By ANNIE MA, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of 21 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Trump administration’s restrictions on social services for immigrants in the country illegally, including the federal preschool program Head Start, health clinics and adult education.

Individual public benefits, such as food stamps and college financial aid, have been largely unavailable to people in the country without legal status, but the new rules and guidance from the administration curbed their access to community-level programs that receive federal money.

The lawsuit led by New York Attorney General Letitia James argues the government failed to follow the rulemaking process and did not provide required notice on conditions placed on federal funds. It also argues the changes will create significant harm.

“These programs work because they are open, accessible, and grounded in compassion,” James said in a statement. “This is a baseless attack on some of our country’s most effective and inclusive public programs, and we will not let it stand.”

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The rule changes rescinded a Clinton-era interpretation of federal laws on immigrants’ access to services. The restrictions were announced jointly earlier this month by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Education Department, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice.

Implementing immigration documentation checks would place a significant burden on programs and in some cases would be unrealistic, the lawsuit said. The extra work would likely affect services provided by these programs to U.S. citizens, who are often from low-income backgrounds and depend on the services for health and education, the lawsuit said.

Head Start, a federal preschool program that provides developmental therapy, child care and preschool to families who are homeless or in poverty, has not asked participants to verify their immigration status in the past.

Some Head Start providers said they do not have the staff or resources to begin implementing such screening.

“It is likely that for some programs, the costs of compliance will be so high as to lead to the programs’ closure,” the lawsuit said. “Many Head Start programs are small entities that operate on razor-thin margins and are likely to close if facing a significant administrative burden.”

Other community-level programs affected by the rule change include mental health services in schools, crisis hotlines and substance use disorder treatment.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The man convicted in the 1979 killing of 6-year-old Etan Patz was awarded a new trial Monday as a federal appeals court overturned the guilty verdict in one of the nation’s most notorious missing child cases.

Pedro Hernandez has been serving 25 years to life in prison since his 2017 conviction. He had been arrested in 2012 after a decades-long, haunting search for answers in Etan’s disappearance, which happened on the first day he was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop in New York City.

The appeals court said the trial judge gave a “clearly wrong” and “manifestly prejudicial” response to a jury note during Hernandez’s 2017 trial — his second. His first trial ended in a jury deadlock in 2015.

FILE – A newspaper with a photograph of Etan Patz is seen on May 28, 2012, at a makeshift memorial in the SoHo neighborhood of New York, where Patz lived before his disappearance on May 25, 1979. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

The court ordered Hernandez’s release unless the 64-year-old gets a new trial within “a reasonable period.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, said it was reviewing the decision. The trial predated current DA Alvin Bragg, a Democrat.

Harvey Fishbein, an attorney for Hernandez, declined to comment when reached Monday by phone.

A message seeking comment was sent to Etan’s parents. They spent decades pursuing an arrest, and then a conviction, in their son’s case and pressing to improve the handling of missing-child cases nationwide.

FILE – Pedro Hernandez appears in Manhattan criminal court with his attorney, Harvey Fishbein, Nov. 15, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano, Pool, File)

Etan was among the first missing children pictured on milk cartons. His case contributed to an era of fear among American families, making anxious parents more protective of kids who many once allowed to roam and play unsupervised in their neighborhoods.

The Patzes’ advocacy helped establish a national missing-children hotline and made it easier for law enforcement agencies to share information about such cases. The May 25 anniversary of Etan’s disappearance became National Missing Children’s Day.

Etan’s case spurred a huge search and an enduring, far-flung investigation. But no trace of him was ever found. A civil court declared him dead in 2001.

Hernandez was a teenager working at a convenience shop in Etan’s downtown Manhattan neighborhood when the boy vanished. Police met him while canvassing the area but didn’t suspect him until they got a 2012 tip that he’d made remarks years earlier about having killed a child in New York.

FILE – Pedro Hernandez appears in Manhattan criminal court, Nov. 15, 2012, in New York. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano, Pool, File)

Hernandez then confessed to police, saying he’d lured Etan into the store’s basement by promising the boy a soda and choked him because “something just took over me.” He said he put Etan, still alive, in a box that he left with curbside trash.

Hernandez’s lawyers said his confession was false, spurred by a mental illness that makes him confuse reality with imagination. He also has a very low IQ.

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The trials happened in a New York state court. Etan’s appeal eventually wound into federal court and came to revolve around Hernandez’ police interrogation in 2012.

Police questioned Hernandez for seven hours — and they said he confessed — before they read him his rights and started recording the interrogation. Hernandez then repeated his admission on tape, at least twice.

During nine days of deliberations, jurors sent repeated queries about those statements. The last inquiry asked whether they had to disregard the two recorded confessions, if they concluded that the first one — given before the Miranda warning — was invalid.

The judge said no. The appeals court said the jury should have gotten a more thorough explanation of its options, which could have included disregarding all of the confessions as improperly obtained.

Associated Press writers Larry Neumeister in New York and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.

By FREIDA FRISARO, Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Jimmy Buffett ’s widow has accused her late husband’s financial adviser of failing to administer the singer’s multimillion-dollar trust in good faith and ignoring what she believed were her best interests for the $275 million estate.

