UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect’s timeline before, during, after the shooting
NYPD
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione, a person of interest in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was taken into custody on Monday in Pennsylvania, nearly one week after the “brazen, targeted” shooting outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel on Wednesday, police said.
Here is a timeline of the suspect’s whereabouts before, during and after the shooting:
Nov. 24
The killer entered New York City by bus on Nov. 24, when a surveillance camera at Port Authority Bus Terminal caught his arrival at 9 p.m., law enforcement sources told ABC News.
The inbound bus originated in Atlanta but it was not immediately clear where the suspect boarded.
He likely checked into a hostel on New York City’s Upper West Side that day and later checked out, sources said.
Nov. 30
The suspect likely checked back into the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side on Nov. 30, sources said.
Dec. 4 at 5 a.m.
At 5 a.m., nearly two hours before the shooting, the suspect was seen in surveillance footage outside the hostel on the Upper West Side, holding what appears to be an e-bike battery.
6:15 a.m.
At 6:15 a.m., surveillance footage reviewed by police shows someone who appears to be the suspect leaving a 57th Street subway station near the crime scene, police sources told ABC News.
6:19 a.m.
New cleared CCTV video shows a man who appears to be the suspect walking west on 55th Street at 6:19 a.m. The video shows him stoop down as he appears to momentarily drop an object on the garbage before continuing to walk.
Before the shooting
Sometime before the shooting, the suspect is spotted at a Starbucks. The exact time is not clear.
6:29 a.m.
The suspect appeared to walk past a parking lot on West 54th Street at 6:29 a.m. — across the street some 50 meters from the site of the shooting.
6:44 a.m.
At 6:44 a.m., the masked gunman fatally shot Brian Thompson in front of the north entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown.
“The shooter then walks toward the victim and continues to shoot,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. “It appears that the gun malfunctions, as he clears the jam and begins to fire again.”
The shooter fled on foot into an alley, where a phone believed to be linked to the suspect was later recovered, police sources said.
Time unknown
The suspect then fled north on a bike and rode into Central Park, police said.
Time unknown
After making his getaway on a bike, the suspect exited Central Park at 77th Street and Central Park West.
At 86th Street and Columbus Avenue, the suspect ditched the bike and took a taxi to the Port Authority bus facility at 178th Street.
Police believe he boarded a bus there and left New York City.
Dec. 9
On Dec. 9, the person of interest in the shooting — 26-year-old Luigi Mangione — was identified and taken into custody in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on unrelated gun charges, authorities said.
The man was on a Greyhound bus traveling through Altoona, sources said, when he got off and walked into a McDonald’s where a witness recognized him from the images of the suspect circulated by police.
Mangione, from Maryland, was in possession of a handwritten document “that speaks to his motivation and mindset,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
“It does seem that he had some ill will toward corporate America,” police said.
Mangione had a ghost gun capable of firing a 9 mm round and a suppressor, police said.
He was also in possession of a fake New Jersey driver’s license similar to the one the suspect used to check into a hostel in New York City before the shooting, she said.
Tisch praised the “good old fashioned detective work” of the NYPD and the “power of the public” that led to the arrest.
Police said they’re working to trace his movements from New York City to Pennsylvania.
Tourism Emissions Project Team, University of Queensland
(NEW YORK) — The carbon footprint from the travel industry is growing at rates never seen before, according to new research.
An increasing demand for international travel over the past decade has led to higher rates of carbon dioxide emissions every year, according to a paper published in Nature Communications on Tuesday.
Greenhouse gas emissions from international tourism are growing at a rate of 3.5% every year — about twice as fast as the overall economy, Ya-Yen Sun, an associate professor at The University of Queensland in Australia and an author of the study, told ABC News.
In the top 20 countries associated with the highest tourism emissions, tourism may be growing “too fast” — up to 5% every year — which is causing those regions to expend more energy to provide services to more visitors, Sun said.
There are also disparities in per-capita tourism emissions, with the 20 highest-emitting countries — including the United States, China and India — contributing three-quarters of the total carbon footprint, the paper found.
Modes of transportation, including air and ground travel, are particular contributors to emissions given their carbon-intensive nature, according to the paper. Slow gains in the efficiency of technology have also contributed to the rise in emission rates from global tourism, the researchers said.
While travel halted in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism came roaring back with a vengeance once the global health threat subsided, which has flooded the travel sector with even more rapid growth, Sun said.
Travel dropped by 60% during the pandemic, but tourism is expected to have fully recovered by the end of 2024, she added.
“We found this is something [that really needs] a lot of attention, because people just enjoy travel,” Sun said.
Carbon dioxide emissions from private planes have increased significantly in recent years, a separate paper published last month in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found.
