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Man charged with killing Minnesota lawmaker plans to plead not guilty
Court Watch |
2025/07/17 02:06
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A Minnesota man plans to plead not guilty to charges he killed the top Democratic leader in the state House and her husband after wounding another lawmaker and his wife, his attorney said.
Vance Boelter, 57, is due in federal court for his arraignment on Sept. 12 under an order issued late Tuesday, hours after a grand jury indicted him on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty.
At a news conference Tuesday, prosecutors released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the June 14 shootings of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark. However, the letter doesn’t make clear why he targeted the couples.
Boelter’s federal defender, Manny Atwal, said in an email that the weighty charges do not come as a surprise.
“The indictment starts the process of receiving discovery which will allow me to evaluate the case,” Atwal said Tuesday. She did not immediately comment Wednesday on any possible defense strategies.
At his last court appearance, Boelter said he was “looking forward to the facts about the 14th coming out.”
While the scheduling order set a trial date of Nov. 3, Atwal said it was “very unlikely” to happen so soon.
Investigators have already gathered a huge amount of evidence that both sides will need time to evaluate. The scheduling order acknowledges that both sides may find grounds for seeking extensions. And the potential for a death sentence adds yet another level of complexity.
The acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, reiterated Tuesday that they consider the former House speaker’s death a “political assassination” and the wounding of Sen. John Hoffman an “attempted assassination.”
But Thompson told reporters a decision on whether to seek the death penalty “will not come for several months.” He said it will ultimately be up to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, with input from the capital case unit at the Department of Justice, local prosecutors and the victims.
Minnesota abolished its state death penalty in 1911, but the Trump administration says it intends to be aggressive in seeking capital punishment for eligible federal crimes.
Boelter’s motivations remain murky. Friends have described him as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. Boelter allegedly made lists of politicians in Minnesota and other states — all or mostly Democrats — and attorneys at national law firms. In an interview published by the New York Post on Saturday, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for President Donald Trump, but he declined to elaborate on that point.
“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” Thompson said.
Prosecutors say Boelter was disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car early June 14 when he went to the Hoffmans’ home in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He allegedly shot the senator nine times, and his wife, Yvette, eight times, but they survived.
Boelter later allegedly went to the Hortmans’ home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them. Their dog was so gravely injured that he had to be euthanized.
Investigators found Boelter’s letter to the FBI director in the car he abandoned near his rural home in Green Isle, west of Minneapolis. He surrendered the night after the shootings following what authorities have called the largest search for a suspect in Minnesota history. |
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Trump says he’s considering ‘taking away’ Rosie O’Donnell’s US citizenship
Law Firm News |
2025/07/13 15:38
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President Donald Trump says he is considering “taking away” the U.S. citizenship of a longtime rival, actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits such an action by the government.
“Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland “if they want her.”
The two have criticized each other publicly for years, an often bitter back-and-forth that predates Trump’s involvement in politics. In recent days, O’Donnell on social media denounced Trump and recent moves by his administration, including the signing of a massive GOP-backed tax breaks and spending cuts plan.
It’s just the latest threat by Trump to revoke the citizenship of people with whom he has publicly disagreed, most recently his former adviser and one-time ally, Elon Musk.
But O’Donnell’s situation is notably different from Musk, who was born in South Africa. O’Donnell was born in the United States and has a constitutional right to U.S. citizenship. The U.S. State Department notes on its website that U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization may relinquish U.S. nationality by taking certain steps – but only if the act is performed voluntary and with the intention of relinquishing U.S. citizenship.
Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, noted the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the Fourteen Amendment of the Constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born U.S. citizen,” Frost said in an email Saturday. “In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris to win his second term. She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage.
Responding to Trump Saturday, O’Donnell wrote on social media that she had upset the president and “add me to the list of people who oppose him at every turn.” |
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Nursing homes struggle with Trump’s immigration crackdown
Court Issues |
2025/07/10 22:39
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Nursing homes already struggling to recruit staff are now grappling with President Donald Trump’s attack on one of their few reliable sources of workers: immigration.
Facilities for older adults and disabled people are reporting the sporadic loss of employees who have had their legal status revoked by Trump. But they fear even more dramatic impacts are ahead as pipelines of potential workers slow to a trickle with an overall downturn in legal immigration.
“We feel completely beat up right now,” says Deke Cateau, CEO of A.G. Rhodes, which operates three nursing homes in the Atlanta area, with one-third of the staff made up of foreign-born people from about three dozen countries. “The pipeline is getting smaller and smaller.”
Eight of Cateau’s workers are expected to be forced to leave after having their Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, revoked. TPS allows people already living in the U.S. to stay and work legally if their home countries are unsafe due to civil unrest or natural disasters and during the Biden administration, the designation was expanded to cover people from a dozen countries, including large numbers from Venezuela and Haiti.
While those with TPS represent a tiny minority of A.G. Rhodes’ 500 staffers, Cateau says they will be “very difficult, if not impossible, to replace” and he worries what comes next.
“It may be eight today, but who knows what it’s going to be down the road,” says Cateau, an immigrant himself, who arrived from Trinidad and Tobago 25 years ago.
