8.26.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the reading of The New York Times for Tuesday,
August twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. As a reminder, RADIOI
is a reading service intended for people who are blind
or of other disabilities that make it difficult to read
printed material. The New York Times is donated to RADIOI
by the Lexington raw Leader. Your reader for today is
Dawn Flickinser. We'll start today's reading with the Miriam Webster

(00:23):
Word of the day trepidation t r e p I
d A t i o n trepidation' so noun. Trepidation
refers to a feeling of fear that causes someone to
hesitate because they think that something bad or unpleasant is
going to happen. The students felt a sense of trepidation

(00:47):
upon being summoned to the principal's office. If you've ever
trembled with fright, you know something of both the sensation
and etymology of trepidation. The word comes from the Latin
verb trepidai, which means to tremble. Trepidare also gave English
the verb trepidate, meaning to feel nervous or apprehensive, but

(01:08):
that word is now considered archaic. Early Meanings of trepidation,
such as tremulous motion or tremor, reflect its shaky origins.
Over time, however, those senses gave way to our modern
meaning referring to fearful hesitancy. Obrego Garcia detained again after

(01:31):
government signaled it would redport him. A judge in Maryland
barred the Trump administration from immediately deporting Kilmer Armando Abrego
Garcia until he had a chance to challenge the move
by Alan fuer Jasminuola and Chris Cameron. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia,

(01:52):
the immigrant who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador in
March and then brought back to face criminal charges, was
detained again on Monday after the administration indicated that it
planned to redport him to Uganda. The detention unfolded after
mister Abrago Garcia arrived at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement

(02:13):
office in Baltimore and came only three days after he
was freed from custody in a criminal case that was
filed against him in Federal District Court in Nashville. The
administration has insisted that mister Abrago Garcia would never go
free on American soil and his lawyer said over the
weekend that Trump officials had threatened to deport him to

(02:33):
Uganda after he was released from jail in Tennessee. Outside
the ICE office on Monday, a lawyer from mister abrago Garcia,
Simon Sandeval Moseenburg, said that the stated intention of the
meeting was for an interview. Clearly that was false, he said,
adding that the immigration authorities did not say why mister
abrago Garcia was being detained or even where he would

(02:57):
be taken. The crowd of supporters descended into chance of
booze in shame to the news and immigrant writes. Volunteers
in yellow vests shielded mister abrago Garcia's family members as
they left the building. Shortly after, mister abrago Garcia's lawyers
filed a legal action known as a habeas petens or

(03:18):
petition in Federal District Court in Maryland, seeking to stop
his removal to Uganda. The petition claimed that the Trump
administration had re arrested him without first giving him the
opportunity to express fears of persecution and torture in that country.
At an afternoon teleconference, Judge Paula Zenus, who has been

(03:40):
dealing with mister Abrago Garcia's case for nearly five months,
said she planned to move as fast as is just
in considering his petition, Judge Zenas asked his lawyers and
Justice Department prosecutors to propose by Tuesday morning a schedule
for briefings and a hearing to consider questions such as
whether mister a brain Brago Garcia should be allowed to

(04:01):
be deported to a country of his choice and whether
he might face danger if sent to Uganda. In the meantime,
she declared the government was barred from re expelling mister
Abrago Garcia, who was now being held in an ice
facility in Virginia. Given that the Justice Department lawyers on
the case have a long history of flouting her orders,

(04:22):
the judge made sure they understood her. Your clients, she
told them, referring to administration officials, are absolutely forbidden at
this juncture to remove mister Abrago Garcia from the continental
United States. Over the weekend, his lawyers had accused the
Trump administration of seeking to coerce a guilty plea from

(04:42):
him on the charges of human smuggling that were brought
against him in an indictment in June. The lawyer said
the administration had promised to send mister Abrago Garcia to
Costa Rica, where he could live freely as a legal resident,
if he pleaded to the charges and agreed to serve
whatever prison sentence he eventually received. Otherwise, the lawyer said,

(05:03):
Trump officials said they would deport mister Abrago Garcia half
way across the world to Uganda, where the lawyer said
his safety and liberty would be under threat. Last week,
Uganda joined other African nations in reaching an agreement with
the United States to accept an unspecified number of migrants
deported from the United States, who would not include people

(05:25):
with criminal records or accompany unaccompanied miners. One of mister
Abrago Garcia's lawyers, Sean Hecker, said after the detention that
the threat of deportation came even as Costa Rica was
willing to take him in as a refugee. The government's
campaign of retribution continues because mister Abrego refuses to be

(05:46):
coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never
have been brought, he said. Prosecutors in Nashville adamantly denied
that they had sought to coerce a guilty plea, saying
in a court filing on Monday that the accusations by
many mister Brego Garcia's lawyers were not true and dishonestly made.
The Secretary of Homeland Security, Christinoum set on social media

(06:08):
that the immigration authorities were processing him for deportation. The
Ugandan government said it had not received official communication from
the US government that mister Abrego Garcia would be sent there.
In a phone interview, Bagar Vincent Wasa, the Permanent Secretary
of Uganda's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said questions about mister

(06:32):
Abrego Garcia were based on speculation in the news media. Unfortunately,
in diplomacy there has to be formal communication, he said.
We don't have any formal communication from the US government.
The arrest in Baltimore was the latest twist and a
long running saga that began this spring when the Trump
administration removed mister Brego Garcia to a notorious terrorism prism

(06:55):
in El Salvador despite a court order that expressly barred
him from being sent to the country. Then, after weeks
of complaining that they were powerless to bring him back
to US, soil. Trump officials did exactly that, not merely
to correct their own mistake, but to file criminal charges
against him. Mister Abrago Garcia's lawyers have accused the Trump