Annual CO2 emissions from private aviation increased by 46% between 2019 and 2023, according to an analysis of flight tracker data from 18,655,789 private flights flown by 25,993 registered business jet-type private aircraft. Some individuals who regularly use private aviation may produce almost 500 times more CO2 in a year than the average individual, the paper found.
There were significant emissions peaks around certain international events, the study found. COP28 — the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Dubai — was associated with 644 private flights, which produced 4,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup, also hosted in the United Arab Emirates, was associated with 1,846 private flights, producing an estimated 14,700 metric tons of CO2, the study found.
However, private aviation only accounts for about 7.9% of total aviation emissions, the paper found.
A previous study that Sun conducted in 2018 found that tourism contributes to about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That number is likely much higher today, Sun said.
“The sector has not made much progress in terms of decarbonizing itself,” she said.
Sun described the findings of the new paper out Tuesday as “quite problematic” because it showcases that emissions from tourism are growing every year,
The paper highlighted the urgent need for effective policy measures to align the tourism sector with global climate goals, the researchers said.
In order to do this, countries will need to begin to monitor tourism emissions at the national level, something that only New Zealand and Denmark are currently doing, Sun said.
It is especially important considering tourism is one of the biggest economic sectors in the world, as people require transportation, food, accommodation and shopping when they travel, Sun said. The global tourism industry was worth an estimated $10 trillion in 2023, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council.
“We found this is something really in need of a lot of attention, because people just enjoy travel,” Sun said.
(WASHINGTON) — One day after moving to dismiss both his cases against President-elect Donald Trump, special counsel Jack Smith is continuing to defend the validity of his own appointment as he appeals the dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump’s co-defendants.
In a filing Tuesday, Smith urged a federal appeals court to reverse U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to toss the classified documents case based on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment as special counsel.
Smith moved to drop Trump from the case Monday due to a long-standing Justice Department policy that bars the prosecution of a sitting president, as he continues his appeal of the case’s dismissal with Trump’s two co-defendants, his longtime valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump pleaded not guilty last year to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S. nuclear secrets to the nation’s defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart the government’s efforts to get the documents back.
Trump, along with Nauta and De Oliveira, also pleaded not guilty to allegedly attempting to delete related surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Judge Cannon dismissed the case against all three defendants this past July on the grounds that Smith’s appointment as special counsel overseeing the case was unconstitutional because he was not appointed by the president or confirmed by Congress.
Smith, in Tuesday’s filing, urged the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse Cannon’s “flawed” conclusion so he can continue the case against Nauta and De Oliveira.
“The Supreme Court held more than 50 years ago that Congress vested the Attorney General with the power to appoint special prosecutors like the Special Counsel, and the text, context, and history of the four statutes the Supreme Court identified, as well as the long history of special-counsel appointments, confirm that Nixon was correct,” the filing said.
In a statement Monday, John Irving, a lawyer for De Oliveira, said, ““The Special Counsel’s decision to proceed in this case even after dismissing it against President Trump is an unsurprising tribute to the poor judgment that led to the indictment against Mr. De Oliveira in the first place. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If they prefer a slow acquittal, that’s fine with us.”
This is likely to be Smith’s last filing against Trump as a defendant, though Trump’s inclusion in the brief is a technicality. While Smith moved on Monday to drop Trump from the case, the court hasn’t yet dismissed the appeal for the president-elect.
“The government has moved to dismiss this appeal as to Donald Trump. If granted, defendant Trump will not appear in the caption in future filings in this case,” Smith wrote in a footnote of Tuesday’s filing.
Smith’s other case against Trump, involving the former president’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, was dismissed Monday at Smith’s request, due to the Justice Department’s presidential immunity policy.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court, at once a major flashpoint in the 2024 campaign and potential presidential election referee, gavels open a new term on Monday with the nation deeply divided over its recent rulings and skeptical of the justices’ ethics and impartiality.
The court’s fall docket includes high-profile disputes over age-verification to access pornography online, the marketing of flavored e-cigarettes to kids, regulation of untraceable “ghost guns,” and EPA limits on sewage dumped into the Pacific Ocean.
A challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors is considered one of the most significant cases of the term, so far. The justices have been asked to decide whether the medical restriction, adopted in more than 20 states, discriminates on the basis of sex in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause.
“This is one of the most significant LGBTQ cases to ever reach the Supreme Court,” said Chase Strangio, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who is expected to argue before the court. “This case will have a huge impact on the future of litigation on behalf of LGBTQ people.
The court could also be forced to weigh in on last-minute appeals over election rules, including changes to how ballots are cast and counted and, potentially, how contested election results are certified. It has already issued decisions allowing Arizona to require proof of citizenship for state voter registration and rejecting Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s bid to appear on the Nevada ballot.
