster and the Rule of Law. Joe knows that only the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, can protect our Country, our People, and Make America Great Again,” Trump posted on his social media platform.
(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon and the Director of National Intelligence have released the annual report on UFO sightings and while they still haven’t found any extraterrestrial origin for the more than 700 new reports that came in last year, there are about two dozen that have them really curious.
UAP is the term the Pentagon and the intelligence community use to describe UFOs, which stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. The agency that reviews all of the new incidents being reported by military personnel and now additional federal agencies is the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
From May 2023 to June 2024, AARO received 757 new incident reports, 485 that occurred in that time period and another 272 reports from 2021 and 2022 that had not been previously sent to the agency. That’s a sizable increase from previous reports, for example, last year’s report cited 281 new reports during its review period, something Pentagon officials said Thursday was due to a greater awareness about reporting UAP incidents, not that they have been growing in frequency.
Overall the total number of cases that have been reviewed by AARO since its founding is now 1,652.
AARO has “discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology” according to this year’s report. A small number of this year’s reports had terrestrial explanations and a significant number will be left for further review, but one thing they haven’t found is that some of the reports are attributable to a “breakthrough” technology.
However, during a press briefing Thursday, the head of AARO acknowledged that there are 21 reports over the last year and a half that he can’t really explain.
“There are interesting cases that with my physics and engineering background and time in the I.C. I do not understand, and I don’t know anybody else understands them,” said Dr. Jon Kosloski, the new director of AARO. Kosloski said the 21 incidents occurred near national security sites and were recorded on video, had multiple eyewitnesses or were captured by other sensors.
So what do these unexplainable UAPs look like? “Orbs, cylinders, triangles, in one of the cases, it has been happening over an extended period of time, and it is possible that there’s multiple things happening” Kosloski said, adding that the incidents might include drone activity that’s being conflated with a UAP.
Kristin Gambardella speaks to ABC News. (ABC News)
(PHOENIX) — Kristin and Dave Gambardella never expected the journey of growing their family to include an abortion procedure, but in summer 2023, the married couple nevertheless found themselves in a Planned Parenthood parking lot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a seven-hour drive from their home in Tucson, Arizona.
A week beforehand, a routine blood test at 17 weeks into Kristin’s pregnancy had come back with devastating results. A follow-up ultrasound confirmed her doctors’ fears. The fetus had a severe genetic abnormality.
“They told us it was really a guaranteed short life, full of pain and surgeries and constant medical care,” Gambardella said. “Dave is a stoic person,” she said of her husband, “and I remember he just broke down and lost it. And that’s when I really felt that feeling in my gut that was like, wow, this is pretty catastrophic.”
In deciding to end the pregnancy, the Gambardellas realized they weren’t only tasked with an agonizing decision for their family — they also had an Arizona law to contend with, which would prevent them from seeing any of their own doctors for the procedure.
“The doctor, I remember, she looked at me and her eyes just looked really sad. And she said, ‘No, you can’t come here. We can’t do that procedure for you. You’d have to leave the state’,” Gambardella said.
Arizona’s abortion ban
In Arizona — one of 21 states that has enacted abortion restrictions since the end of Roe v Wade — abortion is banned after 15 weeks, except for medical emergencies endangering the life of the mother. Gambardella didn’t qualify for that exception.
“As someone who has always believed in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own bodies, it was such a turning point in my understanding on just how much abortion care is interconnected with fertility care and the act of wanting to have a baby,” Gambardella said.
The experience inspired her to join the campaign to pass Proposition 139, a ballot measure that would enshrine in Arizona’s state constitution the right to an abortion until fetal viability.
Arizona is one of 10 states in the country that have such measures on the ballot this November, including Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska.
This large push nationwide comes as abortion access remains one of the most important issues to voters this election — and the top issue for women under 30, according to an October survey by KFF, the nonpartisan health policy organization.