(07:16):
administration of prosecuting him in Nashville as part of a
vindictive effort to punish him for daring to fight back
against his original deportation. As part of their claims, the
lawyer cited several derogatory statements made by mister Trump and
some of his top aides who labeled mister Abrego Garcia
a terrorist and a member of the violent street gang

(07:38):
m S thirteen. Even though several federal judges have questioned
the evidence supporting those assertions, Still, the White House kept
up its drumbeat of attacks on Monday, posting a cartoon
image of mister Brago Garcia on its official ex account
above a phrase reading m S. Thirteen. Earlier on Monday,

(07:58):
he as he arrived for his emigration check in, mister
Abrego Garcia was greeted by the cheers of dozens of supporters.
His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, and his brother Caesar were
by his side. Speaking to the crowd, he thanked the
people who had stood with him and delivered an emotional
plea to emigrants and the emigrant rights community to keep

(08:21):
up the fight and not lose hope. Brothers and sisters.
My name is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, he said, and I
always want you to remember that. To day I can
say with pride that I am free and have been
reunited with my family. Mister Abrego Garcia, dressed in jeans,
sneakers and a black, gray and white polo, appeared nervous

(08:43):
when he first arrived. His eyes shifted from reporters to rallygoers,
and he took a deep breath. His voice broke as
he described how the memories of his family in playing
with his children on a trampoline had sustained him while
he was detained in the Terrorism Confinement Center or Sea Coat,
but he held back his tears and finished his statement
with resolve. He said those moments would continue to fuel

(09:07):
him as he continued his legal battles, and reminded the
audience that his case was not one about emigrant family
but the many targeted under the Trump administration's crackdown, to
all of the families who have also suffered separations or
who live under the constant threat of being separated. He said,
I want to tell you that even though its injustice

(09:27):
is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope. He continued,
God is with us, and God will never leave us.
God will bring justice to all of the injustice. As
he climbed the steps to the federal building, the emigration
agents around the scene turned chaotic. Mister Abrago Garcia bowed
his head as he slowly walked into the building. The

(09:49):
crowd chanted ice go home, and a sea saese puede
or yes you can in Spanish. In Washington, crackdown making
a federal case out of low level arrests a single
afternoon in court illustrated the new ways in which laws
are being enforced after President Trump's takeover of the city's

(10:10):
police by Devlen Barrett. As President Trump posed triumphantly for
photos with police officers, government agents, and members of the
National Guard in southeast Washington last week, lawyers across town
in federal court grappled with his new brand of justice.
The stream of defendants who shuffled through a federal court

(10:31):
room on Thursday afternoon illustrated the new ways in which
laws are being enforced in the nation's capital after the
president's takeover of the city's police. They were appearing before
a magistrate judge on charges that would typically be handled
at the local court level, if they were filed at all.
One man had been arrested over an open container of alcohol.

(10:53):
Another had been charged with threatening the president after delivering
a drunken outburst following his arrest on vandalism in one
defendant's gun case so alarmed prosecutors that they intend to
drop the case. Mister Trump has cast his crack down
on crime as a success and suggested on Friday that
it was a blue print he would seek to apply

(11:14):
to other cities, including Chicago, to defense lawyers and even
some prosecutors, though many of the cases that have landed
in court have raised concerns that the takeover seems intended
to artificially inflate its effect, because government lawyers have been
instructed to file the most serious federal charges, no matter
how minor the incident. One of the recipients of mister

(11:37):
Trump's show of force was Mark Bigelow, twenty eight, a
part time delivery driver for Amazon. After midnight on August nineteenth,
mister Bigelow was sitting in the middle row of a
van parked on a street in northeast Washington with its
doors open. According to court papers, two other men were
in the front when a full complement of law enforcement

(11:58):
officials from the Tropolitan Police Department, the FBI, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the State Department's
Diplomatic Security Service stopped and saw what appeared to be
an open container of alcohol in the front seat. As
law enforcement questioned and searched the two other passengers, mister

(12:18):
Bigelow left the van and started to walk away until
other agents stopped him. According to the charging document, peering
into the van, an officer spotted a second cup containing
an alcoholic beverage in the middle row seat, at which
point mister Bigelow was arrested on charges of possession of
an open container, a misdemeanor. As he was placed in
a vehicle the handcuffed, mister Bigelow became belligerent, twisting his

(12:42):
body and yelling get off me, y'all too, little bro
and an ice agent. According to a court filing, which
described how mister Bigelow made physical contact by kicking an
agent in the hand and another in the leg. As
a result, mister Bigelow was charged with assaulting, resisting, or
impeding a federal officer, an offense that carries a maximum
sentence of eight years in prison. The charges follow a

(13:05):
directive by the U S. Attorney Janine Piro to prosecutors
to charge the most serious crimes possible in each case,
and to do so in federal court, where sentences tend
to run much longer. A federal public defender representing mister Bigelow,
Elizabeth Mullen, told the U S. Magistrate Judge Moksila A
upen Yahya, that he would never have been arrested, led

(13:31):
alone charged with a federal felony for the president, but
for the President's crackdown, he was caught up in this
federal occupation of DC. She said this was a case
created by federal law enforcement. Next up was Torres Riley,
thirty seven, who was arrested at a Trader Joe's grocery
store for what the police said was possession of two

(13:52):
handguns in his bag. Mister Riley's case has been a
point of contention inside the U. S. Attorney's office, where
a number of concluded that officers unlawfully searched mister Riley
when they stopped him violating the Fourth Amendment. According to
people familiar with the case who spoke on condition of
animinity to discuss internal deliberations before mister Trump's cracked down,