The six conservative and three liberal justices return to the bench for oral arguments after delivering an extraordinary round of socially and politically-consequential decisions in June.
“Depending on your point of view, last term was either the term that the court saved the presidency or the term that the court let the most dangerous man in the history of American politics off the hook,” said Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Supreme Court institute at Georgetown Law.
The court’s blockbuster ruling on presidential immunity for former President Donald Trump and a pair of decisions sharply curtailing the power of federal agencies, among others, galvanized partisan interests around the court and ignited fierce public debate even as the full scope and impact of the judgments remains unclear.
Just 43% of Americans say they approve of the court’s work, a near-record low, according to Gallup. A successive series of reported alleged ethics violations by several justices, their resistance to independent enforcement of a new ethics code, and extraordinary leaks to the media of internal justice communications has only complicated the public’s view.
“Something does feel broken,” said Lisa Blatt, a veteran high court litigator, of the internal workings of the court. “Some of [the justices] up there seem visibly frustrated.”
With less than a month before the general election, the justices may be eager to maintain a lower profile, some court analysts say, and their lighter-than-normal case load might be a key indicator.
“This term is, at least at the moment, a much quieter term than we’ve had in the last couple of years,” said outgoing ACLU legal director David Cole. “But that could change if the presidential election is close and disputed.”
Here’s a look at five key cases to watch:
Transgender kids: U.S. v Skrmetti
Key question: Does Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment?
Tennessee and 25 other states have passed bans on medical treatments for minors seeking to identify with, or live as, a gender identity inconsistent with his or her sex at birth. The Supreme Court is asked to decide whether those bans are constitutional.
While leading American medical organizations have endorsed the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and, in some cases, surgeries to improve the health and wellbeing of young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria, some medical groups and conservative lawmakers consider the treatments inappropriate and dangerous.
LGBTQ advocates and families of transgender minors allege Tennessee’s ban prohibits an otherwise legal and approved treatment for some people illegal for others purely on the basis of their sex. They claim it violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and overrides parental authority.
The state denies discrimination, insisting it has the right to regulate medical treatments and access to certain types of procedures, independent of a patient’s sex. The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Tennessee.
This case marks the first time the nation’s highest court will take up the merits of legislation targeting transgender Americans. A decision could most directly impact the more than 300,000 high school-aged transgender youth in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute.
“We expect the Supreme Court is going to say whether governments have to treat trans people with equality, whether it’s okay for them to single us out for mistreatment, specifically in the realm of health, but with implications beyond,” said Gabriel Arkles, senior legal counsel with Advocates for Trans Equality.
The case has not yet been set for oral argument; a decision is expected by the end of June 2025.
Ghost guns: Garland v VanDerStok
Key question: Can the government require purchase-age limits, background checks, serialization and registration for self-assemble gun kits widely available online?
Facing an explosion of crimes and deadly accidents involving self-assembled and untraceable weapons known as ghost guns, the Biden Administration issued a new regulation in 2022 classifying online parts kits and gun templates as “firearms” under federal law.
The Supreme Court will now decide whether that regulation can stand, forcing manufacturers and retailers to comply with licensing, background check, record-keeping and serialization requirements for gun kits, parts, and blueprints as with any other fully-assembled firearm.
Gun groups, which sued over the rule, say parts kits and 3D blueprints do not meet the definition of a “firearm” under the Gun Control Act of 1968, which governs gun sales and production in the U.S. The administration says the law is broadly written and clearly applies to anything that can be “readily converted to a functional condition.”
The dispute centers on competing interpretations of the text of federal law – not Second Amendment rights – but the outcome could have a major practical impact, experts say.
“If the Court strikes down the rule, it significantly limits federal regulation in this area,” said Deepak Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator and Harvard Law professor. “There’s a real risk that criminals will be able to order guns on the internet, and the entire gun control framework will not apply to them.”
Oral arguments in the case have been scheduled for Oct. 8; a decision is expected by the end of June 2025.
Death penalty: Glossip v Oklahoma
Key question: Must Oklahoma put a man to death even though the state doesn’t want to, he maintains his innocence, and prosecutors suppressed key evidence that could have undermined a conviction?
Richard Glossip has been scheduled for execution 8 times and been given his “last meal” 3 times. In 2015, he won a temporary reprieve by challenging the method of lethal injection at the U.S. Supreme Court; he ultimately lost.
Now, Glossip is back at the high court in a last-ditch bid to save his life – this time with the state of Oklahoma on his side, declaring that he may be innocent and deserves a new trial.
Oklahoma’s Republican governor and attorney general – both staunch supporters of the death penalty – have called Glossip’s 2004 murder conviction “deeply flawed.” He was linked to the crime by only the testimony of the confessed killer who later recanted and, unbeknownst to the jury, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and taking psychiatric medication.
