Minneapolis to host NCAA wrestling in 2028, regional basketball in 2027

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The Twin Cities will host the 2027 NCAA men’s basketball tournament first- and second-round games at Target Center and the 2028 NCAA wrestling championships at U.S. Bank Stadium.

It will be the first time the men’s March Madness tournament will be held at Target Center; Minneapolis most recently hosted the early-round games at the Metrodome in 2009. The 2019 NCAA men’s Final Four was at U.S. Bank Stadium.

The two upcoming tournaments will be hosted by the Gophers and Minnesota Sports and Events, the NCAA said.

“Minneapolis continues to be a top choice for hosting premier sporting events,” Wendy Blackshaw, President and CEO of Minnesota Sports and Events, said in a statement. “After the pandemic upended the NCAA Wrestling Championships in 2020, MNSE sought to re-secure the event for Minnesota as soon as possible. We are proud to deliver on that goal, and we look forward to hosting a championship that will be unlike any other.”

The wrestling championship will move from an arena to a stadium in 2028. It will be a reboot of the 2020 tournament that was set for U.S. Bank Stadium before it was canceled due to COVID-19.

Target Center hosted U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Trials and 2024 Big Ten men’s and women’s basketball tournaments earlier this year and the women’s Final Four in 2022.

“Target Center has hosted some of the biggest events in college basketball during the last three years,” Amy Rahja, Target Center’s assistant general manager, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to host the NCAA Men’s Tournament and showcase March Madness in Minnesota.”

The president could invoke a 1947 law to try to suspend the dockworkers’ strike. Here’s how

posted in: Society | 0

By PAUL WISEMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some manufacturers and retailers are urging President Joe Biden to invoke a 1947 law as a way to suspend a strike by 45,000 dockworkers that has shut down 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas.

At issue is Section 206 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. The law authorizes a president to seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period for companies and unions to try to resolve their differences.

Biden has said, though, that he won’t intervene in the strike.

Taft-Hartley was meant to curb the power of unions

The law was introduced by two Republicans — Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio and Rep. Fred Hartley Jr. of New Jersey — in the aftermath of World War II. It followed a series of strikes in 1945 and 1946 by workers who demanded better pay and working conditions after the privations of wartime.

President Harry Truman opposed Taft-Hartley, but his veto was overridden by Congress.

In addition to authorizing a president to intervene in strikes, the law banned “closed shops,” which require employers to hire only union workers. The ban allowed workers to refuse to join a union.

Taft-Hartley also barred “secondary boycotts,” thereby making it illegal for unions to pressure neutral companies to stop doing business with an employer that was targeted in a strike.

It also required union leaders to sign affidavits declaring that they did not support the Communist Party.

Presidents can target a strike that may “imperil the national health and safety”

The president can appoint a board of inquiry to review and write a report on the labor dispute — and then direct the attorney general to ask a federal court to suspend a strike by workers or a lockout by management.

If the court issues an injunction, an 80-day cooling-off period would begin. During this period, management and unions must ”make every effort to adjust and settle their differences.”

Still, the law cannot actually force union members to accept a contract offer.

Presidents have invoked Taft-Hartley 37 times in labor disputes

According to the Congressional Research Service, about half the time that presidents have invoked Section 206 of Taft-Hartley, the parties worked out their differences. But nine times, according to the research service, the workers went ahead with a strike.

President George W. Bush invoked Taft-Hartley in 2002 after 29 West Coast ports locked out members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in a standoff. (The two sides ended up reaching a contract.)

Biden has said he won’t use Taft-Hartley to intervene

Despite lobbying by the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Retail Federation, the president has maintained that he has no plans to try to suspend the dockworkers’ strike against ports on the East and Gulf coasts.

On Wednesday, before leaving Joint Base Andrews for an air tour of North Carolina to see the devastation from Hurricane Helene, Biden said the port strike was hampering efforts to provide emergency items for the relief effort.

“This natural disaster is incredibly consequential,” the president said. “The last thing we need on top of that is a man-made disaster — what’s going on at the ports.”

Biden noted that the companies that control East and Gulf coast ports have made huge profits since the pandemic.