(14:15):
prosecutors in Miss Pierrot's office would have been likely to
dismiss a case like mister Riley's after an initial review
of the facts of the arrest, according to the people
who were familiar with the instructions. Those people said that
after mister Riley's arrest, Miss Pierrot pushed her subordinates to
charge the case despite those concerns. One person familiar with

(14:39):
the matter disputed the characterization, saying that the prosecutors handling
the case did not have a full command of the
facts and that when she saw the police body camera
footage of the arrest on Friday, she ordered them to
dismiss the gun charges against mister Riley. A detention hearing
in the case is scheduled for Monday. In a statement,

(14:59):
missus Piero said, my job is to prosecute crime in
what was one of the most violent cities in the world,
and so doing I will always act with integrity and responsibility.
Under my watch, prosecutors will be aggressive in getting guns
off the street and arguing cases to judges who make
final determinations, but they will do so consistent with the

(15:22):
law and the facts. The argument for dropping such a
case is not simply a question of being tough or
soft on crime or constitutional rights. Prosecutors have to worry,
particularly in Washington, that an appeals court could, in throwing
out a case like mister Riley's, issue a decision that
makes it harder for officers to search people on the street.

(15:44):
Such an adverse ruling, they reasoned, could hamper crime fighting
efforts for years to come. That was the primary concern
of the prosecutors who argued against pursuing the Riley case,
these people said. Mister Riley made his first appearance in
court on Thursday, about the same time that miss Piro
stood in the sun with mister Trump in Southeast Washington.

(16:05):
I am making sure that we backed the Blue to
the hilt, she told. Officers and agents crowded around the President.
Every arrest you make, were going the longest way to
make sure that we charge in those cases. The next
defendant was Edward Dana, thirty, who was accused of threatening
the President's life, which carries a potential five year prison sentence.

(16:27):
Mister Dana, who has a history of mental illness and arrests,
was stopped around ten pm on August seventeenth after the
police received complaints that he had damaged a light outside
a restaurant in northwest Washington. A group of police officers
and federal agents arrested him for property destruction. As he
settled into the back of a police car, he asserted

(16:48):
that he was drunk after having consumed seven drinks. An
officer's body camera captured his comments. He became irate, yelling
at the officer driving the vehicle that he would return
to the restaurant and beat up someone. I'm not going
to tolerate fascism, he declared, vowing to protect the Constitution
by any means necessary, and that means killing you, officer,

(17:10):
killing the president, killing anyone who stands in the way
of our constitution. The officer immediately radioed his dispatcher to
notify Secret Service he just made threats to kill the president.
Not long afterward, mister Dana began to sing. A Secret
Service agent reviewed the video of his comments and foiled
a charging affidavit against him. He is not a danger.

(17:32):
His lawyer, Miss Mullan told the judge the danger here
is having federal agents roaming the streets. Judge Upada Yaya
urged the two sides to reach an agreement on considerations
for his release, but as the hearing wore on, she
began to lose patience with the prosecutor, Connor Mulrow. Mister

(17:53):
Dana was a menace, he argued, insisting that his mental
health problem should not be an excuse to allow him
to keep harassing people and businesses. Mister Mulbrough added that
given mister Dana's long history of quite erratic behavior, he
should remain in jail while awaiting trial. As the hearing continued,
Judge upad Yaya became exasperated with mister Moreau. I know

(18:17):
what you're doing, and I just have no tolerance for it.
She snapped, there has to be a common sense application
of the law. Her last case of the day involved
a man who had been arrested in Washington based on
a warrant in nearby Virginia. Finding no one else able
to transport him at night from one trail to another,
she persuaded Miss Mullen, the defense lawyer, to do it.

(18:39):
The time and resources of the Court are stretched beyond belief.
The judge said, It's been like this all week. FEMA
employees warned that Trump is gutting disaster response. After Hurricane Katrina,
Congress passed a law to strengthen the nation's disaster response.
FEMA employees say the Trump administration has reversed that process

(19:02):
or that progress by Maxine Joslow, Employees at the Federal
Emergency Management Agency wrote to Congress on Monday, warning that
the Trump administration had reversed much of the progress made
in disaster response and recovery since Hurricane Katrina pumbled the
Gulf Coast two decades ago. The letter to Congress, titled

(19:25):
the Katrina Declaration, rebuked President Trump's plan to drastically scale
down FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster response and
more costs to the States. It came days before the
twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and
costliest storms to ever strike the United States. Our shared

(19:47):
commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our
mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel
us to warn Congress and the American people of the
cascading effects of decision made by the current administration, the
FEMA employees wrote in the letter. They added that they
hoped their warnings would come in time to prevent not

(20:08):
only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective
dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people.
Such an event would represent. Danielle Largayse, the acting FEMA
Press Secretary, said in an email that the Trump administration
is committed to ensuring FEMA delivers for the American people

(20:31):
and is working to reduce red tape, in efficiency, and
outdated processes across the agency. It is not surprising that
some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of
inefficiency are now objecting to reform, mister Largase said, an
apparent reference to the FEMA employees who signed the letter.

(20:53):
Hurricane Katrina's landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi calls an estimated
one thousand, eight hundred and thirty three deaths in one
hundred and sixty one billion dollars in property damage, and
shook the country's confidence in the government's ability to handle disasters.
President George W. Bush faced intense criticism for the slow

(21:13):
federal response to Katrina's devastation in New Orleans, leading to
the resignation of his FEMA administrator, Michael D. Brown, and
the passage of the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act.
That landmark law required that FEMA administrators have a demonstrated
ability in and knowledge of emergency management. It also prohibited

(21:36):
the Homeland Security Secretary from interfering with FEMA's authorities, responsibilities,
or functions, among other things, but the Trump administration has
ignored both requirements of the law. The FEMA employees wrote
in the letter, mister Trump installed first one and then
another acting FEMA administrator who lack experience in emergency management.

