The award was presented for the agency's Children and Aging Strategic Planning Projects in the category �Profiles in Community Collaboration�. The entry described the Children�s Agenda Planning Committee and the Aging Leadership Planning Project. In both cases, Social Services took the lead in collaborating with area agencies to develop reports about the needs of children and older adults.

Catawba County Library System has hired a librarian to serve both the Conover and Claremont branches. Siobhan Loendorf will add preschool Ready to Learn sessions, computer classes and adult programming for Conover and Claremont branch libraries.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has released recommendations on widening of Highway 16 South in Catawba County (within the minutes of public meetings). Link to project maps: http://www.ncdot.org/doh/preconstruct/highway/roadway/hearingmaps_by_county/county/Catawba.html

Colonel Michael W. Gilchrist, Commander of the Highway Patrol, presented the awards to EMT Paramedic and Crew Chief Brad Harris and EMT Paramedic Eric Jones for their role in pulling a person from a burning vehicle.

Catawba County�s Budget Office has been recognized by its peers for producing a budget document which is easy to read and understand. The County Budget Office has won the 2011 Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA).

Catawba County has won the Government Innovation Grant Award (GIGA), from the UNC School of Government, the Local Government Federal Credit Union, and the North Carolina Local Government Information Systems Association, for its innovative use of Quick Response (QR) Codes on building permits issued in the county. The County was recognized for implementation of a Building Permit QR Codes system, which provides building contractors and inspectors with up-to-the-minute job site and inspection information, at their fingertips, in the field.

Alexander, Burke, Caldwell and Catawba County students in the 4th or 5th grades submitted posters related to the theme �Severe Weather Awareness� and illustrated an example of a natural hazard that affects North Carolina. One poster from each county and one overall winner from all entries were chosen as the winners of the Unifour Area Severe Weather Awareness Week Poster Contest. The winners were announced during Severe Weather Awareness Week with surprise presentations at each winner�s school.

Catawba County Government renewed an annual tradition on March 22nd, honoring employees with 25 or more years of service at the twenty-seventh annual Quarter Century Club lunch. Catawba County formed the Quarter Century Club in 1986. A highlight of this year�s program was the recognition of twelve new Quarter Century Club members.

Enhancements include an auto-fill feature, the ability to search on a business or landmark name, and links to both Google and Bing maps.

A delegation of high school students representing the Catawba County Youth Council and 4-H attended NC Citizenship Focus, which was held in Raleigh, where more than 200 youth and adults representing over 75 counties exchanged ideas, gained knowledge and learned through hands on experiences about the different levels and branches of government.

Smart Electric North America, LLC is opening its North American headquarters in Conover, NC at 1550 Deborah Herman Road SW. SENA plans to build market share by supplying quality components and finished goods to the top tier lighting companies in the US first; then abroad.

The Institute for Conservation Leadership has chosen to honor the Catawba-Wateree Relicensing Coalition for their exemplary collaboration to accomplish outstanding environmental protection. The Coalition is being recognized for collaborative work that is creative, visionary, and highly effective and that their respective coalition members could not have achieved by acting alone

As of October 1, 2012, Catawba County EMS has been named a Permanent Car Seat Checking Station by Buckle Up NC. Car seat checks will be conducted Monday thru Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., by appointment, at the Newton EMS base, located at 1101 South Brady Ave, Newton, NC 28658.

A new agreement extends borrowing privileges at Lenoir-Rhyne University Library to registered users of Hickory Public and Catawba County Libraries.

The information was developed and compiled by the Children's Agenda Planning Committee, appointed by the Catawba County Board of Commissioners. The committee's vision is to ensure a safe community where all children are engaged, enriched and equipped to reach their full potential.

The agreement would substantially increase the number of items collected for recycling across Catawba County, with further expansion of items collected as needed over time; begin �single stream� collection of recyclable commodities so recycled materials would no longer be required to be separated at curbside; increase Republic Services� investment in Catawba County by $13 million; and protect more than 150 local jobs.

Suzanne M. White, who has managed comprehensive library programs, services and personnel at two full service library branches in Rowan County for more than seven years, and has had a successful career in library services spanning more than twenty years, has been named Catawba County�s new Library Director. White succeeds Karen Foss, who will retire on February 1, 2013, after serving as the County�s Library Director since July 1999.

Two Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) were presented to Grandview Middle School and Northview Middle School at a basketball game between the two rivals on January 24. The AEDs were made possible though efforts of Catawba County Public Health school nurse Virginia Beisler, MS, RN. Beisler worked with Frye Regional Medical Center and each school�s booster and PTA clubs to raise the $3,200 necessary to purchase the AEDs.

Catawba County will mail data verification, income and expense request, to property owners as 2015 revluation process continues on May 17, 2013. Owners are requested to verify the information found on the data verification sheet, provide pertinent additional information and make any necessary corrections, and return the form to the revaluation office. http://www.catawbacountync.gov/events/revalmailer13.asp

Catawba County Home Health is empowering older adults to lower their risk of falling through a new service called Smart Moves.

A new County Solid Waste Franchise with Republic Services (formerly known as GDS), effective July 1, is bringing expanded recycling, new fee schedule, services.

Article by Catawba County Public Health School Nurse Margaret Sides on vision screenings for students is published nationally.

Catawba County requests State assistance for those with damage from July 27 flooding.

Adult Services Social Worker Chandra Henson with Catawba County Social Services has been honored by the North Carolina Adult Foster Care Association.

Annual Financial Report for Fiscal Year 2012-2013 shows Catawba County improved its financial position with conservative approach.

Social Services program honored as one of only 15 programs in U.S. making critical difference in lives of youth in foster care.

Lisa Przekop, director of admissions at University of California, Santa Barbara, says that many high schoolers this year wrote their application essays about depression and anxiety during the pandemic.; Credit: Patricia Marroquin/Moment Editorial/Getty Images

College-bound high schoolers are making their final deliberations ahead of May 1, the national deadline to pick a school. That day will mark the end of a hectic admissions season drastically shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many colleges dropped standardized testing requirements, and because some high schools gave pass/fail grades and canceled extracurriculars and sports, admissions counselors had to change how they read and evaluate applications.

"[It was] definitely the craziest of all my 36 years, without a doubt," says Lisa Przekop, director of admissions at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The UC school system received the most applications in the United States.

Like many others, Przekop says all of her staff has been working remotely throughout the pandemic. But if pivoting to working from home wasn't a challenge enough, Przekop says the school saw an increase in applications of 16%.

"On top of all that, we had to devise a way of doing our admissions selection process without the use of SAT or ACT scores," she says. "So any one of those things would have been a major change, but to have all of them at the same time was beyond anything really that I could've imagined."

Przekop spoke with All Things Considered about how what counselors looked for in applications this year changed, what topics they saw in admissions essays and how the process might have actually improved in spite of the pandemic.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

Has it all added up to more time spent on every individual application?

Quick answer, yes. Things are much more nuanced now. And although a student may have, for instance, planned to do certain activities, well many of those activities were canceled. The other big difference was students were a lot more depressed this year, obviously. Everybody's more anxious, including students. They're applying for college which is stressful in and of itself. And so what we found is a lot of students used their essays to talk about depression, anxiety, things like this. To read essay after essay after essay about depression, anxiety, stress — is taxing. And so we really had to encourage staff to take more breaks as they were reviewing. So it definitely slowed the whole process down at a time when we had more applications to review.

Can you give any insight into what you are basing your decisions on this year?

