Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo cleared in public corruption investigation
In a closeout memo Monday, Julio Gonzalez, who heads Broward's Public Corruption Unit, said the state 'cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Carollo's actions rose to a criminal offense as it pertains to his dealings with' Ball & Chain owner Bill Fuller and Art Acevedo, the former Miami police chief.
Gonzalez wrote that the matter can be referred back to the city of Miami for a possible administrative investigation. Broward County sometimes investigates public corruption matters out of Miami-Dade County because of conflicts of interest.
Fuller previously won in a federal civil lawsuit against Carollo, with a jury awarding him and businessman Martin Pinilla $63.5 million. Jurors found that Carollo weaponized police and code enforcement officers in retaliation against Fuller and Pinilla after they supported his 2017 election opponent.
Acevedo, meanwhile, filed a lawsuit in 2022 against Carollo and two other commissioners who voted to fire him in 2021, accusing the defendants of violating his First Amendment rights and illegally retaliating against him for 'speaking out against corruption and abuse of power by the City of Miami Commission.' That lawsuit is ongoing.
The positive news for Carollo lands the same week as a campaign fundraiser that Miami First, the political committee tied to the commissioner, is hosting to raise money for his potential mayoral campaign.
Carollo said Tuesday that he has not decided if he's running for mayor, saying that other people organized the event. The commissioner faced scrutiny for the timing of the fundraiser, which was scheduled on the same day as the memorial services for Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who died last week.
Reached for comment, Carollo acknowledged that the timing wasn't ideal but said it wasn't intentional.
'This is something that had been planned way before,' Carollo said. 'It's not in my control to cancel something that others have done, and this has got nothing to do with Manolo.'
'I wish it would've been on another day, but that's the day that it fell on,' he added.
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USA Today
11 hours ago
- USA Today
From marginal religious groups to mainstream Christians: Why some see a shift in Supreme Court cases
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More: Supreme Court to decide if prison officials can be sued over inmates' religious rights Handcuffed to a chair while his dreadlocks were shaved off Landor had shown prison officials a copy of a court ruling that dreadlocks grown for religious reasons should be accommodated. But an intake guard threw the ruling in the trash and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while his knee-length locks were shaved off. The justices will decide whether Landor can sue the guards for compensation under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Landor – whose appeal was backed by more than 30 religious groups and the Justice Department − argues that monetary damages are often the only way to hold prison officials accountable when religious rights are violated. Legal experts on religion cases expect the court will side with the Rastafarian. That would be consistent not just with the high success rate of appeals the court agrees to hear from religious people, but also with the role smaller religious groups have played in the court's history. Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists Most of the religious cases Richard Garnett teaches in his classes at the University of Notre Dame Law School involve smaller religious communities, including Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists. 'The story of religious freedom in America has developed through cases involving members of minority religions,' Garnett said. Other court watchers, however, say that was more true in the past than it is now. 'That's kind of a legacy view,' said Carl Esbeck, an expert on religious liberty at the University of Missouri School of Law. In fact, a 2022 study found that; since 2005, the winning religion in most Supreme Court religious cases was a mainstream Christian organization. In the past, by contrast, pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations, according to the analysis by Lee Epstein at Washington University in St. Louis and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School. 'The religion clauses of the First Amendment were once understood to provide modest but meaningful protection for non-mainstream religions from discrimination by governments that favored mainstream Christian organizations, practices, or values,' they wrote. Similarly, traditionalist Christians – such as orthodox Catholics and Baptists – had been significantly less successful than other religious groups in getting accommodations from lower federal courts from 1986 to 1995, according to a study by Michael Heise of Cornell Law School and Gregory Sisk of the University of St. Thomas School of Law. But from 2006 to 2015, their disadvantage 'appeared to fade into statistical insignificance,' they wrote in 2022. The Supreme Court, they said, 'appears to be setting the stage for a more equitable and expansive protection of religious liberty.' Colorado and the gay wedding cake debate Daniel Mach, director of the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, agrees that the court has taken an expansive view of religious liberty protections. But he says it hasn't always been equitable. In 2018, the court said Colorado had shown "religious hostility" to a baker who didn't want to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. More: How a Supreme Court case about a gay couple's wedding cake got caught up in Israeli judicial reform But that same month, Mach said, the court upheld President Donald Trump's travel ban 'even in the face of Trump's repeated unambiguous statements condemning Islam and Muslims.' 