(21:58):
The current acting head, David Richardson, told employees in June
that he did not know the United States had a
hurricane season, a comment that unnerved FEMA employees who heard it.
The agency letter later said mister Richardson was joking, and
Christy Noam, the Homeland Security Secretary, has become directly involved

(22:19):
in FEMA operations. She has imposed new spending rules that
have delayed hundreds of FEMA contracts and that hampered FEMA's
response to the catastrophic floods that swept through central Texas
in July. At the same time, the administration has eliminated
billions of dollars in FEMA grants intended to help communities
better withstand disasters. The administration is also now requiring disaster

(22:44):
survivors to provide email addresses when applying for FEMA aid,
according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, a
change that could prevent people with limited internet access from
receiving vital assistance, and the very future of the agency
is unclear. In June, mister Trump said he wanted to
eliminate FEMA after the end of hurricane season and move

(23:07):
emergency management efforts back to the state level. After the
Texas floods in July, when many Americans were focused on
the rescue efforts, the administration's rhetoric softened and officials spoke
instead of reforming the agencies. Still, about two thousand employees
have left FEMA since mister Trump took office, accounting for

(23:27):
about one third of the agency's permanent workforce. Those who
resigned included some of the agency's most accomplished leaders. The
situation has alarmed the FEMA employees who signed the letter
which lamented the loss of experienced staff whose institutional knowledge
and relationships are vital to ensure effective emergency management. Of

(23:47):
the one hundred and eighty two FEMA employees who signed
the letter, thirty six attached their names, while the rest
withheld their identities for fear of retaliation. The letter was
sent to the leaders of several Congressions committees and to
the FEMA Review Council, which mister Trump created to recommend
ways to overhaul the agency. A FEMA employee who helped

(24:09):
organize the letter, who spoke on the condition of animenity
for fear of retaliation, said many workers declined to sign
their names because they worried about being put on administrative leave.
That was the fate of one hundred and forty four
employees at the Environmental Protection Agency after they signed a
letter a similar letter criticizing the administration. A second FEMA

(24:32):
employee who helped organize the letter, who also spoke on
the condition of animenity, said she wanted to sound the
alarm before it was too late and the next hurricane
has struck. This year's Atlantic hurricane season has been relatively quiet,
with Hurricane Aeron avoiding landfall in the United States last week.
Be forecasts say hurricane season could ramp up before it

(24:54):
ends in November thirtieth. The storms supercharged by warmer ocean
waters fueled by humans caused climate change. Scientists perform first
pig to human lung transplant. Researchers in China placed a
lung from a genetically modified pig into a brain dead
man with mixed results. By Rony Karen Raven. Scientists have

(25:19):
dreamed for centuries about using animal organs to treat ailing humans.
In recent years, those efforts have begun to bear fruit.
Researchers have begun transplanting the hearts and kidneys of genetically
modified pigs into patients, with varying degrees of success, but
lungs are notoriously difficult to transplant, even from human to

(25:40):
human Immortality rates are high now. In the first procedure
of its kind, Chinese scientists on Monday reported transplanting a
lung from a pig into a brain dead man. The
organ sustained damage after it was transplanted, but functioned to
some degree. Scientists at Guangzho Medical Universe City reported in

(26:01):
the journal Nature Medicine. The organ was removed after nine days.
American scientists call the procedure exciting but urged caution. It's
very promising in a great first step, but there is
a lot more work to do to make this feasible,
said doctor Stephanie Chang, an associate professor in cardiothoracic surgery

(26:22):
at NYU Grossman's School of Medicine and surgical director for
the lung transplant Program. If there is a way to
actually source organs from animals and have them work in
genetically modified ways, that would be very exciting, she said.
While dialysis can help people with kidney failure, there's not
much that can replace your lungs. Doctor Chang added. In

(26:46):
the United States alone, millions suffer from severe, life threatening
lung disease, including chronic conditions caused by COVID, Yet there
is an extreme shortage of human lungs available for transplant.
Many donor organs damaged by a lifetime of environmental exposure
or simply not in good enough condition to a transplant.

(27:07):
The Chinese scientists transplanted the left lung of a pig
that had undergone six gene edits into a brain dead
thirty nine year old man. Because the procedure left his
functioning right lung in place. The experiment did not prove
that the transplanted lung could sustain life on its own.
Critics noted, it's impressive, but it doesn't answer the question

(27:29):
is that lung working, said doctor Richard N. Pearson, a
professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School in the Massachusetts
General Research Institute who has done extensive research on pig
heart transplants. The research team could have blocked off blood
flow to the right lung in order to access how
well the transplant was working, he said, but they did not.

(27:52):
They've shown a piglong can be sewn into a human
being and shown what happens, he said, but an opportunity
was missing in this experiment. The Chinese authors of the
report did not respond to email queries for more information.
The pig's lung also suffered damage within twenty four hours
of the transplant. Signs of antibody mediation rejection, which occurs

(28:16):
when the body forms antibodies and attacks the organ and
is the most common cause of transplant failure, were observed
at least three and six days after transplantation. Fluid build
up was also discovered in the lung. Since lungs come
into contact with the environment with every breath and are
constantly being exposed to external threats like allergens, pollutants, and viruses.