Absolutely. Maybe in the past I would've focused on that GPA right away. Now when I'm looking at that academic picture, I have to look at the fact that did the student challenge themselves as much as they could have? Were the courses even available? Do I see any trends in their academic performance? If their spring term of last year, their junior year, was all pass/no pass, can I safely assume that they did well in those courses? And that's where you really had to rely on what the students shared in their essays to try to piece that together.

Are you noticing greater diversity in the students applying to UC?

In terms of ethnic diversity, yes, we are seeing that. In terms of diversity of experience — for instance, first generation students and students with lots of different socioeconomic backgrounds — we're definitely seeing that. I'm seeing students who are very committed to the environment more so than i've seen before. I'm seeing students who are more politically aware and active than I've seen before. So I'm definitely seeing a pattern of behaviors that look a little bit different than students in the past.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: /The Washington Post via Getty Images

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According to the National Institute For Early Childhood Research, nearly half of all three-year-olds and a third of all four-year-olds in the United States were not enrolled in preschool in 2019. That's in large part because many parents can't afford it. Imagine a future where we changed that. A future where every American child had access to two years of preschool during a critical period of their mental development. How would their lives change? How would society change? If President Biden gets his way, and Congress agrees to spend $200 billion on his proposal for universal preschool, then we may begin to find out.

But it turns out, we kind of already know. In fact, a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research gives us a glimpse of what that world could look like. It adds to a burgeoning amount of high-quality research that shows just how valuable preschool is — and maybe not for the reasons you might think.

An Accidental Experiment

The story begins back in the mid-to-late 1990s. The Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, wanted to improve the city's schools. One of his big goals was to provide universal, full-day kindergarten for Boston's kids. But the budget was tight, and following a task force's recommendations, he and local lawmakers decided to move resources from preschool (for four-year-olds) to kindergarten (for five-year-olds) in order to achieve it.

The result was an even more limited number of slots for city-funded preschool, and the city officials had to figure out how to fairly divvy up those slots. They resorted to a lottery system, randomly selecting kids who would get in.

Fast forward two decades later, and the economists Christopher R. Walters, Guthrie Gray-Lobe, and Parag A. Pathak saw this as a golden opportunity to see how preschool can affect people's lives. The fact that Boston's school administrators randomized who got admitted meant there were two virtually identical groups of kids with only one difference: one group got an extra year of education by going to preschool. That gave the researchers the opportunity to compare and contrast the two groups of kids and credibly see how kids' lives changed as a result of getting into preschool.

Four thousand four-year-olds took part in Boston's preschool lottery between 1997 and 2003. Walters, Gray-Lobe, and Pathak acquired data on them from the Boston school system. And then they were able to get additional data from other sources that gave them insight into ways that the childrens' lives might have benefited from an additional year of preschool education. These kids are now all twentysomethings — a fact that should make you feel old.

Consistent with other studies that find preschool has a huge effect on kids, Walters, Gray-Lobe, and Pathak find that the kids lucky enough to get accepted into preschools in Boston saw meaningful changes to their lives. These kids were less likely to get suspended from school, less likely to skip class, and less likely to get in trouble and be placed in a juvenile detention facility. They were more likely to take the SATs and prepare for college.

The most eye-popping effects the researchers find are on high school graduation and college enrollment rates. The kids who got accepted into preschool ended up having a high-school graduation rate of 70% — six percentage points higher than the kids who were denied preschool, who saw a graduation rate of only 64%. And 54% of the preschoolers ended up going to college after they graduated — eight percentage points higher than their counterparts who didn't go to preschool. These effects were bigger for boys than for girls. And they're all the more remarkable because the researchers only looked at the effects of a single year of preschool, as opposed to two years of preschool (as President Biden is now proposing for the nation's youth). Moreover, in many cases, the classes were only half-day.

Intriguingly, while attending preschool at age four had clear effects on these kids' entire lives, it did not improve their performance on standardized tests. These findings fit into a large body of research that suggests the true value of preschool is helping little ones to develop "non-cognitive skills," like emotional and social intelligence, grit, and respect for the rules.

"The combination of findings — that we don't see an impact on test scores, but we do see an impact on these behavioral outcomes and the likelihood of attending college — is consistent with this idea that there's some kind of behavioral or socio-emotional, non-cognitive impact from preschool," says Christopher Walters, an economist at UC Berkeley who co-authored the study.

In other words, there's growing evidence that preschool can permanently improve kids lives — but it's not necessarily because it makes them smarter. It seems more related to making them more disciplined and motivated, which is just as important (or perhaps even more important) for their future livelihoods as how well they perform on reading or math tests.

The Bigger Picture

This latest study isn't the first to show the outsized effects of providing a preschool education. The Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has spent many years studying the results of small, randomized experiments with preschool in the 1960s and 1970s. The most famous such experiment was The Perry Preschool Project, which was conducted in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The program provided two years of high-quality preschool for disadvantaged three- and four-year-olds.

Heckman and his colleagues found that the Perry Preschool had seismic effects on the kids who participated. They were much less likely to get arrested, go on welfare, or be unemployed as adults. They earned significantly more. In a recent study, Heckman and his team found that even the kids of the kids who went to the Perry preschool had significantly better outcomes in life.

All in all, Heckman and his team estimate that every dollar the Perry Preschool project invested in kids had a return on investment of 7-10 percent per year, through increased economic gains for the kids and decreased public spending on them through other social programs when they got older. That's a substantial return, equal to or greater than the average annual return from the stock market, and much greater than most other things our government spends money on.

Other preschool programs studied by Heckman and his colleagues have had even greater benefits. In the 1970s, a couple of programs in North Carolina experimented with high-quality childcare centers for kids. The centers offered kids aged zero to five education, medical checkups, and nutritious food. Heckman and his team found these centers delivered a 13 percent annual return on investment to the public for every dollar they invested. The program helped Heckman develop what's known as "the Heckman Curve," which asserts that the government gets more bang for the buck the earlier it provides resources to educate people. Educating toddlers, Heckman says, is much more powerful than educating high-schoolers, college students, or adults in, for example, job-training programs.

As astounding as Heckman's findings about preschool have been, naysayers have long questioned whether such effects could be replicated with larger scale programs, like the one President Biden is now proposing. This new study out of Boston, which looks at a large-scale program conducted across the entire city, is another brick in the growing edifice of evidence that shows preschool is a worthy investment, not just for kids, but for society overall.

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This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Some institutions have scrapped Columbus Day or switched to celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day. One New Jersey school district came up with a new solution: eliminate all holiday names.; Credit: Olesya Semenov/EyeEm via Getty Images

Memorial Day. Thanksgiving. Labor Day.

You may be used to seeing your calendar punctuated by the various holidays that occur throughout the year.

But on one New Jersey school district's calendar, each one of these days will be listed, simply, as "day off."

It all started when the school board in Randolph Township voted to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day. Some residents were outraged, so the board said that instead it would wipe holiday names from the school calendar altogether while still observing the days off.

"The overwhelming majority of the township population feels that they've [Randolph Township school board members] grossly overstepped their bounds, that they're completely pushing their own personal, political ideologies," Randolph resident Tom Tatem told Fox News. He started a petition calling on school officials to resign.

Institutions across the country are wrestling with the question of what to do with Columbus Day.

Critics have derided the idea of celebrating the Italian explorer, who perpetrated violence on Native Americans when he arrived in the United States. Boosters say it is critical to recognize the contributions of Christopher Columbus, and that Italian-Americans have historically faced discrimination.

Some places have switched to marking Indigenous Peoples' Day in recognition of the Native Americans who occupied the United States long before European explorers like Columbus arrived.