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'Yoder is an important precedent of this Court, and it cannot be breezily dismissed as a special exception granted to one particular religious minority,' Alito wrote. More: Supreme Court sides with Maryland parents who want to avoid LGBTQ+ books in public schools In a 2020 speech to the conservative Federalist Society, Alito had warned that 'religious liberty is in danger of becoming a second-class right.' He listed examples of cases he'd judged about religious minorities, including the rights of Muslim police officers to have beards, of a Jewish prisoner to organize a Torah study group and whether a Native American could keep a bear for religious services. The baker who didn't want to make a cake for a same-sex wedding and Catholic nuns who objected to insurance coverage for contraceptives 'deserve no less protection,' Alito said about more recent cases. More: Supreme Court sides with Catholic Charities in case about tax exemptions and religion `Clear pattern of preference for religious groups' Cornell Law School Professor Nelson Tebbe said more of the claims about religious freedom started to come from mainstream majority Christian groups as political polarization increased and as the gay rights movement picked up speed. 'Suddenly, civil libertarian groups who had been on the side of minority religions…started to realize that civil rights laws could be vulnerable to religious attacks by conservative Christians and they started to get worried,' Tebbe said. As the court has shifted its approach, he said, the justices have both granted exemptions from regulations that burden religion as well as said government must treat religious groups no differently than secular organizations when providing public benefits − such as school vouchers. 'While both of those could be seen as understandable on their own terms, when you put them together, there's a clear pattern of preference for religious groups,' he said. 'It's a pretty dramatic moment in constitutional law in this area.' Garnett, the religious freedom expert at the University of Notre Dame Law School, said the court's decisions are a reflection of the ongoing debate over how much accommodation should be given in a country with diverse religious views. 'So the fact that those cases are coming up isn't because the court sort of shifted to protecting majority groups,' he said. 'It's because events on the ground shifted. And the nature of the controversies that are served up are different.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
State Department announces investigation into Harvard international visas
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Indianapolis Star
a day ago
- Indianapolis Star
Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down following Trump budget cuts
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced on Aug. 1 that it was starting an 'orderly wind-down of its operations' weeks after Congress passed a measure that clawed back more than $1 billion in funds to the organization. The announcement came a day after U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, said the Senate Appropriations Committee hadn't included funding for the corporation in its fiscal 2026 spending bill. 'It is a shameful reality, and now communities across the country will suffer the consequences as over 1,500 stations lose critical funding," Murray said, according to The Hill. The corporation has said more than 70% of its federal funding, which it disperses to NPR and PBS, goes to local public media stations. PBS advocates previously told USA TODAY the budget cuts would disproportionately affect rural areas. President Donald Trump called for the outlets' federal funding to be pulled in May, saying 'neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.' Corporation for Public Broadcasting employees were told on Aug. 1 that most staff positions would be slashed as the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. Some staff would remain through January 2026 to 'ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations,' according to the corporation's news release. 'Public media has been one of the most trusted institutions in American life, providing educational opportunity, emergency alerts, civil discourse, and cultural connection to every corner of the country,' Corporation for Public Broadcasting President and CEO Patricia Harrison said. 'We are deeply grateful to our partners across the system for their resilience, leadership, and unwavering dedication to serving the American people.' The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was established by Congress in 1967. This is a developing story. Check back for updates. BrieAnna Frank is a First Amendment Reporting Fellow at USA TODAY. Reach her at bjfrank@