(28:40):
They are rich in immune cells. The immune responses in
these organs are thus more aggressive than those seen in
other solid organs, like the kidney, in transplanted lungs are
more likely to fail. If you put all the organs
on a spectrum, the lung will always be the hardest
to do, said doctor Leonardo Riella of Massachusetts General Hospital,

(29:02):
who performed the first successful transplant of a kidney from
a gene edited pig into a living human. In human
human transplants, a normal kidney may last twelve to fourteen years,
while lung may last five to seven years, he said.
Research teams around the world have been increasing the number
of experiments with organs from genetically modified pigs bread by

(29:25):
different companies with various sets of gene edits. In March,
a team of Chinese scientists reported that they had transplanted
a genetically altered pig's liver into a brain dead person,
where it functioned for ten days, producing bile and poor
kine albumum and maintaining stable blood flow without signs of rejection.

(29:47):
The u S company e Genesis, is also studying the
transplantation of pig livers in addition to other organs. In April,
the company received authorization from the Food and Drug Administration
to start clinical trial using pig livers to treat patients
with a condition called acute on chronic liver failure. The
treatment involves circulating the patient's blood outside the body through

(30:10):
the animal's liver. Much of the focus of such clinical
research has been on kidneys, since over half a million
Americans suffer from kidney failure and require dialysis, including about
one hundred thousand who are on waiting lists for human kidneys.
There is an acute shortage of donated organs, with fewer
than twenty five thousand transplants completed in twenty twenty three.

(30:34):
Many patients die while they wait. In February, the FDA
also gave the go ahead to United Therapeutics Corporation to
start a clinical trial transplanting kidneys from genetically engineered pigs
into patients with kidney failure. One New Hampshire man who
received a kidney from a genetically altered pig produced by

(30:56):
e Genesis, has been living with the organs since January
he is the longest survivor with a pig's kidney to date.
The Meninda's brother's momentum built for years, it was dashed
in two days. Young people energized to push for redemption
and the release of Lyle and Eric. Parole commissioners took

(31:17):
a different view and a harder line by Matt Stevens
and Tim Orango. For more than two years, people who
were not yet born when Lyle and Eric Menindez murdered
their parents powered to push to free the brothers from prison.
Joined by lawyers and family members, and fueled by documentaries, podcasts,
news conferences, and social media posts, they were remarkably successful

(31:41):
in generating attention, so much so that after more than
three decades in prison, the brothers found themselves this week
in front of the California's Board of Parole hearings, almost
thirty six years to the day that they killed their parents,
Jose and Kitty, inside their Beverly Hills home. The brothers
seemed as close as ever to rejoining their clan. I

(32:04):
am so sorry to everyone, Lyle, now fifty seven, said
through tears on Friday, and I will be forever sorry.
But to the parole board members who decided the brother's
fate on Thursday and Friday in separate hearings, Sorry was
far from enough. After reviewing hundreds of pages of documents
and listening to hours of testimony over video, the two panels,

(32:26):
with two members each, swiftly denied the brother's parole. The
momentum that had been building for years came to a
halt in a matter of minutes. The social media campaigns
of the young had collided with the hard line parole
system of the old. We find your remorse is genuine,
Julie Garland, a member of the state panel for Lyle,
told him on Friday. In many ways, you look like

(32:48):
you've been a model inmate, but she added, you still
struggle with anti social personality traits like deception and rule breaking.
Throughout their campaign, the brothers backers focused on the fact
that Eric and Lyle had been sexually abused by their
father and had feared for their lives, factors that their
supporters said should have been enough, alongside their record of

(33:10):
good works while incarcerated to free them. But the State
Parole board members tasked with deciding the brother's fate had
access to a raft of prison records and those documented
a more complicated picture of the brothers and their conduct
behind bars. While acknowledging the brother's service, the parole commissioners
had questions about the original crime and about the brother's

(33:32):
recurrent misconduct in prison. Why did the brothers kill their
mother when it was their father who was overwhelmingly responsible
for the abuse. Were they really actually in eminent fear
for their lives when they killed and how did they
explain persistent violation of prison rules, including the repeated use
of cell phones, as well as Eric's use of drugs

(33:54):
and participation in financial fraud schemes. It was an extremely
violent yard that I was trying to survive, Eric said,
noting that certain prison gangs were in charge and running
some of the illegal schemes he had participated in. At
the time, he said he was still facing life in
prison without the possibility of parole, and he thought he
had to prioritize protecting himself over following the rules. The

(34:18):
commissioners were particularly troubled that the brothers kept using cell phones,
even in recent months when they knew they would be
coming before the board with a chance of parole. What
I got in terms of the phone in my connection
with the outside world was far greater than the consequences
of me getting caught with the phone, Eric said. Patrick Reardon,
the other member of Lyle's parole panel, said he saw

(34:40):
an inconsistency between Lyle's service and prison, including a role
on the inmate Advisory Council and his constant possession of
a cell phone, which mister Reardon said fit a pattern
of deceit. Like his brother, Lyle told the parole commissioners
that a cell phone made his life better and counpt
him connected, but commissioners made clear that such a rationale

(35:02):
did not justify breaking the rules. Lorie Levinson, a former
federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Loyola Law
School in Los Angeles, said she was not surprised by
the decision for both of them. They were not following
all the roles in custody, including the use of the
cell phone, As Levinson said after the decision on Lyle,

(35:23):
for both of them, there are real questions about why
why they went ahead and chose to kill their parents
instead of choosing other options. Nathan Hochman, the Los Angeles
County District Attorney, said had contested the brother's efforts to
be freed since he took office in twenty twenty four
after defeating George Gascon, who had supported parole for the

(35:46):
Menindez brothers for decades. Lyle Menendez has refused to accept
full responsibility for his actions, he said in a statement
after the decisions. Along with his brother, he has clung
to a fabricated self desay story, repeatedly shifting narratives and
enlisting others to bolster false claims. The brothers never thought

