The 6-second soundless video of an April 2024 incident at Beaumont United High School starts with Ja’Liyah Celestine, a 17-year-old Black student, kneeling in the middle of a hallway, covering her eyes. 

Celestine later told the Texas Observer that, before this, Linda Holland, a white Beaumont ISD police officer waited “a long time” before breaking up a fight between her and another student, who Celestine said had instigated the fight. Celestine said that after the fight had already ended, Holland pepper-sprayed Celestine’s face, bringing her to her knees. The video, recorded by a teacher and obtained and reviewed by the Observer, shows students and teachers still circled around Celestine a few feet away, watching. Holland grabs Celestine by the hair, knees her in the face, and knocks the 4’11”, 100-pound girl on her back. Celestine’s friend attempts to pull her to her feet, while Holland shakes her head and walks away. 

“It was so much going on, and all I remember is my eyes started burning. And then after that, I remember the cop kicking me in my face. She had me by my hair. She kneed me,” Celestine told the Observer. “I was really confused. … I didn’t know that I was getting pepper-sprayed, and I was scared.” 

Six months later, in late October, Texas Appleseed, an education and juvenile justice advocacy organization, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on behalf of Celestine and other Black students in the district, alleging that Beaumont ISD “violated Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against them and disproportionately subjecting them to law enforcement referrals.” The main school district in the eponymous city of 115,000, located between Houston and the Louisiana line, Beaumont ISD is a majority-Black district in a racially diverse town. 

Beaumont (Shutterstock)

The Texas Appleseed complaint also states the district violated a state law by allowing a police officer, rather than other school staff, to engage in “routine student discipline” for minor infractions of campus or district policy. 

But, now that President Donald Trump is back in the White House and has ordered that the Education Department be gutted, Celestine may not see any relief from the feds, leaving her and other students potentially subject to discrimination looking for other recourse. In January, Trump ordered OCR attorneys to cease all investigations initiated under prior administrations. On March 11, the department cut half its total staff. Seven of 12 regional OCR offices have already been shut down, including the Dallas office, which handled complaints based in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. 

Sheria Smith, an OCR attorney, had been working out of the Dallas office for nine years before she and her coworkers were terminated, shut out of what Smith said was OCR’s busiest office. Smith, who is also president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, a union representing 2,800 Department of Education employees, told the Observer that, even in the roughly two months before the firings, OCR attorneys had “been hamstrung” in efforts to enforce civil rights laws: “We were prohibited from doing any work on any cases, moving it forward, setting up interviews with stakeholders.”

OCR is “often the last line of defense,” Smith said at an American Federation of Teachers town hall meeting. “When families come to us, they have already tried to work things out with their school district. They tried to work things out with their state.”

Even as Trump carries out plans to dismantle the Education Department, he has shifted OCR’s priorities by using the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as a basis to remove gender-neutral bathrooms, ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, investigate complaints of anti-semitism and discrimination against white students, and “end DEI” in schools. Smith described the anti-DEI effort as “witch-hunting school districts and schools that might be providing services that benefited Black and brown or students of color.” 

Beth Echols, the OCR attorney assigned to Celestine’s case, last spoke to Celestine, her mom Angela Mack, and Texas Appleseed attorney Andrew Hairston around Thanksgiving, Hairston told the Observer. At the time, the agency was looking for information about racial disparities in arrest and law enforcement referrals at Beaumont ISD. Hairston received another email from Echols in mid-December, then “We’ve heard nothing in the new year,” he said. 

On March 3, a Department of Education spokesperson responded to an Observer email inquiring about the status of Celestine’s complaint: “The Office for Civil Rights does not confirm complaints.”

Since 1980, the department’s civil rights office has enforced the nation’s anti-discrimination laws in schools, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law that dismantled legal segregation, and later the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The OCR specifically enforces Title II of the civil rights law, which ensures everyone has access to “places of public accommodations”; Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, or religion by entities that receive federal funding; and Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination. The OCR also mandates school districts send civil rights-related and other data so the agency can develop research and regulations guiding school districts. 