Randolph Township arrived at a novel solution to this problem: eliminate every holiday name to avoid taking a side.

The goal appears to have been to sidestep the debate over Columbus Day, but the Randolph Township school system instead found itself squarely in it, and opponents of the move have called on school officials to resign.

The Randolph Board of Education is now scheduled to convene Monday for a special meeting to reconsider its plan to remove holiday names from the school calendar.

What's happening in New Jersey

In May, the Randolph school board voted unanimously to replace Christopher Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples' Day.

Some parents grew angry with the decision, but instead of reverting back to the old calendar, the board moved in early June to scrap all holiday names from the school calendar, not giving preference to either one of the October celebrations.

"If we don't have anything on this calendar, then we don't have to have anyone [with] hurt feelings," Randolph school board member Dorene Roche said during a June 10 public meeting, according to NJ.com.

The backlash has only grown.

A petition calling on Randolph Township Schools superintendent Jennifer Fano and members of the board of education to resign has topped 4,000 signatures. "They represent everything that is wrong in education today and are completely incompetent in every aspect of their role," the petition says.

For its part, the school board acknowledged the public outcry but said its decision was misconstrued by some people.

A press release issued by the Randolph board of education on Sunday clarified that the holidays will still be observed as days off and that their decision was not meant to dishonor "the great veterans and the heroes" after which several of those holidays are named.

"These State, Federal and other holidays have not been cancelled or taken away by this Board of Education as some are falsely claiming," the board said. "Everyone is still encouraged to celebrate them in whatever way they deem appropriate."

Matthew Pfouts, director of communications and digital media for the Randolph Township Schools, told NPR the board has no further comment.

Changing views on holidays

On the national level, Columbus Day remains a federal holiday.

But a number of states, including Alaska and Virginia, as well as some cities either observe Indigenous Peoples' Day as a holiday or celebrate it in some way.

The movement away from Columbus Day has not come without controversy.

The New York City Department of Education tried to rename Columbus Day over objections and eventually settled on marking a holiday called "Italian Heritage Day/Indigenous People's Day," which drew its own set of critiques. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it was wrong to make the two groups share one holiday.

There are also other efforts to recognize the role people of color played in American history.

This week, the Senate unanimously passed a bill to make Juneteenth — the day marking the end of slavery in the U.S. — a public holiday.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that low-level crack cocaine offenders cannot benefit from a 2018 federal law.; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that some crack cocaine offenders sentenced to harsh prison terms more than a decade ago cannot get their sentences reduced under a federal law adopted with the purpose of doing just that.

At issue in the case was the long and now notorious history of sentencing under the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established harsh mandatory prison sentences based on the amount of drugs that the defendant possessed or sold. The triggering amount, however, was different for crack cocaine used most often by Black people, and powder cocaine, used most often by whites.

Indeed, the ratio was 100-to-1, so that a five-year mandatory minimum penalty, for instance, was triggered by possession of 5 grams of crack, whereas the same penalty was triggered by 500 grams of powder cocaine.

Nine years after enactment of these mandatory penalties, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found these disparities unjustified, and by 2010 Congress passed new legislation to reduce the disparity to from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. But that left everyone previously sentenced under the old regime stuck with the harsher penalties. And in 2018, Congress passed and then-President Donald Trump signed into law a bipartisan bill to make the new ratios retroactive.

That allowed thousands of crack offenders who were serving prison sentences to be resentenced under the new law and new sentencing guidelines, with an average reduction of six years in their sentences. But while the new law allowed even drug kingpins to be resentenced, some prisoners were left out — a number now in the low hundreds, according to the Biden administration.

One of those was the prisoner at the center of Monday's case, Tarahrick Terry, sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison for possession with intent to distribute 3.9 grams of crack cocaine, less than the weight of four paper clips.

He claimed that his sentence, like others, should be revised in light of the 2018 law, but the Supreme Court rejected that argument. Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that Terry had been sentenced under a section of the law that applied to "career criminals," those who had two previous drug or violent convictions. Terry did, in fact, have two previous drug convictions as a teenager — for which he spent 120 days in jail.

So, as Thomas observed, Terry was sentenced under the provision of the law that was not included in the 2018 revision.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin and Cory Booker and Republican Sens. Charles Grassley and Mike Lee — the sponsors and drafters of the act — warned in a friend of the court brief filed in the case that excluding low-level offenders from the act's reforms would mean ignoring its purpose. "Had Congress intended to exclude individuals with low-level crack offenses from relief," they wrote, "Congress of course could have done so."

Thomas and the rest of the court rejected that argument. "We will not convert nouns to adjectives and vice versa," wrote Thomas, which is what he said Congress was asking the court to do. The 2018 law, he said, did not change the section of the law under which Terry was sentenced, so the argument that the revision modified the whole law just wouldn't wash.

Although the decision was unanimous, it included an interesting back-and-forth about race between Thomas, the only African American on the court and arguably its most conservative member, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, its only Hispanic and arguably most liberal member. Specifically, their disagreement was about the role race played in the adoption of mandatory minimum sentences that were wildly more harsh for possession or sale of crack cocaine than for powder cocaine.

As Thomas saw it, the 100-to-1 ratio for crack cocaine was enacted "with near unanimity" by Congress, because of two concerns expressed by Black leaders at the time: First, that crack "was fueling crime against residents in the inner cities who were predominantly black," and second that "prosecutors were not taking these kinds of crimes seriously enough because the victims were disproportionately black." Moreover, he quoted a 1995 U.S. Sentencing Commission report that concluded the 100-to-1 ratio created "a perception of unfairness," even though there was no reason to believe that "racial bias or animus undergirded the initiation of the federal sentencing law."

In a concurring opinion, Sotomayor declined to join that part of Thomas' opinion, because "it includes an unnecessary, incomplete, and sanitized history of the 100-to-1 ratio," including "race-based myths" about crack cocaine.

"The full history is far less benign," she said. It ignores the fact that Black leaders were promised federal investment in longer term solutions — including in job training and education programs — but that help never arrived. Nor, she noted, did the majority opinion mention that the bill containing the 100-to-1 ratio was "rush[ed] through to pass dramatic drug legislation before the midterm elections," and that the legislative history of the bill offered no justification for the 100-to-1 ratio, "save that it was the highest ratio proposed."

"Most egregiously, the Court barely references the ratio's real-world impact" — one so profound and unjustified, as demonstrated by subsequent research — "that the [Congressional Black Caucus] came together in unanimous and increasingly vocal opposition to the law."

In the end, however, Sotomayor agreed that "unfortunately," the reading of the law urged by the primary sponsors of the 2018 revision is not born out by the text. "Fortunately," she added, "Congress has numerous tools to right this injustice."

As for prisoner Terry, who brought Monday's case, he is now in the final months of his prison term, and according to the Biden administration is serving his remaining time in home confinement.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Police tape blocks access from a street leading to the building complex where the Capital Gazette is located on June 29, 2018, in Annapolis, Md. The suspect barricaded a back door in an effort to "kill as many people as he could kill," police said.; Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Jury selection in the trial of the gunman who fatally shot five employees at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md., on June 28, 2018 gets underway on Wednesday.

Jarrod Ramos, 41, has pleaded guilty — but not criminally responsible for reason of insanity — in the killings of John McNamara, Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. The mass shooting was one of the deadliest attacks on journalists in modern U.S. history.

"There is a sense that you don't want this to be the thing that makes your life change," Phil Davis, the paper's former criminal justice reporter who now works at the Baltimore Sun, told NPR.

Davis was hiding under his desk while live tweeting the shooting that day. Later, he was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that put out a paper the very next day.