Jane Buffett on Monday asked a judge in West Palm Beach, Florida, to stop Richard Mozenter from trying to remove her as a trustee and instead sought an order removing him from overseeing the estate, according to court papers.

Jimmy Buffett, who popularized beach bum soft rock and created a “Margaritaville” empire of restaurants and resorts, died Sept. 1, 2023, at 76.

His widow and Mozenter have since been embroiled in a battle over who controls the trust, with each accusing the other of mishandling funds in lawsuits filed in both California and Florida.

The dispute is similar to another going on with the estate of another beloved singer, Tony Bennett. Two of the late crooner’s daughters sued their brother over his handling of the family trust.

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Jane Buffett’s filing on Monday accuses Mozenter of “repeatedly” breaching his fiduciary duty by failing to provide her with basic information about the trust’s assets and its investments while taking “unreasonable fees and costs in the context of the services provided.”

On May 30, Jane Buffett’s lawyers provided Mozenter’s lawyers a copy of a petition they planned to file in Los Angeles Superior Court if he did not resign as cotrustee by June 2, the filing states.

Mozenter’s counsel instead filed a petition June 2 in West Palm Beach, seeking Buffett’s removal as cotrustee, documents show. Jane Buffett’s complaint was filed June 3 in Los Angeles, where Mozenter is managing director at Gelfand, Rennert and Feldman LLC.

“Notably, Mr. Mozenter only brought this (and his other) retaliatory, baseless action after Mrs. Buffett had informed him that, absent his resignation, she would initiate litigation against him to seek his removal as co-trustee,” the complaint said.

Mozenter claimed in his lawsuit that Jimmy Buffett established the trust with Mozenter as an independent trustee because he was concerned about his wife’s “ability to manage and control his assets.”

The complaint filed Monday in Florida says the relationship between Jane Buffett and Mozenter is “untenable,” and asks the judge to remove Mozenter as cotrustee.

“Jane will not play into Mr. Mozenter’s hands by litigating this dispute in two separate courts across the country, which would drain the very trust money that Jimmy specifically set aside for her care,” said attorney Matt Porpora.

“Instead, Jane is bringing the fight to Florida, where she and Jimmy called home. Jane is confident she will prevail regardless of where her claims are heard, and her decision to move her claims from California to Florida illustrates that she is the only co-trustee looking to conserve — not waste — trust assets,” Porpora said.

Mozenter did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

“Mitchell-Lama was one of New York’s most successful projects, and the time has come for us to do it again.”

The authors alongside tenants and other elected officials at a rally in support of Mitchell-Lama housing in April (Photo courtesy of AM Epstein’s office)

It is well-known that New York City is in the midst of an affordability crisis. While a large part of the solution lies in helping low-income New Yorkers thrive through programs like Section 8, an often overlooked population that is being hit hard by this crisis is the middle class.

A recent report by the Community Service Society of New York revealed that 39 percent of eviction orders between 2021 and 2024 have been directed to middle-income households. This is a 12 percent increase from pre-pandemic years 2014 to 2019. Between 2020 and 2022, over 400,000 people left the state, 94 percent of whom were from New York City. Many of these residents were middle and working-class people who left due to the high cost of living.

It is obvious that New York City needs more units designated for middle-income residents. A critical component of addressing this lies in creating new middle-income housing. The Mitchell-Lama program does just that, providing affordable rental and cooperative housing to moderate and middle-income families. 

The program started 70 years ago, when the city was undergoing rising costs of living compounded by the disinvestment of developers in middle-income housing. Between 1955 and 1981, the Mitchell-Lama initiative successfully built over 100,000 middle-income apartments. As a result, housing costs stabilized and the city was able to prosper. The program was essential for preventing a middle-class exodus from New York City. Mitchell-Lama was one of New York’s most successful projects, and the time has come for us to do it again. 

As members of the New York State Assembly representing Lower Manhattan, including numerous Mitchell-Lama developments, we know how integral these homes are to the generations of New Yorkers who have been able to grow up, raise their families, and age in place in these units. 

We need modern, sustainable housing for the middle class that is permanently affordable, accessible, and built to last. With the past success of Mitchell-Lama, city and state leaders have a blueprint for making middle-income housing attainable. Indeed, our colleagues in Albany have begun to see the inherent value in well-maintained, readily available middle-income units. 

In last year’s state budget, as well as this year’s, we put $80 million aside for new middle-income housing, for a total of $160 million. We also provided $100 million in capital last year and $140 million this year, for a total of $240 million, to help fix up existing Mitchell-Lama developments and to build new middle-income housing. 

These investments can create tremendous opportunities for home ownership for thousands of New York families, the benefits of which are undeniable. In addition to building wealth through equity, homeownership is associated with increased community involvement and stability. The sense of belonging created by homeownership leads to greater civic engagement and participation in local initiatives, giving residents even greater control over the prosperity of their communities. 

Now is the time to act. New York has the opportunity to champion middle-income housing by working with developers and using city and government property to jumpstart this development.

If we fail to take action, the outcome is clear: New York will continue to grow more and more unaffordable, families will have to make greater sacrifices to make rent payments, many will be forced to leave altogether, and our cherished communities will erode. 

Harvey Epstein and Grace Lee are members of the New York State Assembly representing Lower Manhattan.

The post Opinion: We Need More Middle-Income Housing  appeared first on City Limits.