Murder trial set for September for Minnesota trooper who shot motorist during freeway stop

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A Minnesota state trooper who’s charged with murder for fatally shooting a motorist as he tried to pull away from a traffic stop is set to go on trial in September.

Trooper Ryan Londregan, 27, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in the death of Ricky Cobb II. It was the first hearing in the case for a new prosecution team from a Washington, D.C., law firm that Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty hired to take over after the original leader from her office stepped away from the politically charged case.

“I plead innocent your honor,” Londregan told Judge Tamara Garcia.

Garcia scheduled the trial to start Sept. 9, with one week blocked out for jury selection and two weeks for testimony. The next hearing is set for Aug. 12 to iron out rules for the trial. The charges include second-degree murder, manslaughter and assault.

Defense attorney Chris Madel moved to disqualify the special prosecutors from Steptoe LLC, arguing that firm’s $850 per-hour, per-attorney fee, and $250 an hour for paralegals, would factor into prosecutorial decisions. But he then dropped that motion and demanded a speedy trial.

The outside lawyers include four former federal prosecutors and one former Manhattan assistant district attorney. Moriarty has said she hired them because her office lacks enough experienced attorneys, given its current caseload, to handle the high-profile and complicated case. The contract includes an initial $1 million billing cap for their services.

Troopers pulled the 33-year-old Cobb over on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis last July 31 because the lights were out on his car. They then found that the Spring Lake Park man was wanted for violating a protection order in neighboring Ramsey County. Londregan, who is white, shot Cobb twice as the Black man tried to drive away after troopers ordered him to get out of his car.

Madel maintains that Londregan’s use of force was justified to protect himself and another trooper who was partially inside the car.

Law enforcement and Republican leaders have been calling on Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to take the case away from Moriarty, a former public defender who was elected on a platform of police accountability following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis officer in 2020, and turn it over to Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison. Walz has expressed concern about the direction of the case but has not acted.

Cobb’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit last month, alleging that the stop and the shooting were unjustified.

Biden’s upcoming graduation speech roils Morehouse College, a center of Black politics and culture

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By BILL BARROW and MATT BROWN (Associated Press)

ATLANTA (AP) — When he gives the commencement address at Morehouse College, President Joe Biden will have his most direct engagement with college students since the start of the Israel-Hamas war at a center of Black politics and culture.

Morehouse is located in Atlanta, the largest city in the swing state of Georgia, which Biden flipped from former President Donald Trump four years ago. Biden’s speech Sunday will come as he tries to make inroads with a key and symbolic constituency — young Black men — and repair the diverse coalition that elected him to the White House.

The announcement of the speech last month triggered peaceful protests and calls for the university administration to cancel over Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. Some students at Morehouse and other historically Black campuses in Atlanta say they vociferously oppose Biden and the decision to have him speak, mirroring the tension Biden faces in many communities of color and with young voters nationally.

Morehouse President David Thomas said in an interview that the emotions around the speech made it all the more important that Biden speak.

“In many ways, these are the moments Morehouse was born for,” he said. “We need someplace in this country that can hold the tensions that threaten to divide us. If Morehouse can’t hold those tensions, then no place can.”

The speech comes at a critical moment for Biden in his general election rematch against Trump. Biden is lagging in support among both Black voters and people under 30, groups that were key to his narrow 2020 victories in several battleground states, including Georgia.

Fifty-five percent of Black adults approved of the way Biden is handling his job as president, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in March, a figure far below earlier in his presidency. Overall, 32% of 18- to 29-year-olds approved in the same poll.

“This is a global catastrophe in Gaza, and Joe Biden coming to pander for our votes is political blackface,” said Morehouse sophomore Anwar Karim, who urged Thomas and school trustees to rescind Biden’s invitation.

Recent scenes on American campuses reflect objections among many young voters about Israel’s assaults in Gaza. Biden has backed Israel since Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds of hostages on Oct. 7. That includes weapons shipments to the longstanding U.S. ally, even as Biden advocates for a cease-fire, criticizes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tactics and the civilian death toll in Gaza surpasses 35,000 people, many of them women and children.

Many younger Black people have identified with the Palestinian cause and have at times drawn parallels between Israeli rule of the Palestinian territories and South Africa’s now-defunct apartheid system and abolished Jim Crow laws in the U.S. Israel rejects claims that its system of laws for Palestinians constitutes apartheid.