Nearly one in five civilian workers in the U.S. is foreign born, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but as in construction, agriculture and manufacturing, immigrants are overrepresented in caregiving roles. More than a quarter of an estimated 4 million nursing assistants, home health aides, personal care aides and other so-called direct care workers are foreign born, according to PHI, a nonprofit focused on the caregiving workforce.
The aging of the massive Baby Boom generation is poised to fuel even more demand for caregivers, both in institutional settings and in individuals’ homes. BLS projects more growth among home health and personal care aides than any other job, with some 820,000 new positions added by 2032.
Nursing homes, assisted living facilities, home health agencies and other such businesses were counting on immigrants to fill many of those roles, so Trump’s return to the White House and his administration’s attack on nearly all forms of immigration has sent a chill throughout the industry.
Katie Smith Sloan, CEO of LeadingAge, which represents nonprofit care facilities, says homes around the country have been affected by the immigration tumult. Some have reported employees who have stopped coming to work, fearful of a raid, even though they are legally in the country. Others have workers who are staying home with children they have kept out of school because they worry about roundups. Many others see a slowdown of job applicants.
Rachel Blumberg, CEO of the Toby and Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences in Boca Raton, Florida, has already lost 10 workers whose permission to stay in the U.S. came under a program known as humanitarian parole, which had been granted to people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. She is slated to lose 30 more in the coming weeks with the end of TPS for Haitians.
“I think it’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Blumberg, forecasting further departures of employees who may not themselves be deported, but whose spouse or parent is.
Blumberg got less than 24 hours’ notice when her employees lost their work authorization, setting off a scramble to fill shifts. She has already boosted salaries and referral bonuses but says it will be difficult to replace not just aides, but maintenance workers, dishwashers and servers.
“Unfortunately, Americans are not drawn to applying and working in the positions that we have available,” she says.
Front-line caregivers are overwhelmingly female and a majority are members of minority groups, according to PHI, earning an average of just $16.72 hourly in 2023.
Long-term care homes saw an exodus of workers as COVID made an already-challenging workplace even more so. Some facilities were beginning to see employment normalize to pre-pandemic levels just as the immigration crackdown hit, though industry-wide, there is still a massive shortage of workers.
Some in the industry have watched in frustration as Trump lamented how businesses including farming and hospitality could be hurt by his policies, wondering why those who clean hotel rooms or pick tomatoes deserve more attention than those who care for elders. Beyond rescinded work authorizations for people living in the U.S., care homes are having difficulty getting visas approved for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses they recruit abroad.
What used to be a simple process now stretches so long that candidates reconsider the U.S. altogether, says Mark Sanchez, chief operating officer of United Hebrew, a nursing home in New Rochelle, New York.
“There are lines upon lines upon lines,” says Sanchez, “and now they’re saying, ‘I’m going to go to Canada’ and ‘I’m going to go to Germany and they’re welcoming me with open arms.’”
Looking around a facility with a majority-immigrant staff, the son of Filipino immigrants wonders where his future recruits will come from.
“I don’t have ICE coming in my door and taking my people,” Sanchez says, “but the pipeline that was flowing before is now coming in dribs and drabs.”
Long-term care workers are routinely lured away not just by hospitals and doctors’ offices, but restaurants, stores and factories. Half of the average nursing home’s staff turns over each year, according to federal data, making the attraction and retention of every employee vital to their operation.
Robin Wolzenburg of LeadingAge in Wisconsin began working to place an influx of people from Afghanistan after the U.S. pulled out its final troops four years ago and thousands of refugees arrived in her state. Care homes began hiring the refugees and were so delighted with them, some facilities began hiring refugees who arrived from Ukraine, Somalia and Congo. Though many homes had employee retention rates around 30%, Wolzenburg said the figure was above 90% with refugees.
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US completes deportation of 8 men to South Sudan after weeks of legal wrangling
Legal Interview |
2025/07/06 17:21
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Eight men deported from the United States in May and held under guard for weeks at an American military base in the African nation of Djibouti while their legal challenges played out in court have now reached the Trump administration’s intended destination, war-torn South Sudan, a country the State Department advises against travel to due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The immigrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan arrived in South Sudan on Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to relocate them in a case that had gone to the Supreme Court, which had permitted their removal from the U.S. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the U.S.
“This was a win for the rule of law, safety and security of the American people,” said Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in a statement Saturday announcing the men’s arrival in South Sudan, a chaotic country in danger once more of collapsing into civil war.
The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the transfer of the men who had been put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan. That meant that the South Sudan transfer could be completed after the flight was detoured to a base in Djibouti, where they men were held in a converted shipping container. The flight was detoured after a federal judge found the administration had violated his order by failing to allow the men a chance to challenge the removal.
The court’s conservative majority had ruled in June that immigration officials could quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.
A flurry of court hearings on Independence Day resulted a temporary hold on the deportations while a judge evaluated a last-ditch appeal by the men’s before the judge decided he was powerless to halt their removals and that the person best positioned to rule on the request was a Boston judge whose rulings led to the initial halt of the administration’s effort to begin deportations to South Sudan.
By Friday evening, that judge had issued a brief ruling concluding the Supreme Court had tied his hands.
The men had final orders of removal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have said. Authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants if authorities cannot quickly send them back to their homelands.
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