“It’s time for them to sit at the table and get this strike done,” he said.

Though many ports are publicly owned, private companies often run operations that load and unload cargo.

William Brucher, a labor relations expert at Rutgers University, notes that Taft-Hartley injunctions are “widely despised, if not universally despised, by labor unions in the United States.”

And Vice President Kamala Harris is relying on support from organized labor in her presidential campaign against Donald Trump.

If the longshoremen’s strike drags on long enough and causes shortages that antagonize American consumers, pressure could grow on Biden to change course and intervene. But experts like Brucher suggest that most voters have already made up their minds and that the election outcome is “really more about turnout” now.

Which means, Brucher said, that “Democrats really can’t afford to alienate organized labor.”

AP Writer Colleen Long at Joint Base Andrews and AP Business Writers Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

Prosecutors: Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ after losing 2020 election in failed bid to cling to power

posted in: Politics | 0

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump “resorted to crimes” after losing the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a court filing unsealed Wednesday that argues that the former president is not entitled to immunity from prosecution over his failed bid to remain in power.

The filing was submitted by special counsel Jack Smith’s team following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, narrowing the scope of the prosecution charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

The purpose of the brief is to convince U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment are private, rather than official, acts and can therefore remain part of the indictment as the case moves forward.

Those include efforts to persuade former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the counting of the electoral votes on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021.

“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team said. “Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.”

“When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office,” the filing said.

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Doctor who helped supply Matthew Perry ketamine pleads guilty to drug charge

posted in: News | 0

By ANDREW DALTON

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A San Diego doctor charged in connection with Matthew Perry ’s fatal overdose pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to distribute the surgical anesthetic ketamine.

Dr. Mark Chavez, 54, entered the plea to the felony in federal court in Los Angeles, becoming the third person to admit guilt in the aftermath of the “Friends” star’s death last year.

Prosecutors offered lesser charges to Chavez and two others in exchange for their cooperation as they go after two targets they deem more responsible for the overdose death: another doctor and an alleged dealer that they say was known as “ketamine queen” of Los Angeles.

Chavez is free on bond until the sentencing. He has turned over his passport and agreed to surrender his medical license, among other conditions.

His lawyer Matthew Binninger said after Chavez’s first court appearance on Aug. 30 that he is “incredibly remorseful” and is “trying to do everything in his power to right the wrong that happened here.”

Also working with federal prosecutors are Perry’s assistant, who admitted to helping him obtain and inject ketamine, and a Perry acquaintance, who admitted to acting as a drug messenger and middleman.

The three are helping prosecutors as they go after their main targets: Dr. Salvador Plasencia, charged with illegally selling ketamine to Perry in the month before his death, and Jasveen Sangha, alleged to be a dealer who sold the actor the lethal dose. Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

Chavez admitted in his plea agreement that he obtained ketamine from his former clinic and from a wholesale distributor where he submitted a fraudulent prescription.

Under the law he could get up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced on April 2, but is likely to be sentenced to far less because of the plea and his cooperation with prosecutors.

Perry was found dead by his assistant on Oct. 28, 2023. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine was the primary cause of death. The actor had been using the drug through his regular doctor in a legal but off-label treatment for depression that has become increasingly common.

FILE – Matthew Perry appears at the GQ Men of the Year Party in West Hollywood, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2022. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)

Perry began seeking more ketamine than his doctor would give him. About a month before the actor’s death, he found Plasencia, who in turn allegedly asked Chavez to obtain the drug for him.

“I wonder how much this moron will pay,” Plasencia texted Chavez, according to court filings from prosecutors. The two met up the same day in Costa Mesa, halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, and exchanged at least four vials of ketamine, the filings said.

After selling the drugs to Perry for $4,500, Plasencia allegedly asked Chavez if he could keep supplying them so they could become Perry’s “go-to,” prosecutors said.

U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in announcing the charges Aug. 15 that “the doctors preyed on Perry’s history of addiction in the final months of his life last year to provide him with ketamine in amounts they knew were dangerous.”

Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on “Friends,” when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit sitcom.