“I think that the president will do himself good if he does not duck that, especially when you think about the audience that he will be speaking to directly and to the nation,” Thomas said.

Sunday’s speech will culminate a four-day span during which Biden will concentrate on reaching Black communities. On Thursday, the White House is hosting plaintiffs from the Brown v. Board of Education case that barred legal segregation of America’s public schools. The following day, Biden will address an NAACP gathering commemorating the 70th anniversary of the landmark decision.

Former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, a longtime Biden ally who helped broker his speech at Morehouse, said he understood students’ concerns but emphasized that Biden has pressured Netanyahu and supports a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians. Trump, meanwhile, has effectively abandoned that long-held U.S. position and said Israel should “finish the problem” in Gaza.

“That’s nowhere in the conversation,” Richmond said.

The debate over Biden’s speech at Morehouse reflected a fundamental tension of historically Black colleges and universities, which are both dedicated to social justice and Black advancement and run by administrators who are committed to keeping order.

“We look like a very conservative institution” sometimes, Thomas said. “On one hand, the institution has to be the stable object where we are today in the world.”

But, he added, the university’s long-term purpose is to “support our students in going out to create a better world.”

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Blowback started even before Thomas publicly announced Biden was coming. Faculty sent executives a letter of concern, prompting an online town hall. Alumni gathered several hundred signatures to urge that Thomas rescind Biden’s invitation. The petition called the invitation antithetical to the pacifism Martin Luther King Jr., a Morehouse alumnus, expressed when opposing the Vietnam War.

Some students note that leaders of Morehouse and other HBCUs did not always support King and other Civil Rights activists who are venerated today. Morehouse, for instance, expelled the actor Samuel L. Jackson in 1969 after he and other students held Morehouse trustees, including King’s father, in a campus building as part of demanding curriculum changes and the appointment of more Black trustees.

Students organized two recent protests across the Atlanta University Center (AUC), a consortium of historically Black institutions in Atlanta that includes Morehouse. Chants included “Joe Biden, f— off!” and “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide,” along with expletives directed at Thomas.

“Our institution is supporting genocide, and we turn a blind eye,” said Nyla Broddie, a student at Spelman College, which is part of the AUC. Brodie argued Biden’s Israel policy should be viewed in the broader context of U.S. foreign policy and domestic police violence against Black Americans.

Thomas said he “feels very positive about graduation” and that “not one” Morehouse senior — there are about 500 at the all-male private school — has opted out of participating. “That’s not to say that the sentiments about what’s going on in Gaza don’t resonate with people in our community,” Thomas said.

Thomas met privately with students as did several trustees. The Morehouse alumni association hosted a student town hall, featuring at least one veteran of the Atlanta Student Movement, a Civil Rights-era organization.

But there was a consistent message: Uninviting the president of the United States was not an option. When students raised questions about endowment investments in Israel and U.S. defense contractors, they said they were told the relevant amounts are negligible, a few hundred thousand dollars in mutual funds.

“I think folks are excited” about Biden coming, said Democratic Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Warnock said Biden is in “a great position” to talk about student debt relief, increased federal support for HBCUs and other achievements.

HBCUs have not seen crackdowns from law enforcement like those at Columbia University in New York City and the University of California, Los Angeles. However, Morehouse and the AUC have seen peaceful demonstrations, petitions and private meetings among campus stakeholders. Xavier University, a historically Black university in Louisiana, withdrew its commencement invitation for U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, citing a desire among students “to enjoy a commencement ceremony free of disruptions.”

Whether Morehouse graduates or other students protest Biden or disrupt the ceremony remains to be seen. Student protest leaders say they are unaware of any plans to demonstrate inside during the commencement.

Thomas, Morehouse’s president, promised that forms of protest at commencement that “do not disrupt ceremonies” will not result in sanctions for any students.

But he also vowed to end the program early if disruptions grow.

“We will not — on Morehouse’s campus — create a national media moment,” he said, “where our inability to manage these tensions leads to people being taken out of a Morehouse ceremony in zip ties by law enforcement.”

The Commission on Presidential Debates faces an uncertain future after Biden and Trump bypassed it

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By JONATHAN J. COOPER (Associated Press)

PHOENIX (AP) — The nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which has planned presidential faceoffs in every election since 1988, has an uncertain future after President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump struck an agreement to meet on their own.