"That's kind of what drove me to continue as a criminal justice reporter. Once I got the feeling of like, 'no we're going to get back to exactly what we do. We're going to tackle this how we would even if it wasn't us and try to go at it from the perspective of a local community newspaper,'" Davis said.

Bruce Shapiro, the executive director of the Columbia University's Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, said what made this shooting reverberate in newsrooms across the U.S. was "the idea of a newsroom full of colleagues being murdered just because they are journalists. It's an identity based attack."

Attacks on journalists in the U.S. haven't stopped there. During his time in office, President Donald Trump tweeted that the news media is the enemy of the people. Associated Press journalists were threatened and had their equipment damaged by supporters of Trump during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. And last year, during the protests in Minneapolis over the murder of George Floyd by police, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker reported at least 160 threats to journalists across the country in one week--mostly by police.

Shapiro says the trial is a reminder to the public of the risks and costs local reporters take daily.

"The reality is that local newsrooms all over the country cover extraordinarily difficult events affecting their own families, neighbors, kids, schools whether that is wildfires, whether that is mass shooting, whether that is COVID-19," Shapiro said.

The Capital Gazette trial has been delayed several times due to COVID-19, turnover in the public defender and state's attorney's offices, and rounds of court hearings. Davis says he hopes the long-awaited trial brings some closure.

"Certainly for the families of the victims themselves, I look forward to being on the other end of this trial," he said. "And whatever the outcome is, being able to embrace them and support them just to bring them some sort of closure."

Today, less than a week before the third anniversary of the shooting, the judge has called a pool of 300 people to determine the 12 that will sit as jurors. They will then determine Ramos's mental sanity during the attack.

Steve Mercer, a former Maryland public defender, said the defense has the burden to prove Ramos's sanity. He said that in cases like these, the defense will look at motive and intent. One possible motive, Mercer says, is Ramos' "long-simmering feud with the paper."

Ramos sued the paper for defamation in 2012 after reporters wrote about his guilty plea on charges of criminal harassment and 90-day suspended jail sentence. But that motive might not hold up.

"I think there's a big gap between sort of being upset about a story that's published ... and then going in and committing a mass shooting," Mercer said.

Mercer adds what presents a challenge to both the defense and prosecution is Ramos's conduct after the shooting. He was found by police under a desk at the scene of the shooting with a pump-action shotgun which was purchased legally a few years before.

"The defense may point to it and say that it shows just a disconnect from reality and a lack of awareness of what was going on," Mercer said.

Circuit Court Judge Judge Michael Wachs will ultimately decide if he ends up in prison or a state psychiatric hospital.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Britney Spears performing onstage in Las Vegas in 2016.; Credit: Christopher Polk/Getty Images

Addressing a Los Angeles Superior Court judge today via a remote connection, Britney Spears on Wednesday afternoon made her most public statement to date about her long-running conservatorship. For over a decade, the pop star's life has been ruled by an atypical court-dictated legal arrangement that removes practically all autonomy from her life. Until now, the pop star has remained mostly quiet on the subject.

Today, in a passionate statement, she plead for the conservatorship to end. According to tweets sent by observers on the scene, Spears was open and outspoken about her situation. She said her life was being exploited, and she can't sleep, is depressed and cries every day. She stated that she wants another baby, but is forced by the agreement to keep an IUD in place.

Before today, after a recent New York Times and FX documentary, Framing Britney Spears, reignited interest in her story and the wider #FreeBritney movement, she has shied away from public comment, but did share some thoughts on social media.

"I didn't watch the documentary but from what I did see of it I was embarrassed by the light they put me in," she wrote in an Instagram caption in March. "I cried for two weeks and well .... I still cry sometimes !!!!"

But on Tuesday, The New York Times, citing recently obtained confidential court records, reported that Spears has been trying to fight her conservatorship for years.

"She articulated she feels the conservatorship has become an oppressive and controlling tool against her," a court investigator wrote in a 2016 report. The system had "too much control," Ms. Spears said, according to the investigator's account of the conversation. "Too, too much!"

Ms. Spears informed the investigator that she wanted the conservatorship terminated as soon as possible. "She is 'sick of being taken advantage of' and she said she is the one working and earning her money but everyone around her is on her payroll," the investigator wrote.

In 2019, Ms. Spears told the court that she had felt forced by the conservatorship into a stay at a mental health facility and to perform against her will.

You can find more details about the history of her conservatorship here, but these are the broad strokes:

In 2008, Britney Spears' father, Jamie Spears, gained control of all aspects of his daughter's life after the singer publicly struggled with her mental health. (As the Framing Britney Spears documentary brought new attention to her case, it also started some soul-searching among media types who farmed her mental health issues for tabloid headlines.) Everything from her performances to her finances to her relationships with her two now-teenage sons was under her father's control.

The pop star's fans began to question the ethics and legality of the arrangement, and under the banner #FreeBritney they have sustained a lengthy campaign to see it end.

During this time, Britney Spears continued working — putting out platinum-selling albums, doing TV gigs and mounting a hugely successful four-year residency in Las Vegas. She had no control over the financial arrangements of any of these projects.

In a 2020 court filing, Spears asked the court to suspend her father from his role as conservator and refused to perform if he remained in charge of her career. As a result, a wealth-management company became a co-conservator for her finances, but her father presently remains the main conservator for all other aspects of Spears' life.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Federal prosecutors secured their first guilty plea Wednesday in the Justice Department's sprawling conspiracy case involving the Oath Keepers extremist group in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

At a hearing in federal court in Washington, D.C., Graydon Young pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of obstruction of an official proceeding. The 55-year-old Florida resident agreed to cooperate with investigators, which could prove critical as the government pursues the remaining defendants in the high-profile case.

Young is one of 16 people associated with the Oath Keepers to be charged with conspiracy, obstruction and other offenses over the Capitol riot. Prosecutors say the defendants coordinated their efforts and actions to try to disrupt Congress' certification of the Electoral College count on Jan. 6.

More than 500 people have been charged so far in connection with the Capitol breach, but the Oath Keepers conspiracy case is one of the most closely watched because of the allegations and the link to an extremist organization.

Young is the second defendant linked to the Oath Keepers to plead guilty. Jon Schaffer pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding and entering restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon in April.

According to Young's statement of offense, he coordinated with his co-conspirators ahead of Jan. 6 and used encrypted messaging apps to maintain "operational security."

On the day itself, the document says, Young and some of his co-conspirators pushed through U.S. Capitol Police lines guarding the Capitol and into the building.

"Mr. Young believed that he and the co-conspirators were trying to obstruct, influence, and impede an official proceeding, that is, a proceeding before Congress, specifically, Congress's certification of the Electoral College vote," the document says.

At Wednesday's hearing, Judge Amit Mehta read that passage to Young to ensure that it was accurate.

"Yes, sir," Young replied, "that is correct."

According to the plea deal, Young has agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors, including sitting for interviews with investigators and testifying before the grand jury and at trial.

The government, meanwhile, has agreed to dismiss the remaining charges against him. Even so, Mehta said Young is facing a possible prison sentence of 5 to 6 1/2 years under the sentencing guidelines.

Wednesday brought another significant development in the Capitol investigation.

Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old from Indiana who described Jan. 6 as the "best day ever," became the first Capitol riot defendant to be sentenced.

Morgan-Lloyd was not accused of taking part in any of the violence at the Capitol. She pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of "parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building."

Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced her to three years of probation and no jail time.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Britney Spears arrives for a movie premier in Hollywood, Calif., on July 22, 2019. On Wednesday, the singer asked a judge to end her conservatorship.; Credit: Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images

Britney Spears is asking a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to end her 13-year conservatorship, saying she is being exploited, bullied and feeling "left out and alone."

Below is a transcript from a leaked audio recording of part of Spears' court statement Wednesday posted on YouTube and verified by NPR.

Britney Spears: I will be honest with you, I haven't been back to court in a long time because I don't think I was heard on any level when I came to court the last time. I brought four sheets of paper in my hands and wrote in length what I had been through the last four months before I came there. The people who did that to me should not be able to walk away so easily. I'll recap: I was on tour in 2018; I was forced to do. My management said if I don't do this tour I will have to find an attorney.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny: Ms. Spears, Ms. Spears. I hate to interrupt you, but my court reporter is taking down what you're saying.

Spears: OK.

Penny: And so you have to speak a little more slowly.

Spears: Oh, of course. Yes. OK. I apologize. Great.

Penny: So we hear and make a record of everything you're saying.

Spears: The people who did this to me should not get away and be able to walk away so easily. Recap: I was on tour in 2018. I was forced to do. My management said if I don't do this tour, I will have to find an attorney and by contract my own management could sue me if I didn't follow through with the tour. He handed me a sheet of paper as I got off the stage in Vegas and said I had to sign it. It was very threatening and scary and with the conservatorship, I couldn't even get my own attorney. So out of fear, I went ahead and I did the tour. When I came off that tour, a new show in Las Vegas was supposed to take place. I started rehearsing early, but it was hard cause I'd been doing Vegas for four years and I needed a break in between.

But no, I was told this is the timeline and this is how it's gonna go. I rehearsed four to four days a week, half of the time in the studio and a half of the other time in a Westlake studio. I was basically directing most of the show with my whereabouts, where I preferred to rehearse and actually did most of the choreography, meaning I taught my dancers my new choreography myself. I take everything I do very seriously. There's tons of video with me at rehearsals. I wasn't good. I was great. I led a room of 16 new dancers in rehearsals. It's funny to hear my manager's side of the story. They all said I wasn't participating in rehearsals and I never agreed to take my medication, which my medication is only taken in the mornings, never at rehearsal. They don't even see me. So why are they even claiming that?

When I said no to one dance move into rehearsals, it was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere and I said, no, I don't want to do it this way. After that, my management, my dancers and my assistant of the new people that were supposed to do the new show all went into a room, shut the door and didn't come out for at least 45 minutes. Ma'am, I'm not here to be anyone's slave. I can say no to a dance move. I was told by my — at the time — therapist, Dr. Benson, who died, that my manager called him and then that moment and told him I wasn't cooperating or following the guidelines in rehearsals. And he also said I wasn't taking my medication, which is so dumb because I've had the same lady every morning for the past eight years give me my same medication and I'm nowhere near these stupid people. It made no sense at all.

There was a week period where they — they were nice to me and they said, "I don't want to do —" And I told them, "I don't want to do the —" They, wait, no — they were nice to me. They said, if I don't want to do the new Vegas show, I don't have to cause I was getting really nervous. I said, "I can wait." It was like, they told me I could wait. It was like lifting literally 200 pounds off of me when they said I don't have to do the show anymore cause it was — I was really, really hard on myself and it was too much.

I couldn't take it anymore. So I remember telling my assistant, "But you know what, I feel weird if I say no. I feel like they're going to come back and be mean to me or punish me or something." Three days later, after I said no to Vegas, my therapist sat me down in a room and said he had a million phone calls about how I was not cooperating in rehearsals and I haven't been taking my medication. All of this was a false. He — he immediately the next day put me on lithium out of nowhere. He took me off my normal meds I'd been on for five years. And lithium is a very, very strong and completely different medication compared to what I was used to. You can go mentally impaired if you take too much, if you stay on it longer than five months. But he put me on that and I felt drunk. I really couldn't even take up for myself. I couldn't even have a conversation with my mom or dad really about anything. I told them I was scared and my doctor had me on — six different nurses with this new medication come to my home, stay with me to monitor me on this new medication, which I never wanted to be on to begin with.

There were six different nurse — nurses in my homes and they wouldn't let me get in my car to go anywhere for — for a month. Not only did my family not do a goddamn thing, my dad was all for it. Anything that happened to me had to be approved by my dad. And my dad only — he acted like he didn't know that I was told I had to be tested over the Christmas holidays before they sent me away when my kids went home to Louisiana. He was the one who approved all of it. My whole family did nothing. Over the two-week holiday, a lady came into my home for four hours a day, sat me down and did a psych test on me. It took forever, but I was — I was told I had to then — after that I got off — Wait.

I was told — I had to then after I got a phone call from my dad saying after I did the psych test with this lady, basically saying I had failed the test or whatever — whatever. "I'm sorry, Britney, you have to listen to your doctors. They are planning to send you to a small home in Beverly Hills to do a small rehab program that we're going to make up for you. You're gonna pay $60,000 a month for this."

I cried on the phone for an hour and he loved every minute of it. The control he had over someone as powerful as me as he loved the control to hurt his own daughter, 100,000%. He loved it.

I packed my bags and went to that place. I worked seven days a week, no days off — which in California, the only similar thing to this is called sex trafficking, making anyone work — work against their will. Taking all their possessions away — credit card, cash, phone, passport card — and placing them in a home where they — they work with the people who live with them. They offer — they all lived in the house with me, the nurses, the 24/7 security. There — there was one chef that came there and cooked for me daily during the weekdays. They watched me change every day, naked. Morning, noon and night. My body — I had no privacy door for my — for my room. I gave eight gallons of blood a week. If I didn't do any of my meetings and work from 8 to 6 at night — which is 10 hours a day, seven days a week, no days off — I wouldn't be able to see my kids or my boyfriend. I never had a say in my schedule. They always told me I had to do this. And ma'am, I will tell you, sitting in a chair 10 hours a day, seven days a week, it ain't fun. And especially when you can't walk out the front door.

And that's why I'm telling you this again two years later, after I've lied and told the whole world I'm OK and I'm happy. It's a lie. I thought I just — maybe I said that enough, maybe I might become happy because I've been in denial. I've been in shock. I am traumatized, you know, fake it till you make it. But now I'm telling you the truth, OK? I'm not happy. I can't sleep. I'm so angry. It's insane and I'm depressed. I cry every day. And the reason I'm telling you this is because I don't think how the state of California can have all this written in the court documents from the time I showed up and do absolutely nothing. Just hire — with my money — another person to keep — and keep my dad on board. Ma'am, my dad and anyone involved in this conservatorship and my management who played a huge role in punishing me when I said, "No, ma'am, they should be in jail." Their cruel tactics working for Miley Cyrus. If she smokes on joints and stage at the VMAs, nothing is ever done to this generation for doing wrong things. But my precious body, whose work for my dad for the past f***ing 13 years, trying to be so good and pretty. So perfect when he works me so hard, when I do everything I'm told, and the state of California allowed my ignorant father to take his own daughter, who only has a role with me if I work with him. They set back the whole course and allowed him to do that to me? That's given these people I've worked for way too much control.

They also threatened me and said if I don't go, then I have to go to court and it will be more embarrassing me if the judge publicly makes you go, "The evidence we have, you have to go." I was advised for my image. I need to go ahead and just go and get it over with. They said that to me. I don't — I don't even drink alcohol. I — I should drink alcohol, considering what they put my heart through.