Organizations including Texas Appleseed have also pushed state lawmakers to enact legislation reining in excessive policing, as recent laws expanded police presence in schools. In 2019, Texas passed a law barring districts from assigning “routine student discipline” to police officers or having police officers engage in “contact with students unrelated to the law enforcement duties.” Instead, bill author and former Democratic state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. told the Observer, campus rule infractions should be “taken care of by their teachers and administration or in-house without using security officers” and “the school board [should] take quick action” to see it enforced. 

Celestine’s complaint also asserts Holland failed to comply with the Beaumont ISD Police Department’s own policy manual and Beaumont ISD’s Student Code of Conduct, which describes district disciplinary procedures for student misconduct. The police department manual requires officers “use only an amount [of force] that ‘reasonably appears necessary’ under the totality of circumstances,”  but the complaint states: “No circumstances exist to justify this excessive use of force and deprivation of Ja’Liyah’s rights.” The code of conduct lists both permissible and impermissible disciplinary techniques. “Of those techniques that are prohibited are ‘directed use of […] unpleasant spray’ near a student’s face,” states the complaint. 

Beaumont ISD spokesperson Jackie Simien provided the Observer an emailed statement saying: “BISD is aware of the allegations and disputes the characterization of the events. … The District can confirm BISD staff responded appropriately to safeguard the safe operation of the campus in compliance with policy and law.” Simien did not provide answers to other Observer questions.

Relying on local law enforcement and school districts to enforce federal, state, or local policies without oversight is challenging, Hairston said. “Generally, districts don’t have much, in my experience, willingness to stand up against the culture of school policing and the abuse that so many Black and brown children face at the hands of school police officers,” he told the Observer.

According to Texas Education Agency spokesperson Jake Kobersky, the agency does not investigate complaints of racial discrimination that might violate the Civil Rights Act, adding that “Such complaints are referred to the USDOE Office of Civil Rights.” 

Hairston told the Observer that when school districts and the state fail to protect students against discrimination in schools, typically the mere act of filing a complaint with the feds can put pressure on school districts to change practices. Without federal oversight, as the OCR is being dismantled, Hairston said school police “are going to be so emboldened.” 

Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Education Department released a report finding that racial discrimination against Black and Latino students in school discipline persisted in public schools nationwide. The agencies issued a joint letter calling on school districts to reform their practices to comply with Title VI. “Discrimination in student discipline forecloses opportunities for students, pushing them out of the classroom and diverting them from a path to success in school and beyond,” the letter stated. The report has now been removed from the Department of Education’s website. 

When Trump took office, OCR was investigating 12,000 complaints: 6,000 related to discrimination against students with disabilities; 1,000 related to sex discrimination; and 3,200 related to racial discrimination, ProPublica reported. OCR records show there are still 952 Texas-based cases left pending: 527 related to students with disabilities; 162 related to sex discrimination; and 258 related to racial discrimination. Eight of these civil rights complaints are from Beaumont ISD. 

In Beaumont ISD, law enforcement referrals disproportionately affect Black students. OCR data for the 2021-22 school year shows Black students comprised 75 percent of students arrested by school law enforcement, even though they made up 60 percent of the student population that year. TEA records show Black students made up 60 percent of the district’s student population in the 2023-24 school year, but they accounted for 85 percent of students who received out-of-school suspensions and were moved from schools into the disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP), where students receive online education under surveillance and which criminal justice advocates refer to as a step in the school-to-prison pipeline. 

Statewide, Black students made up less than 13 percent of all students enrolled in public schools in 2023-24. But TEA data for that year reveals that Black students accounted for 31 percent of students who received out-of-school suspensions and 22 percent of students sent to DAEP. 

On the same day of the Beaumont incident, Holland called Celestine’s mom, Angela Mack, to apologize, Mack said. “I thought that was very strange for an officer to reach out and apologize to me, and that was before I knew that incident between her and my daughter had happened,” Mack told the Observer. 

But Mack said Holland did not mention that she pepper-sprayed Celestine’s face, grabbed her by her hair, and kneed her. Nor did Beaumont United High School administrators inform Mack about what happened during the incident. Instead, Celestine’s friend had called Mack, and later, she saw the video. “You hear about things like this on TV all the time, and you never expect it to happen to somebody so close, let alone your child,” she said. Holland deferred to district administrators when the Observer asked her for comment on the incident.