(36:07):
they would get as far as they have up until
late last year, when a court began reviewing their sentences
of life. Without the possibility of parole, Lyle and Eric
assumed they would die in prison. Now, even after this week,
many of their family and supporters believe it is only
a matter of when they will be freed, not if
they point to the fact that most first timers in

(36:28):
front of the parole board are denied. While we are
of course disappointed by today's decision as well, we are
not discouraged. The family said in a statement after Lyle's
hearing on Friday. The process for parole is exceptionally rigorous,
but we are incredibly proud of how Eric and Lyle
showed up. Showed up with honesty, accountability, and integrity. Eric

(36:49):
and Lyle were denied parole for three years, a minimum
period possible, but were each told that if they stay
out of trouble, they could petition for a new hearing earlier,
possibly as soon as eighteen months. Although the brothers received
encouragement from the commissioners during the proceedings, the decisions were
an abrupt turnaround, turn about for the supporters. I think

(37:11):
everybody was really in a state of shock from the
results of the parole hearings, said Robert rand, a journalist
who has covered the case since shortly after the crime
and wrote the book The Menindez Murders. It appeared the
momentum was with the brothers and they actually had a
chance to be released. He said that story will not
soon fade away. I don't think the brothers will die

(37:33):
in a California prison. Another legal path that could lead
to freedom is the brother's efforts to persuade a judge
in Los Angeles to throw out their convictions because of
new evidence that has emerged in recent years about Jose
Menendez's alleged sexual abuse. Over the summer, the judge in
the case, asked the district attorney to explain by a

(37:54):
new trial shouldn't be granted a request that suggested the
court was considering such a don't ever not have hope,
Miss Garland told Lyle, adding that the denial was not
the end. Trump orders major expansion of National Guard's role
in law enforcement. An executive order released on Monday directs

(38:16):
the creation of specialized Guard units to quell civil disturbances
in each state and seek civilian volunteers to assist federal
agents in Washington. By John Ismay, Helene Cooper, and Eric Schmidt,
President Trump directed the Defense Department on Monday to take

(38:36):
a larger role in domestic law enforcement, including by quelling
civil disturbances, as he threatens to broaden deployments of the
National Guard in cities run by his political enemies. The
executive order released by the White House on Monday morning
also formalizes the creation of specially trained National Guard units
and the District of Columbia in all fifty states that

(38:59):
can be mobilized quickly for ensuring the public safety and order.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about the order,
which came two weeks after mister Trump declared a crime
emergency in the District of Columbia and deployed National Guard
troops to the nation's capital over the objections of local officials,

(39:20):
who have said crime in the city is at its
lowest level in decades. In a statement, the White House
said the President was ordering common sense measures to ensure
long term safety of our nation's capital. The statement said
the executive order would increase participation across agencies in enabling
more specially trained personnel to deliver on mister Trump's campaign

(39:43):
promise and constitutional obligation to make DC safe and beautiful again.
Mister Trump has mused openly about expanding the deployments to
other cities, particularly Democratic strongholds like New York, Chicago, and Baltimore,
saying crime there is out of SA control. On Monday,
mister Trump said he could solve crime in Chicago in

(40:04):
a week, though he hedged about whether he planned to
move ahead with sending troops there. While Guard troops have
been temporarily mobilized by governors in the past to respond
to natural disasters and occasionally for civil unrest, the order
appears to carve out a much larger domestic role for
the National Guard. According to government documents, Guard troops can

(40:27):
be mobilized for duty within a state or territory by
a governor in response to a crisis or a natural disaster,
or in support of special events when local, tribal and
state capabilities are overwhelmed, exhausted, or unavailable. The president can
also federalize the Guard himself, as mister Trump did in
deploying members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles

(40:50):
and June over the objections of the state's governor. Monday's
order appears to create a force of Guard soldiers that
could be called out by the White House regardless of
whether state and local law enforcement are available and able
to handle civil disturbances, raising significant legal questions. Quelling civil
disturbances is the responsibility of state and local law enforcement,

(41:14):
except in the most extreme instances, said Elizabeth Goitin, a
senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at the
New York University's Law School. Having soldiers police protests as
this order in visions, threatens fundamental liberties and public safety,
and it violates a century's old principle against involving the

(41:36):
military and domestic law enforcement. Under an eighteen seventy eight
law called the Possecomitatus Act. It is normally illegal to
use federal troops on domestic soil for policing purposes, but
mister Trump, in federalizing the California Guard, invoked a statute
section one two four zero six of Title ten of

(41:59):
the us DA that allows him to call National Guard
members and units into federal service under certain circumstances, including
during a rebellion against the authority of the federal government.
In California, where mister Trump deployed roughly four thousand members
of the National Guard to Los Angeles citing protests over

(42:19):
immigration rates, state officials opened a legal challenge to the deployment,
where a federal judge had ruled to be illegal, before
an appeals court blocked the ruling. The order also directs
a task force in Washington, led by a White House adviser,
Stephen Miller, to create an online portal for Americans with
law enforcement for other relevant backgrounds and experience to apply

(42:44):
to join federal agents in enforcing mister Trump's crime Emergency Order.
In the District of Columbia. As of Sunday, there were
two thousand, two hundred and seventy four Guard troops deployed
to Washington. Only nine hundred and thirty four of those
troops are part of the DC National Guard. The rest
have been mobilized from units in Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee,

(43:10):
and West Virginia. On Sunday, Guard soldiers in Washington who
were previously unarmed, began carrying their service weapons while on patrol,
a task that is outside traditional norms for Guard troops
on domestic missions. According to a report published by the
Congressional Research Service in April, the typical jobs given to

(43:31):
U S military personnel who have been mobilized to assist
civil authorities include transporting supplies, clearing or constructing roads, and
controlling traffic during missions such as border security, natural disaster response,
and public health emergencies. The specialized force proposed for the
Guard in Washington would be deputized to enforce federal law,