Also, the Bridges Facility they sent me to none of the kids — I was doing this program for four months. So the last two months I went to a Bridges Facility. None of the kids there did the — did the program. They never showed up for any of them. You didn't have to do anything if you didn't want to. How come they always made me go? How come I was always threatened by my dad and anybody that persisted in this conservatorship? If I don't do this, what they tell me — enslave me to do, they're going to punish me. The last time I spoke to you about just keeping the conservatorship going and also keeping my dad in the loop made me feel like I was dead. Like I didn't matter. Like nothing had been done to to me. Like you thought I was lying or something. I'm telling you again, because I'm not lying. I want to feel heard and I'm telling you this again so maybe you can understand the depth and the degree and the damage that they did to me back then.

I want changes and I want changes going forward. I deserve changes. I was told I have to sit down and be evaluated — again — if I want to end the conservatorship. Ma'am, I didn't know I could petition the conservatorship to end it. I'm sorry for my ignorance, but I honestly didn't know that. But honestly, which I don't think I owe anyone to be evaluated. I've done more than enough. I don't feel like I should even be in a room with anyone to offend me by trying to question my capacity of intelligence, whether I need to be in this stupid conservatorship or not. I've done more than enough. I don't owe these people anything. Especially me, the one that is roofed and fed tons of people on tour on the road. It's embarrassing and demoralizing what I've been through. And that's the main reason I've never said it openly. And mainly I didn't want to say it openly because I honestly don't think anyone would believe me. To be honest with you, the Paris Hilton story on what they did to her, at that school, I didn't believe any of it. I'm sorry, I'm an outsider. And I'll just be honest, I didn't believe it. And maybe I'm wrong. And that's why I didn't want to say any of this to anybody, to the public, because people would make fun of me or laugh at me and say, "She's lying. She's got everything. She's Britney Spears." I'm not lying. I just want my life back. And it's been 13 years and it's enough.

It's been a long time since I've owned my money and it's my wish and my dream for all of this to end without being tested. Again, it makes no sense whatsoever for the state of California to sit back and literally watch me with their own two eyes, make a living for so many people and pay so many people — trucks and buses on tour on the road with me — and be told I'm not good enough. But I'm great at what I do. And I allow these people to control what I do, ma'am, and it's enough, it makes no sense at all. Now, going forward, I'm not willing to meet or see anyone. I've met with enough people against my will. I'm done. All I want is to own my money, for this to end, and my boyfriend to drive me in his f***ing car. And I would honestly like to sue my family, to be totally honest with you.

I also would like to be able to share my story with the world and what they did to me instead of it being a hush hush secret to benefit all of them. I want to be able to be heard on what they did to me by making me keep this in for so long is not good for my heart. I've been so angry and I cry every day. It concerns me I'm told I'm not allowed to expose the people who did this to me. For my sanity, I need you to the judge to approve me to do an interview where I can be heard and what they did to me. And actually, I have the right to use my voice and take up for myself. My attorney says I can't. It's not good. I can't let the public know anything they did to me. And by not saying anything is saying it's OK. I don't know what I said here. It's not OK. I would actually — I don't want to interview. I'd much rather just have an open call to you for the press to hear, which I didn't know today we're doing, so thank you.

Instead of having an interview, honestly, I need that to get it off my heart. The anger and all of it. That — that — that's — that's been happening. It's not fair they're telling me lies about me openly. Even my family. They do interviews to anyone they want on news stations, my own family doing interviews and talking about the situation and making me feel so stupid. And I can't say one thing. And my own people say I can't say anything. It's been two years. I want a recorded call to you — actually, we're doing this now, which I didn't know that we were doing this — until the public knows what they did me. I told my — I know my lawyer Sam has been very scared for me to go forward because he's saying if I speak up, I'm being overworked in that facility, that rehab place that the rehab place will see me. He told me I should keep it to myself. I would personally like to — actually, I know I've had grown with a personal relationship with Sam, my lawyer. I've been talking to him like three times a week now. We've kind of built a relationship, but I haven't really had the opportunity by my own self to actually handpick my own lawyer by myself. And I would like to be able to do that.

I would like to also — the main reason why I'm here is because I want to end the conservatorship without having to be evaluated. I've done a lot of research, ma'am, and there is a lot of judges who do end conservatorships for people without them having to be evaluated all the time. The only times they don't is if a concerned family member says something's wrong with this person and consider an other — otherwise. And considering my family has lived off of my conservatorship for 13 years, I won't be surprised if one of them has has something to say. Go forward and say, "We don't think this should end. We have to help her." Especially if I get my fair serve and turn in exposing what they did to me. Also I want to speak to you about at the moment my obligations, which I personally don't think at the very moment, I owe anybody anything.

I have three meetings a week I have to attend no matter what. I just don't like feeling like I work for the people whom I pay. I don't like being told I have to, no matter what, even if I'm sick, Jodi, the conservator says I have to see my Coach Ken even when I'm sick. I would like to do one meeting a week with a therapist. I've never in — before — even before they sent me to that place, had two therapy sessions. A therapy, one, a therapy session and one therapy session with my — I have a doctor and then a therapy person. What I've been forced to do illegal in my life, I shouldn't be told I have to be available three times a week to these people I don't know.

I'm talking to you today because I feel again, yes, even Jodi is starting to kind of take it too far with me. They have me going to therapy twice a week and a psychiatrist. I've never in the past had — they had me going yeah, twice a week and my doctor goal. So that's three times a week. I've never in the past went to see a therapist more than once a week. It takes too much out of me going to this man I don't know. Number one, I'm scared of people. I don't trust people with what I've been through. And the clever set up of being in what's like, one of the most exposed places in Westlake, which today — yesterday paparazzi showed me coming out of the place, literally crying in there. It's embarrassing and it's demoralizing. I deserve privacy when I go. I deserve privacy when I go and have therapy either at my home, like I've done for eight years — they've always come to my home — or when the Dr. Benson, the guy — the man that died — I went to a place similar to what I went to in Westlake, which was very exposed and really bad. OK, so wait, where was I? It was like, it was identical to Dr. Benson who died. The one who illegally — yes, 100% — abused me by the treatment he gave me to. And to be totally honest with you, I was so —

Penny: Ms. Spears, excuse me for interrupting you. But my reporter says if you could just slow down a little bit because she's trying to make sure she gets everything that you're saying.

Spears: OK, cool.

Penny: And so if you just —.

Spears: OK.

Penny: So that would be great.

Spears: I have been through — and the clever set up in Westlake is identical to Dr. Benson who died, the one who illegally — yes, 100% — abused me by the treatment he gave me. And to be totally honest with you, when he passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God. In other words, my team is pushing — pushing it with me again. I have trapped phobias being in small rooms because the trauma locked me up for four months in that place is not OK for them to send me — sorry, I'm going fast — to that small room like that twice a week with another new therapist I pay that I never even approved. I don't like it. I don't want to do that. And I haven't done anything wrong to deserve this treatment. It's not OK to force me to do anything I don't want to do. By law — by law, Jodi and this so-called team should honestly — I should be able to sue them for threatening me and saying if I don't go and do these meetings twice a week, we — we can't let you have your money and go to Maui on your vacations. You have to do what you're told for this program and then you will be able to go.

But it was very clever. They picked one of the most exposed places in Westlake knowing I have the hot topic of the conservatorship, that over five paparazzi are going to show up and get me crying coming out of that place. I begged them to make sure that they did this at my home so I would have privacy. I deserve privacy. The whole conservatorship from the beginning — once — the conservatorship — the conservatorship from the beginning, once you see someone, whoever it is in the conservatorship, making money, making them money and myself money and working, that whole, that whole statement right there, the conservatorship should end. There should be no — I shouldn't be in a conservatorship if I can work and provide money and work for myself and pay other people. It makes no sense. The laws need to change. What state allows people to own another person's money and account and threaten them and saying, "You can't spend your money unless you do what we want you to do." And I'm paying them.