The school suspended Celestine and required her to perform 30 hours of community service and spend 60 days in the district’s DAEP before she could return to Beaumont United. The district later reduced the time in DAEP to 30 days.

Celestine said she felt helpless. “I was sad about it, especially because of the altercation with a white police officer,” Celestine said. “And then, adding on, going to Pathways [DAEP], knowing that all this wasn’t my fault, all that happened to me, that made me even sadder.”  

Mack said she eventually met with Principal Wiley Johnson and Assistant Principal Dalana Bennett a week after the incident. “Nobody told me anything. They just thought I was an angry mom because my daughter got in a fight and I didn’t want her to go to DAEP,” Mack said. “Up until this very moment … nobody from both the Beaumont Independent School District or Beaumont United has mentioned [the police actions] to me.” 

In DAEP, Celestine said instructors demanded her to write a letter to the Beaumont United principal, apologizing for her actions. 

At the start of this school year, Celestine returned to Beaumont United and has been volunteering for a community mentoring program, holding down a job as an HEB customer service rep, and looking forward to graduation. She told the Observer she still hasn’t completely recovered from the incident, but she’s determined to keep fighting so people know that what happened to her “can happen and that it should not happen.” Hairston said that Celestine, Mack, and attorneys at Texas Appleseed are planning to file a civil suit in state court seeking a declaratory judgment that the Beaumont ISD police department violated the law by allowing a police officer to engage in routine discipline. 

“Something needs to be done to show that this won’t be tolerated,” Mack said.  

The post A White School Officer Pepper-Sprayed and Kneed a Black Beaumont Student, Complaint Says. Will Feds Act? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Five years after Harvey Weinstein ’s original #MeToo trial delivered a searing reckoning for one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures, the ex-studio boss is on trial again after an appeals court threw out the landmark rape conviction.

Opening statements are set for Wednesday in a trial that could take six weeks.

It’s happening at the same Manhattan courthouse as his first trial, and two accusers who testified then are expected to return.

But Weinstein’s retrial is playing out at a different cultural moment than the first, which happened during the height of the #MeToo movement. And along with the charges being retried, he faces an additional allegation from a woman who wasn’t involved in the first case.

The jury counts seven women and five men — unlike the seven-man, five-woman panel that convicted him in 2020 — and there’s a different judge.

The #MeToo movement, which exploded in 2017 with allegations against Weinstein, has also evolved and ebbed.

At the start of Weinstein’s first trial, chants of “rapist” could be heard from protesters outside.

TV trucks lined the street, and reporters queued for hours to get a seat in the packed courtroom. His lawyers decried the “carnival-like atmosphere” and fought unsuccessfully to get the trial moved from Manhattan.

This time though, over five days of jury selection, there was none of that.

Those realities, coupled with the New York Court of Appeals’ ruling last year vacating his 2020 conviction and 23-year prison sentence — because the judge allowed testimony about allegations Weinstein was not charged with — are shaping everything from retrial legal strategy to the atmosphere in court.

Weinstein, 73, is being retried on a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcibly performing oral sex on a movie and TV production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006 and a third-degree rape charge for allegedly assaulting an aspiring actor, Jessica Mann, in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.

Weinstein also faces a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcing oral sex on a different woman at a Manhattan hotel in 2006. Prosecutors said that the woman, who hasn’t been named publicly, came forward days before his first trial but wasn’t part of that case. They said they revisited her allegations when his conviction was thrown out.

The Associated Press does not generally identify people alleging sexual assault unless they consent to be named, as Haley and Mann have done.

Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies raping or sexually assaulting anyone. His acquittals on the two most serious charges at his 2020 trial — predatory sexual assault and first-degree rape — still stand.

Lindsay Goldbrum, a lawyer for the unnamed accuser, said Weinstein’s retrial marks a “pivotal moment in the fight for accountability in sex abuse cases” and a “signal to other survivors that the system is catching up — and that it’s worth speaking out even when the odds seem insurmountable.”