(43:55):
according to the executive order, which also directs the creation
of a standing National Guard Quick Reaction Force that would
be available for rapid deployment anywhere in the country. Federal
law enforcement entities already maintain a nationwide network of trained
special agents who can respond in times of crisis like

(44:15):
the FBI's hostage Rescue Team based in Quantico, Virginia, which
can be rapidly deployed anywhere in the United States for
counter terrorism missions and special weapons and tactics teams at
each FBI filled office. By directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegsgeth
Hegseth to train a specialized DC National Guard unit dedicated

(44:39):
to ensuring public safety in Washington, mister Trump is essentially
requiring the city's guard to come up with a rapid
response style unit that can deploy quickly when he decides
the need has risen. Military analysts say that this is
what the National Guard trains to do anyway, deploy quickly,
Although usually in the event of a natural disaster like

(45:01):
a hurricane, Guard troops have also deployed to respond to
political crisis, like the January sixth, twenty twenty one attack
on the Capitol by mister Trump's supporters, and during the
Black Lives Matter protests that erupted after the Minneapolis police
killed George Floyd in twenty twenty. It is unusual, though,
for National Guard troops to just live on standby, waiting

(45:24):
for the President to decide he wants to target crime
in a city of his choosing. Guard troops train part time,
often one week and a month and two weeks a year,
to respond to emergencies. They do not sit around waiting
for the president to deploy them as a law enforcement arm.
Most of them are not full time soldiers. They have
separate jobs, said Pete Fever, a political science professor at

(45:48):
Duke University. Maintaining a specialized force at a high amount
of readiness is tent amount to mobilizing them. I could
literally be left behind to day how a student with
the disability changed the law. Schools across the country face
increasing threats, but many students with disabilities don't have a

(46:08):
way to evacuate. By Sonya Row, every time her middle
school classmates streamed outside for monthly fire drills, Kyra Tiller
had to stay behind, worrying about what would happen to
her in a real emergency. Flashing bright lights can trigger
seizures for Miss Tiller, who has epilepsy, so her teachers

(46:30):
in Gainesville, Virginia would send her to a windowless office
during drills to avoid the alarm strobes. When her family
requested a real emergency plan, administrators just said they would
figure it out. She remembers thinking I could literally be
left behind to die. Other students with disabilities effaced similar
difficulties in recent years. A student in Maryland was left

(46:52):
in a stairwell during a fire to wait for rescuers
because she uses a wheelchair, and a high school student
with a cane had trouble evacuating when a gunman killed
two people at her Saint Louis school. Police officers ended
up pointing guns at her. Only a handful of states
require public schools to develop individual plans for evacuating students

(47:12):
with disabilities in an emergency, even as schools across the
country face increasing risks from climate related disasters and school shootings.
More than seven million public school students have disabilities, a
population that is growing. Stettling, Virginia adopted a law this
year after Miss Tiller started researching the issue and meeting

(47:33):
with some of the states one hundred and eighty thousand
other students with disabilities. She talked to wheelchair users who
couldn't fit in closets to hide from active shooters. She
met students with autism or sensory issues who needed extra
support to keep calm during a lockdown. I just couldn't
believe that this was something that wasn't being taken seriously,
she said. A Prince William County Public School spokeswoman, Diana Gillotta,

(47:59):
set in a statement that the district couldn't comment on
Miss Tiller's situation, but she added that the district supports
legislation enhancing students' safety. We continued to monitor and evaluate
our processes and procedures to make improvements in this area,
as she said. Laura Jane Cohen, a Democratic state delegate,
introduced the bill on Miss Tiller's behalf. It's the second

(48:22):
piece of legislation she has sponsored for the safety of
students with disabilities. The first requires schools to prioritize evacuating
students who use wheelchairs or have other mobility challenges. Miss Cohen,
a former Fairfax County School Board member, said she served
on an advisory committee for students with disabilities and heard

(48:42):
from plenty of families about inadequate school safety plans. It
was nuts to me, Miss Cohen said, it just didn't
make any sense. The final version of Miss Tiller's bill
passed unanimously, though some of its language was softened because
of liability concerns from school boards and state education official.
Maryland passes are similar or pasted a similar bill requiring

(49:05):
schools that have emergency plans for disabled students in twenty seventeen,
after Cassidy Scott, then twelve, was left in her middle
school stairwell when a small fire broke out in the cafeteria.
Miss Scott, who uses a wheelchair and has significant cognitive disabilities,
was traumatized by the incident, her mother said. The Virginia

(49:27):
Maryland laws both require emergency plans to be considered as
part of the process of developing individualized education programs known
as EEPs. These are legally binding documents establishing specific accommodations
for students with disabilities that schools must fulfill under federal law.

(49:47):
It's unclear, however, how strongly those requirements will be enforced
under President Trump, who wants to shut down the federal
Education Department and has slashed its staff and budget. He
has also floated the the idea of shifting oversight of
special educations in the Department of Health and Human Services,
led by Robert F. Kennedy, junior. Miss Tiller now nineteen

(50:09):
and a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel At Chapel, Hill said she plans to keep pushing.
She has formed a disability advocacy group that is seeking
similar legislation requiring emergency plans for students with disabilities nationwide.
She secured her own plan in high school even before

(50:29):
the Virginia law was passed, with the help of her
family and an educational advocate they hired. It wasn't that complicated.
During emergency drills, she put on a pair of black
out sunglasses covered in duct tape to block the flashing lights,
and an aid was assigned to take her to the
front of the building. Still, that took six years to achieve,