Ma'am, I've worked since I was 17 years old. You have to understand how thin that is for me. Every morning I get up to know, I can't go on somewhere unless I meet people I don't know every week in an office identical to the one where the therapist was very abusive to me. I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. And now we can sit here all day and say, "Oh, conservatorships are here to help people." But ma'am, there's a thousand conservatorships that are abusive as well. I don't feel like I can live a full life. I don't — I don't owe them to go see a man I don't know and share him my problems. I don't even believe in therapy. I always think you take it to God.

I want to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. In the meantime, I want this therapist once a week. He can either come to my home — no, I just want him to come to my home. I'm not willing to go to Westlake and be embarrassed by all these paparazzi, these scummy paparazzi laughing at my faces while I'm crying, coming out and taking my pictures as all these white, nice dinners where people drinking wine at restaurants, watching me from these places.

They set me up by sending me to the most exposed places, places. And I told them I didn't want to go there because I knew paparazzi would show up there. They only gave me two options for therapist, and I'm not sure how you make your decisions, ma'am, but this is the only chance for me to talk to you for a while. I need your your help. So if you can just kind of let me know where your head is, I don't really honestly know what to say, but my requests just are to end the conservatorship without being evaluated. I want to petition, basically, to end the conservatorship, but I want to — I want it to be petitioned. And if I don't want to be evaluated, to be sat in a room with people for hours a day like they did me before, and they made it even worse for me after that happened.

So I just — I'm honestly new at this and I'm doing research on all these things. I do know common sense and the method that things can end, it — for people, it has ended without them being evaluated. So I just want you to take that into consider — consideration. I've also done research and wait — also took a year during COVID to get me any self-care methods during COVID. She said there were no services available. She's lying, ma'am. My mom went to the spa twice in Louisiana during COVID. For a year, I didn't have my nails done. No hair styling and no massages, no acupuncture, nothing. For a year. I saw the maids in my home each week with their nails done different each time. She made me feel like my dad does — very similar, her behavior. And my dad, but just a different dynamic. Team wants me to work and stay home instead of having longer vacations. They — they are used to me sort of doing a weekly routine for them and I'm over it. I don't feel like I owe them anything at this point. They need to be reminded they actually work for me. They trick me by sending me to the — OK, I repeated myself there. OK.

Also, I was supposed to be able to have a friend that I used to do AA meetings with. I did AA for two years, I have like, you know — I did three meetings a week and met a bunch of women there. And I'm not able to see my friends that live eight minutes away from me, which I find extremely strange. I feel like they're making me feel like I live in a rehab program. This is my home. I'd like for my boyfriend to be able to drive me in his car. And I want to meet with the therapist once a week, not twice a week. And I want him to come to my home because I actually know I do need a little therapy.

I was told, hold on — I think that's — oh, and I would like to progressively move forward and I want to have the real deal. I want to be able to get married and have a baby. I was told right now in the conservatorship, I'm not able to get married or have a baby. I have an IUD inside of myself right now, so I don't get pregnant. I wanted to take the IUD out so I could start trying to have another baby. But this so-called team won't let me go to the doctor to take it out because they they don't want me to have children — any more children.

So basically this conservatorship is doing me way more harm than good. I — I deserve to have a life. I've worked my whole life. I deserve to have a two- to three-year break and just, you know, do what I want to do. But I do feel like there is a crutch here and I feel like I feel open and I'm OK to talk to you today about it. But I — I wish I could stay with you on the phone forever, because when I get off the phone with you, all of a sudden all I hear — I hear all these no's. No, no, no. And then all of a sudden I get — I feel ganged up on and I feel bullied and I feel left out and alone. And I'm tired of feeling alone. I deserve to have the same rights as anybody does by having a child, a family, any of those things. And more so. And that's all I wanted to say to you. And thank you so much for letting me speak to you today.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd.; Credit: /Court TV via AP

A Minnesota judge sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to 22 1/2 years in prison Friday for the murder of George Floyd.

Judge Peter Cahill wrote that part of the mission of the Minneapolis Police Department is to give citizens "voice and respect."

"Mr. Chauvin, rather than pursuing the MPD mission, treated Mr. Floyd without respect and denied him the dignity owed to all human beings and which he certainly would have extended to a friend or neighbor. In the Court's view, 270 months, which amounts to an additional ten years over the presumptive 150-month sentence, is the appropriate sentence."

Read Cahill's entire sentencing order and memoradum for Chauvin below.

Chauvin, 45, was convicted in April of all three charges he faced — second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

He was sentenced only on the first of the charges, the most serious, as is typical in Minnesota.

Cahill said Chauvin's crime included four aggravating factors: that Derek Chauvin abused a position of trust and authority as a police officer, that he treated Floyd with "particular cruelty," that he committed the crime as part of a group with at least three other people, and that children were present during the commission of the offense.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Sonia Doe, pictured here, reached a settlement with the New Jersey Department of Corrections that will make it standard for the state to assign jail stays to a person based on their gender identity, not the sex assigned at birth.; Credit: /The ACLU New Jersey

For 18 months, Sonia Doe faced humiliating strip searches in front of male guards. Male prisoners exposed themselves to her. She faced sexual harassment, discrimination and physical threats from corrections officers and inmates alike.

Doe, who is transgender, has lived her life publicly as a woman since 2003. Yet, Doe — a pseudonym used for her lawsuit — was transported to four different men's prisons across New Jersey from March 2018 to August 2019.

It took a lawsuit filed that August for Doe to finally be transported to a woman's prison weeks later.

As part of the settlement for that lawsuit Tuesday, the New Jersey Department of Corrections will now make it customary for prisoners who identify as transgender, intersex or nonbinary to be assigned a jail stay in line with their gender identity — not with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Tuesday's news marks a major policy shift for the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

Research has shown that transgender inmates face particular danger while in prison, but few states offer them protections like these. Connecticut and California passed laws in 2018 and 2020, respectively, that require transgender inmates to be assigned prisons based on their gender identity. Rhode Island, New York City and Massachusetts also have housed inmates based on their gender identity.

"When I was forced to live in men's prisons, I was terrified I wouldn't make it out alive. Those memories still haunt me," Doe said in a statement announcing the settlement. "Though I still have nightmares about that time, it's a relief to know that as a result of my experience the NJDOC has adopted substantial policy changes so no person should be subjected to the horrors I survived."

Doe faced harassment, discrimination and abuse

According to court documents reviewed by NPR, Doe was placed in men's prisons in spite of the state's Department of Corrections knowing she was a transgender woman.

Clear documentation, including her driver's license, showed her gender identity, but Doe was still forced to remain in men's prisons. In addition to facing physical assaults and verbal and sexual harassment in prison, she was also forced to remain in solitary confinement for long stretches.

Corrections staff would refer to her as a man and address her using male pronouns, according to her complaint. She also was denied gender-appropriate clothing items and had difficulty receiving her hormone therapy regularly and on time.

The settlement forces agency-wide changes

The new policy will require staff to use appropriate pronouns, and prohibits harassment and discrimination based on gender identity.

As part of the settlement in the Doe case, all New Jersey state corrections officers, regardless of rank or facility, will have to sign an acknowledgement that they have read the policy. The agency also will provide targeted training on the changes.

The Department of Corrections also said it would guarantee gender-affirming undergarments, clothing, and other property for the inmates. Medical and mental health treatment, including gender-affirming care, also will be provided "as medically appropriate."