This time around, the Manhattan district attorney’s office is prosecuting Weinstein through its Special Victims Division, which specializes in such cases, after homicide veterans helmed the 2020 version. At the same time, Weinstein has added several lawyers to his defense team — including Jennifer Bonjean, who is involved in appealing his 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles. She helped Bill Cosby get his conviction overturned and defended R. Kelly in his sex crimes case.

“This trial is not going to be all about #MeToo. It’s going to be about the facts of what took place,” Weinstein’s lead attorney, Arthur Aidala, said recently. “And that’s a big deal. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

But there has been some talk of #MeToo already. A prosecutor asked prospective jurors whether they’d heard of the movement. Most said that they had but that it wouldn’t affect them either way.

Others went further.

A woman opined that “not enough has been done” as a result of #MeToo. A man explained that he had negative feelings about it because his high school classmates had been falsely accused of sexual assault.

Another man said he viewed #MeToo like other social movements: “It’s a pendulum. It swings way one way, then way the other way, and then it settles.”

None of them are on the jury.

By VALERIE GONZALEZ and GISELA SALOMON, Associated Press

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Hubert Montoya burst out laughing when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security emailed to say he should leave the country immediately or risk consequences of being deported. He is a U.S. citizen.

“I just thought it was absurd,” the Austin, Texas, immigration attorney said.

It was an apparent glitch in the Trump administration’s dismantling of another Biden-era policy that allowed people to live and work in the country temporarily. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is quietly revoking two-year permits of people who used an online appointment app at U.S. border crossings with Mexico called CBP One, which brought in more than 900,000 people starting in January 2023.

The revocation of CBP One permits has lacked the fanfare and formality of canceling Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands whose homelands were previously deemed unsafe for return and humanitarian parole for others from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who came with financial sponsors. Those moves came with official notices in the Federal Register and press releases. Judges halted them from taking effect after advocacy groups sued.

CBP One cancellation notices began landing in inboxes in late March without warning, some telling recipients to leave immediately and others giving them seven days. Targets included U.S. citizens.

Timothy J. Brenner, a Connecticut-born lawyer in Houston, was told April 11 to leave the U.S. “I became concerned that the administration has a list of immigration attorneys or a database that they’re trying to target to harass,” he said.

CBP confirmed in a statement that it issued notices terminating temporary legal status under CBP One. It did not say how many, just that they weren’t sent to all beneficiaries, which totaled 936,000 at the end of December.

CBP said notices may have been sent to unintended recipients, including attorneys, if beneficiaries provided contact information for U.S. citizens. It is addressing those situations case-by-case.

Online chat groups reflect fear and confusion, which, according to critics, is the administration’s intended effect. Brenner said three clients who received the notices chose to return to El Salvador after being told to leave.

“The fact that we don’t know how many people got this notice is part of the problem. We’re getting reports from attorneys and folks who don’t know what to make of the notice,” said Hillary Li, counsel for the Justice Action Center, an advocacy group.

President Donald Trump suspended CBP One for new arrivals his first day in office but those already in the U.S. believed they could stay at least until their two-year permits expired. The cancellation notices that some received ended that sense of temporary stability. “It is time for you to leave the United States,” the letters began.

FILE – Migrants seeking asylum leave an immigration office after their scheduled meetings were canceled and they were turned away soon after President Donald Trump canceled the CBP One app, Jan. 20, 2025, in Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

“It’s really confusing,” said Robyn Barnard, senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First. “Imagine how people who entered through that process feel when they’re hearing through their different community chats, rumors or screenshots that some friends have received notice and others didn’t.”

Attorneys say some CBP One beneficiaries may still be within a one-year window to file an asylum claim or seek other relief.

Notices have been sent to others whose removal orders are on hold under other forms of temporary protection. A federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily halted deportations for more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came since late 2022 after applying online with a financial sponsor and flying to a U.S. airport at their own expense.

Maria, a 48-year-old Nicaraguan woman who cheered Trump’s election and arrived via that path, said the notice telling her to leave landed like “a bomb. It paralyzed me.”

Maria, who asked to be named only by her middle name for fear of being detained and deported, said in a telephone interview from Florida that she would continue cleaning houses to support herself and file for asylum.