The state’s highest court, in narrowly divided rulings, denied all of Glossip’s appeals and rejected the state officials’ requests to vacate the conviction and initiate a new trial. It has said the execution must go forward.
“You might think this is extraordinary – someone having exculpatory evidence in the file that the state didn’t disclose and sometimes even allowing people to testify falsely,” said University of Chicago Law professor David Strauss. “It’s actually not that extraordinary. It actually happens pretty often, and the court should pay attention to that, and, if possible, do something about it.”
The dramatic case will test the Supreme Court on the competing values of finality after decades of failed appeals; the primacy of state courts on matters of state law; and the meaning of justice in a case with so many apparent flaws.
“It would be remarkable to me for the Supreme Court to say where the state and the individual don’t want execution it should go forward nonetheless,” said ACLU legal director David Cole.
Oral arguments in the case have been scheduled for Oct. 9; a decision is expected by the end of June 2025.
Online porn: Free Speech Coalition v Paxton
Key question: Can states require websites with sexual material “harmful to minors” to verify a user’s age and display warnings that porn is potentially addictive?
Nineteen states have enacted age verification requirements for websites with sexually-explicit material that could be harmful to minors. Under Texas’ law, adults must submit personal information – including an uploaded copy of their ID – in order to obtain access.
The Supreme Court will now decide whether forcing adults to prove their age unlawfully burdens their First Amendment rights to view constitutionally-protected material, even if the objective is to protect kids.
“Pornography is protected speech; that’s black letter law. Material that is not obscene as to adults may be obscene as to children; that’s black letter law. No one’s disputing any of that,” said Jeremy Broggi, a Supreme Court litigator with Wiley Rein LLP. “In this case, the dispute is about when you say that everyone has to verify their age to access the material, does that burden the rights of adults that want to access it?”
Free speech advocates and the ACLU argue that the law is astonishingly broad and burdensome – applying to not just porn sites but public health resources and R-rated entertainment, among other things. They say it also robs people of a right to anonymity and that there are more effective and automated ways to block children.
“In addition to the censorship problem, there’s a question about what happens to this data. You put your photo ID on the website. They, in theory, are not allowed to keep it, although, how is Texas going to police that?” said Alan Morrison, associate dean for public interest and public service at George Washington University Law School.
Texas insists its requirements are reasonable measures to protect children, not unlike lawful requirements to verify a customer’s age before purchasing liquor or entering a strip club.
“PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas,” said Attorney General Ken Paxton, “because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children. In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children. If they don’t want to comply, they should leave Texas.”
Both sides say the Supreme Court’s ruling could have a sweeping impact nationwide.
“More people watch porn and view porn each year than vote and read the newspaper,” said Lisa Blatt, a veteran Supreme Court litigator with Williams & Connolly LLP. A 2016 study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine reports that up to 70% of men and 40% of women have used pornography within the past year.
The case has not yet been set for oral argument; a decision is expected by the end of June 2025.
Flavored e-cigarettes: FDA v Wages and White Lion
Key question: Did the FDA illegally refuse to approve the sale of flavored vapes, or e-cigarettes, popular among teens?
With e-cigarettes and vapes booming in popularity, the Supreme Court will scrutinize how the Food and Drug Administration vets new nicotine products for market and why it rejected a wave of flavored vapes in recent years.
Under federal law, the companies must provide FDA with reliable and robust evidence to show that the products would promote public health and that, on balance, the benefits to adult smokers would outweigh the risks of youth addiction.
At the center of the case is FDA’s refusal to approve applications from makers of e-liquid flavors like “Jimmy The Juice Man Peachy Strawberry,” “Suicide Bunny Mother’s Milk and Cookies” and “Iced Pineapple Express.”
The agency said the companies had provided insufficient evidence that the benefits of their flavored products exceed the dangers to hooking kids. The companies later sued, alleging a flawed analysis that discounted the ways vape products help people stop smoking.
A Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel concluded that the FDA refusal to approve new flavored nicotine products was “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of federal law. The agency has appealed.
“If you ask adults who smoke if they were to switch to e-cigarettes what kind of flavors are they interested in, the majority of responses are tobacco flavor. If you ask kids, they like the fruit or candy flavor,” said Caroline Cecot, an administrative law expert at George Washington University Law School. “This was a big part of what the FDA was sort of thinking about. And we have this evidence.”
Nearly a quarter of high school students who use e-cigarettes consume illicit menthol-flavored varieties, according to the 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey.
The Supreme Court’s decision could impact how quickly and how much more widely available additional flavored nicotine products will be on the market in the U.S. The case has not yet been set for oral argument; a decision is expected by the end of June 2025.