(50:51):
and Miss Tiller regrets the time in that windowless office
when you are in school and you know that your
safety isn't a priority. She said, that's a really discouraging,
disheartening feeling. Prosecutors fail three times to charge women with
felony assault of FBI agent in DC, it is highly

(51:11):
unusual for prosecutors to fail even once to obtain an
indictment from a grand jury, given the way the process
is stacked in favor of the government. By Alan Feuer
and Minho Kim, Federal prosecutors on Monday reduced the charges
against a woman accused last month of assaulting an FBI
agent during a protest against immigration officials in Washington, refining

(51:34):
her case as a misdemeanor after they were unable to
persuade three grand juries over a month to indict her
for with a felony. It is highly unusual for prosecutors
to fail even once, let alone three times, to obtain
an indictment from a grand jury, given the way the
process is stacked in favor of the government, and the
move by the prosecutors in the U. S. Attorney's Office

(51:56):
in Washington to recast the proceeding against a woman, Sidney
Lourie red as a low level misdemeanor case suggested that
they had overcharged it from the beginning. Prosecutors almost never
go in front of grand juries without obtaining indictments because
they are in control of the information. Grand jurors here
and defendants are not allowed to have their lawyers in

(52:18):
the room as evidence is presented. But in a brief
submission filed to Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey and Federal
District Court in Washington, the prosecutors in Missus Reed's case
acknowledged the extraordinary that they had failed three times to
secure an indictment within the thirty days given to them

(52:39):
to do so. After miss Reed's arrest, three grand juries
have now declined to indict miss Reed for felony assault
on a law enforcement officer. Her lawyers, to Zarah Abe
and Eugenie um Set in a statement on Monday evening,
the U. S. Attorney can try to concoct crimes to
quiet the people, but in our criminal justice system, the

(53:00):
citizens have the last word. We are anxious to present
the misdemeanor case to a jury and to quickly clear
miss Reid's name. The reduction of the charges came as
President Trump has flooded the streets of Washington with agents
from several federal law enforcement agencies and with National Guard
soldiers in a purported effort to drive down local crime.

(53:21):
The measure has resulted in a flurry of defendants being
charged with federal crimes that would typically be handled at
the local court level, if they were filed at all.
On July twenty three, Miss Reid was accused in a
criminal complaint of having forcibly assaulted, impeded, or interfered with
federal agents as they sought to transfer two alleged gang
members into FBI custody at the local jail in Washington

(53:44):
the day before. At a pair of hearings last week,
prosecutors said that Miss Reid, in an apparent active protest
video recorded the agents and sought to place herself between
them and one of the people being transferred, ignoring several
orders to step back. After an immigration agent pushed Miss
Read against a wall, the prosecutor said, she struggled, kicking

(54:07):
and flailing her arms as an FBI agent, Eugenia Bates
rushed into help. During the scuffle, miss Reid forcibly pushed
Agent bates arm against the cement wall, prosecutors said, causing
lacerations on the back of her left hand. The felony
version of the statute initially used to charge Miss Reid,

(54:27):
requires prosecutors to prove that she intended to injure the
FBI agent and actually made physical contact, her lawyers have said.
The lawyers argued that the altercation occurred because of the
agent's own actions, and the prosecutors should not be allowed
to charge her with a felony, which could carry a
sentence of up to eight years in prison. Mister Trump's

(54:50):
takeover of the Washington Police has led the U. S.
Attorney's Office to instruct prosecutors to charge defendants with the
most serious crimes possible in each case, and to do
so in federal court, where sentences tend to run much longer.
One of those cases involved a black man, Torres Riley,
who was recently arrested at a Trader Joe's grocery store

(55:11):
for what the police said was possession of two handguns
in his bag. On Monday, prosecutors moved to dismiss charges
against mister Riley, but another federal magistrate, Judge Zea M. Farroquai,
lambsted them in a hearing for having charged him in
an apparent violation of his constitutional rights. Lawlessness cannot come

(55:32):
from the government, Judge Faraqui said, according to huff Post,
we're pushing the boundaries here. Addressing the criticism that the U. S.
Attorney's Office has received towards crackdown in recent days, Akash M. Seingh,
a high ranking official at the Justice Department, met with
federal prosecutors on Monday, telling them that they should not

(55:55):
be cowed by news articles. According to two people, familiar
with the matter. Mister Singh also told prosecutors that if
sitting grand jurors rejected their efforts to bring serious charges,
they should simply impanel nude grand juries. The People said.
The felony charge that grand jurors rejected in miss Reid's
case was the same one used in a separate case

(56:17):
brought two weeks ago against Shawn C. Dunn, a former
Justice Department employee who was arrested after throwing a Delhi
sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer. The officer
struck by the sandwich was on the streets as part
of President Trump's recent initiative to have scores of federal
agents patrol for local crime. Mister Dunn is set to

(56:38):
appear in court on September fourth for a preliminary hearing
to assess the viability of the charge unless prosecutors managed
first to obtain an indictment against him. The reduction of
the charges against Miss Reed also came after federal prosecutors
failed to indict several protesters in Los Angeles after evidence
challenging the government's narrative emerged. Megan Blanco, a former federal

(57:03):
prosecutor who defended a protester in Los Angeles who had
faced similar charges as those filed against Miss Reid warned
against what she described as the government's unethical overreach. She
detailed how the government charged her client, jose Mohika, without
fully corroborating claims from federal agents, but the government's narrative

(57:24):
soon fell apart when her team found video evidence that
contradicted the agent's story. She said, this concludes the reading
of The New York Times for today. Your reader for
today has been don Flickincher. If you have any questions, comments,
or suggestions concerning this program, please feel free to call
us at area code eight five nine four two two

(57:45):
six three nine zero. Thank you for listening, and now
please tay tune for continued programming on Radio ap