The Biden and Trump campaigns announced a deal Wednesday to meet for debates in June on CNN and September on ABC. Just a day earlier, Frank Fahrenkopf, chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, had sounded optimistic that the candidates would eventually come around to accepting the commission’s debates.

“There’s no way you can force anyone to debate,” Fahrenkopf said in a virtual meeting of supporters of No Labels, which has continued as an advocacy group after it abandoned plans for a third-party presidential ticket. But he noted candidates have repeatedly toyed with skipping debates or finding alternatives before eventually showing up, though one was canceled in 2020 when Trump refused to appear virtually after he contracted COVID-19.

In reaching an agreement on their own, Biden and Trump sidelined a commission that aims to set neutral rules and provide a forum that’s simultaneously broadcast on all major networks.

The commission suggested in a statement Wednesday that it would not immediately let go of its plans.

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The commission was “established in 1987 specifically to ensure that such debates reliably take place and reach the widest television, radio and streaming audience,” the statement said. “Our 2024 sites, all locations of higher learning, are prepared to host debates on dates chosen to accommodate early voters. We will continue to be ready to execute this plan.”

Representatives for the commission did not respond to requests for further comment.

The Biden and Trump campaigns had both been critical of the commission’s plans, including the dates it set in September and October, after voters in many states will have already started casting ballots by mail.

Fahrenkopf on Tuesday said he had not spoken to representatives for either Biden or Trump. All the while, the campaigns had closed in on their own agreements. But he defended the importance of television debates in general.

“You learn a lot about the personality of the candidate,” Fahrenkopf said. “Not only where they stand on the issues but how they conduct themselves and how you feel about how they conduct themselves.”

Now armed with AI, America’s adversaries will try to influence election, security officials warn

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By DAVID KLEPPER and ERIC TUCKER (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s foreign adversaries will again seek to influence the upcoming U.S. elections, top security officials warned members of the Senate Wednesday, harnessing the latest innovations in artificial intelligence to spread online disinformation, mislead voters and undermine trust in democracy.

But the U.S. has greatly improved its ability to safeguard election security and identify and combat foreign disinformation campaigns since 2016, when Russia sought to influence the election, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The latest warning from security officials comes as advances in AI make it easier and cheaper than ever to create lifelike images, video and audio that can fool even the most discerning voter. Other tools of disinformation include state media, online influencers and networks of fake accounts that can quickly amplify false and misleading content.

Russia, China and Iran remain the main actors looking to interfere with the 2024 election, security officials said, but due to advances in technology other nations or even domestic groups could try and mount their own sophisticated disinformation campaigns.

Russia remains “the most active foreign threat to our elections,” Haines said, using its state media and online influencers to erode trust in democratic institutions and U.S. support for Ukraine.

In recent months, Russia has seized on America’s debate over immigration, spreading posts that exaggerate the impact of migration in an apparent effort to stoke outrage among American voters.

China did not directly try to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, mostly because of concerns over blowback, Haines said.

China’s ties to TikTok were one of the things cited by members of Congress who recently voted to force TikTok’s Beijing-based owner to sell the platform.

“Needless to say, we will continue to monitor their activity,” Haines said of China.

Iran, meanwhile, has used social media platforms to issue threats and try to confuse voters, Haines said. She cited a 2020 episode in which U.S. officials accused Tehran of distributing false content and being behind a flurry of emails sent to Democratic voters in multiple battleground states that appeared to be aimed at intimidating them into voting for President Donald Trump.

Previous efforts by federal agencies to call out foreign disinformation on platforms like Facebook or X, formerly known as Twitter, have quickly become caught up in debates over government surveillance, First Amendment rights and whether government agencies should be tasked with figuring out what’s true.

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Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the committee, questioned the officials about what they could do and how they would respond to “clearly fake” AI-generated videos about candidates that surface before the election.

“Who would be the person that would stand before the American people and say, ’We’re not interfering in the election. We just want you to know the video’s not real. Who would be in charge of that?” Rubio asked.

Haines responded that “I could be the person who goes out and makes that determination” but said there may be certain situations in which it would make more sense for state or local authorities to make that announcement.

Wednesday’s hearing on foreign threats to the election also covered the risk that an adversary could hack into state or local election systems, either to change the vote or to create the perception that the outcome can’t be trusted.

Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said the federal government has worked closely with state and local election officials to ensure the 2024 election is the most secure ever.

“Election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said.