Inmates who are transgender also will be given the opportunity to shower separately and won't have to go through a strip searches or pat downs by an officer of the opposite sex.

"The settlement of this lawsuit puts in place systemic, far-reaching policy changes to recognize and respect the gender identity of people in prison," said Tess Borden, ACLU-NJ Staff Attorney. ACLU New Jersey represented Doe along with Robyn Gigl of Gluck Walrath LLP.

As part of the settlement, the New Jersey Department of Corrections have agreed to pay Doe $125,000 in damages and $45,000 in separate attorney's fees.

Longstanding issues at New Jersey prisons

Doe was not the only transgender inmate who has faced frightening treatment in New Jersey prisons.

Rae Rollins, a transgender woman, filed a lawsuit in March saying she was one of several inmates attacked by corrections officers earlier this year at the scandal-plagued Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women. In January, several women were severely beaten by corrections officers at that facility. Ten correctional police officers have been charged in connection to the alleged beatings of prisoners.

Rollins sought a transfer to a different women's prison after the incident, but was moved to a men's prison instead. Rollins has since been moved to an out-of-state prison, according to the state's records.

Earlier this month, New Jersey's embattled corrections commissioner announced his resignation from his post — a day after Gov. Phil Murphy said the state would close the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

After issuing its final decisions of the term Thursday, the Supreme Court on Friday granted a religious liberty case for next term and turned away challenges to longstanding decisions on qualified immunity and defamation, prompting dissents from the court's conservatives.

Court agrees to hear one religious liberty case, but rejects another

The justices agreed to consider a constitutional challenge to a school funding program in Maine that excludes private schools that teach religion.

Only half the school districts in Maine run their own high schools. The rest pay for students to attend public schools in other districts or to attend private schools. The state, however, will not fund students who attend any school that offers religious teaching.

Parents who wanted to send their children to a private Christian school challenged the law, alleging it violated their right to exercise their religion freely. The First Circuit disagreed, but now the high court will hear their case.

The justices, however, declined to hear another case about religious liberty – this one brought by a Washington state florist who refused to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. She alleged that the state's antidiscrimination law violated her First Amendment rights, and in 2017, Washington's supreme court ruled against her.

Though the justices on Friday declined to hear her appeal, three of the court's conservatives—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch—would have taken it for next term.

Thomas calls to do away with qualified immunity

Also on Friday, Justice Thomas once again called for the court to do away with qualified immunity, the legal shield for police officers that has come under intense scrutiny in the last year of racial justice protests.

Thomas was dissenting from the court's refusal to hear the case of a college student promoting Turning Point USA, a right-wing organization known for publishing lists of university professors it deems hostile to conservatives. The student alleged campus police at Arkansas State University violated her First Amendment rights when they stopped her from advertising the organization near the student union. But the campus officers escaped liability in the lower court because of qualified immunity, a doctrine created by the Supreme Court in 1967 that has evolved into a near-impenetrable bulwark for the police.

"Why should university officers," wrote Thomas, "receive the same protection as a police officer who makes a split-second decision to use force in a dangerous setting?" Going further, Thomas questioned whether the judicially-created doctrine should exist at all, an opinion that has garnered more and more bipartisan consensus in the wake of George Floyd's murder.

Thomas and Gorsuch call to overturn landmark Free Speech precedent

The court declined to hear a defamation case brought by a Miami-born international arms dealer—portrayed in the 2016 movie War Dogs—against the author of a book about his life.

The lower court dismissed the suit. It pointed to a landmark 1964 First Amendment decision, in which the high court said that publishers are immune from libel suits brought by public figures, so long as the publishers either didn't know, or had no reason to know, that the information they published was false.

Both Thomas and Gorsuch dissented, arguing the court should overturn the nearly 50-year-old precedent. In the era of disinformation, "lies impose real harm," wrote Thomas. "Instead of continuing to insulate those who perpetrate lies," said Thomas, the court should narrow First Amendment protections.

In a separate dissent, Gorsuch agreed. In 1964, publishers needed protection against libel for unpopular opinions to survive. Indeed, the court's 1964 decision was first used to protect civil rights leaders who had published a New York Times ad criticizing the Montgomery, Alabama police for repeatedly arresting Martin Luther King Jr.

But, said Gorsuch, in 2021, "it's less obvious what force [libel protections have] in a world in which everyone carries a soapbox in their hands," referring to smartphones. Now, Gorsuch wrote, "the deck seems stacked against those with traditional (and expensive) journalistic standards—and in favor of those who can disseminate the most sensational information as efficiently as possible without any particular concern for truth."

Another execution

On top of its decisions about cases next term, the justices gave Alabama the green light to execute Matthew Reeves, whose death sentence was recently overturned by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

This is the second time the justices have ruled against Reeves, who in 1998 was convicted for murder in Alabama. In 2002, Reeves first challenged his sentence in state court. He argued that because of his low IQ, his lawyer should have hired an expert to evaluate him for an intellectual disability. After 15 years of appeals, the Supreme Court denied his claim in 2017. So Reeves appealed his claim through the federal system.

But on Friday, the high court again rejected his challenge, thus allowing Alabama to move forward with his execution. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan, dissented, criticizing the state court for its brusque dismissal of Reeves's claim.

Sotomayor drew attention to "a troubling trend in which this court strains to reverse summarily any grants of relief to those facing execution." The court, wrote Sotomayor, "turns deference" to state courts "into a rule that...relief is never available to those facing execution."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Evidence exists linking three cancers and two other health problems with chemicals used in herbicides in the Vietnam War, a committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has concluded.

A bold national initiative is needed to reduce the enormous health burden of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States, according to a new report from a committee of the Institute of Medicine.

Women who might become pregnant need 400 micrograms of folic acid per day to reduce their risk of having a child with neural tube defects, according to the latest report on Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) from the Institute of Medicine.

Bacteria that resist antibiotics can be passed from food animals to humans, but not enough is known to determine the public health risks posed by such transmission, says a new report by a committee of the National Research Council.

Outdated food safety laws and a fragmented federal structure serve as barriers to improving protection of the nations food supply from contamination or other hazards, according to Ensuring Safe Food From Production to Consumption.

Increased research is the key to developing more widely applicable detection systems to find pipe bombs before they explode and to help catch the perpetrators when a bomb has gone off, says a new report from a committee of the National Research Council.

Good morning and welcome. There has been unprecedented interest in recent years about whether marijuana or its constituent compounds should be used as medicine. Since 1996, voters in seven states have approved the medical use of marijuana.

The explosive growth of information technology is having a profound impact on our lives.

Although there is evidence of harmful health and ecological effects associated with exposure to high doses of chemicals known as hormonally active agents – or endocrine disrupters – little is understood about the harm posed by exposure to the substances at low concentrations, such as those that typically exist in the environment, says a new report from a National Research Council committee.

The federal government should not increase the maximum level of copper allowed in drinking water, because higher levels could lead to liver poisoning in infants and children with certain genetic disorders.

Insufficient evidence exists to support claims that taking megadoses of dietary antioxidants, such as selenium and vitamins C and E, or carotenoids, including beta-carotene, can prevent chronic diseases, says the latest report on Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

Darkly colored, carotene-rich fruits and vegetables -- such as carrots, sweet potatoes, and broccoli -- provide the body with half as much vitamin A as previously thought.

Focused attention by world leaders is needed to address the substantial challenges posed by disposal of spent nuclear fuel from reactors and high-level radioactive waste from processing such fuel for military or energy purposes.