Salomon reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV, AAMER MADHANI and JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A planned meeting Wednesday between top U.S., British, French and Ukrainian diplomats to push forward a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine was scrapped at the last minute, with U.S. Vice President JD Vance saying negotiations are reaching a moment of truth.

“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process,” Vance told reporters during a visit Wednesday to Agra, India.

He said it was “a very fair proposal” that would “freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today,” with both sides having to give up some territory they currently hold. He did not provide further details of the proposal.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrives to speak at the Rajasthan International Center in Jaipur, India, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

Vance’s comments came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out ceding territory to Russia as part of any potential peace agreement, calling it a nonstarter. The Ukrainian leader spoke Tuesday in response to reports the Trump administration was proposing a deal that would allow Russia to keep occupied Ukrainian territory as part of a potential peace agreement.

U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the talks in London to find an end to the more than three-year war would involve only lower-ranking officials after the U.S. State Department said Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unable to attend because of a scheduling issue.

Rubio’s abrupt cancelation raised doubts about the direction of the negotiations.

Commenting on those attending the London talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “as far as we understand, they so far have failed to bring their positions closer on some issues.”

He said the Kremlin was still in consultations with American officials but wouldn’t publicly discuss details.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to visit Moscow again later this week, according to Russian officials.

Even achieving a limited, 30-day ceasefire has been beyond the reach of negotiators, as both sides have continued to attack each other in a grinding war of attrition along the 620-mile front line and launch long-range strikes.

A Russian drone struck a bus carrying workers in Marganets, in eastern Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Wednesday morning, killing eight women and one man, regional head Serhii Lysak wrote on his Telegram channel. More than 40 people were injured, he said.

Lysak published photos of a bus with its windows blown out and shards of glass mixed with blood spattered on the bus floor.

Ukrainian delegation arrives in London despite change in U.S. plans

President Donald Trump has pushed for an end to the war and said last week that negotiations were “coming to a head.” That comment came after Rubio suggested that the U.S. might soon back away from negotiations if they don’t progress.

Rubio had indicated that Wednesday’s meeting could be decisive in determining whether the Trump administration remains engaged.

Those still attending the meeting included retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said on X that a delegation including him, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov had arrived in London for the talks despite the alterations.

“The path to peace is not easy, but Ukraine has been and remains committed to peaceful efforts,” Yermak said. Officials would “discuss ways to achieve a full and unconditional ceasefire as the first step toward a comprehensive settlement and the achievement of a just and lasting peace.”

Zelenskyy rejects ceding territory to Moscow

During similar talks last week in Paris, U.S. officials presented a proposal that included allowing Russia to keep control of occupied Ukrainian territory as part of a deal, according to a European official familiar with the matter.

Zelenskyy pushed back against that during an appearance in Kyiv, saying: “There is nothing to talk about — it is our land, the land of the Ukrainian people.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Russia, meanwhile, has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting by imposing far-reaching conditions.

Trump said repeatedly during his election campaign last year that he would be able to end the war “in 24 hours” upon taking office. But he has expressed frustration with Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Some European allies are wary of the American proposal for Ukraine to exchange land for peace. But an official said there’s also acknowledgment by some allies that Russia is firmly entrenched wholly or partially in five regions of Ukraine — Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

If the goal is to obtain a ceasefire immediately, “it should be based on the line of contact as it is,” said a senior French official. The official was not authorized to be publicly named and spoke on the condition of anonymity according to French presidential policy.

Moscow holds advantage on the battlefield

Still, Ukraine’s territorial integrity and aspirations to strengthen ties with the rest of the continent are a top priority for the Europeans, the European official said.

Britain had downplayed expectations of a breakthrough in London, but says this is an important week for diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting.

Western analysts say Moscow is in no rush to conclude peace talks, because it has battlefield momentum and wants to capture more Ukrainian land.

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Ukraine’s delegation heading to the U.K. had a mandate to discuss only an unconditional or partial ceasefire with Russia. He said that “after a ceasefire, we’re prepared to sit down for talks in any format.”

Novikov reported from Kyiv and Madhani from Washington. Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.