Where the candidates stand
Democrats hope that the issue could drive enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has centered her campaign on restoring reproductive rights and attacking former President Donald Trump for nominating the conservative Supreme Court justices that voted to overrule Roe v. Wade.
Trump, who has repeatedly shifted his position on abortion from supporting a federal ban to declaring that he would not pass one, while remaining open to other reproductive health care restrictions, maintains that he will “protect women,” but is sparse on details.
It’s not clear, however, if abortion-access ballot measures will alter the outcome of the presidential race in a swing state like Arizona. Voters could split the ticket — voting to enshrine abortion access, but prioritizing other issues in their presidential choice.
Trump is leading Harris in Arizona by two points, according to 538’s latest polling average, even as polling so far has shown the abortion access amendment in Arizona to be widely popular, with about 60% of likely voters saying they’ll support it.
That level of support is in line with the success of abortion rights ballot measures in other states over the last two years since Roe v. Wade was overruled. Reproductive rights ballot measures have passed every time they’ve been on the ballot, whether the state leans Republican, Democrat or is closely divided like Arizona.
Susan Ashley, a retiree and a volunteer for the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign, says her “fury” over Roe vs. Wade being overturned drove her to make the initiative her “full-time job right now.”
“I’ve been an active voter, but I’ve never been involved in an event where there were so many passionate volunteers. And so this struck a nerve,” Ashley said.
Efforts on the ground
Athena Salman, a former Arizona state representative and director of Arizona campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All, was at Ashley’s side for door-knocking in mid-October, in the 90-degree heat.
The two women spoke to nearly a dozen registered Independents in a neighborhood of Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Each voter they spoke to said they were supporting the ballot measure.
“I think it really shows that Arizonans are just fed up with their reproductive freedom being up in the air and they’re ready to take action and get the government interference out of our personal decisions,” Salman said.
Though Arizona currently bans abortion at 15 weeks, the state saw all abortions halted for four months in the summer of 2022 when a ban from 1864 was revived. It nearly took effect again in the spring of 2024, but the Arizona state legislature repealed it after massive outcry from residents and a push from the Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes.
To Cindy Dahlgren, spokesperson for the campaign against the abortion access ballot measure, the legislature’s decision to repeal the near-total abortion ban and keep a 15-week ban should put people at ease.
“Proponents play on those fears and that confusion by saying there’s a ban when there’s not a ban,” she said, arguing that the current law only curtails the procedure but doesn’t fully ban it. “I would also point out that it was the legislature that repealed that law. And there doesn’t seem to be an appetite to put that law back in.”
Her campaign, called “It Goes Too Far,” argues that enshrining abortion access until fetal viability would remove too many restrictions around abortion, leaving it too unregulated.
“The choice really in November is not between abortion or no abortion. It’s between limited abortion and safety precautions and a doctor and parents involved or unlimited and unregulated abortion,” Dahlgren said.
Asked about cases like Gambardella’s, where pregnancy complications arise in the second trimester, or women who experience rape or incest and do not qualify for an exception, Dahlgren said, “we do not have to enshrine a very extreme abortion amendment to care for those victims.”
But Dr. Misha Pangasa, an OB-GYN with Planned Parenthood, one of only nine clinics in Arizona providing abortion care, said she doesn’t want to leave reproductive rights up to the political makeup of the state legislature anymore.
“The idea that Arizonans health care is at the whims of whichever legislature is holding the majority is never going to be the best way for people to get the best care,” Pangasa said.
There are currently around 40 laws that restrict abortions in the state of Arizona, which Pangasa said have already significantly impacted her ability to provide care to pregnant patients.
“Pregnancy is complicated and decisions at various stages are hard. And I am the one there helping support them. And what I wish that our government would do is just let me,” Pangasa said.
Pangasa said she sees patients like the Gambardellas on a regular basis.
“To be honest, it’s a really heartbreaking moment to be in when I talk to my patients and say, if you were in a different state with me right now, I would tell you that these are your options. But because we’re in Arizona, an abortion is just not an option,” she said.
