Deputy acquitted of all charges for failing to act during deadly Parkland school shooting

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida sheriff’s deputy was acquitted Thursday of felony child neglect and other charges for failing to act during the 2018 Parkland school massacre, concluding the first trial in U.S. history of a law enforcement officer for conduct during an on-campus shooting.

Former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson wept as the verdicts were read. The jury had deliberated for 19 hours over four days.

After court adjourned, Peterson, his family and friends rushed into a group hug as they whooped, hollered and cried. One of his supporters chased after lead prosecutor Chris Killoran and said something. Killoran turned and snapped at him, “Way to be a good winner,” and slapped him on the shoulder. Members of the prosecution team then nudged Killoran out of the courtroom.

The campus deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Peterson had been charged with failing to confront shooter Nikolas Cruz during his six-minute attack inside the three-story 1200 classroom building on Feb. 14, 2018, that left 17 dead.

He could have received nearly 100 years in prison, although a sentence even approaching that length would have been highly unlikely given the circumstances and his clean record. He also could have lost his $104,000 annual pension.

Prosecutors, during their two-week presentation, called to the witness stand students, teachers and law enforcement officers who testified about the horror they experienced and how they knew where Cruz was. Some said they knew for certain that the shots were coming from the 1200 building. Prosecutors also called a training supervisor who testified Peterson did not follow protocols for confronting an active shooter.

Peterson’s attorney, Mark Eiglarsh, during his two-day presentation, called several deputies who arrived during the shooting and students and teachers who testified they did not think the shots were coming from the 1200 building. Peterson, who did not testify, has said that because of echoes, he could not pinpoint the shooter’s location.

Eiglarsh also emphasized the failure of the sheriff’s radio system during the attack, which limited what Peterson heard from arriving deputies.

“As parents, we have an expectation that armed school resource officers – who are under contract to be caregivers to our children – will do their jobs when we entrust our children to them and the schools they guard,” Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor and the prosecutor’s office said in a statement after the verdict. “They have a special role and responsibilities that exceed the role and responsibilities of a police officer. To those who have tried to make this political, I say: It is not political to expect someone to do their job.”

Security videos show that 36 seconds after Cruz’s attack began, Peterson exited his office about 100 yards (92 meters) from the 1200 building and jumped into a cart with two unarmed civilian security guards. They arrived at the building a minute later.

Peterson got out of the cart near the east doorway to the first-floor hallway. Cruz was at the hallway’s opposite end, firing his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle.

Peterson, who was not wearing a bullet-resistant vest, didn’t open the door. Instead, he took cover 75 feet (23 meters) away in the alcove of a neighboring building, his gun still drawn. He stayed there for 40 minutes, long after the shooting ended and other police officers had stormed the building.

Peterson spent nearly three decades working at schools, including nine years at Stoneman Douglas. He retired shortly after the shooting and was then fired retroactively.

Cruz’s jury could not unanimously agree he deserved the death penalty. The 24-year-old former Stoneman Douglas student was then sentenced to life in prison.

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New York Dems put abortion on the ballot in bid to retake the House

Left-leaning New York groups pledged $20 million Thursday to support a change to the New York State constitution to protect abortion rights that will be on the 2024 ballot — something they believe will boost turnout for Democrats in key swing House districts.

A state Equal Rights Amendment will ask voters next November to codify a number of rights, including abortion and LGBTQ rights, in the state constitution. New York Democrats are hoping to replicate a model they found successful last cycle, when a constitutional abortion amendment was on the same ballot as vulnerable Democrats in Michigan. The amendment passed and those members held their seats.

“We’ve learned a ton from our colleagues around the country, including our colleagues in Michigan,” said Sasha Neha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal rights. "It was incredibly successful, and similar to New York in that there was support for this ballot measure across party lines. It was really popular for candidates to stand with and encourage people to vote yes on the referendum.”

The coalition released a memo on its investment Thursday, which says it believes that the constitutional amendment will bolster turnout across the state, particularly in six battleground House districts, five of which are held by Republicans. With a razor-thin margin standing in the way of the majority, Democrats think this strategy will help them flip control of the House next year.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, who will both be on the ballot next year, have endorsed the effort, as well as other statewide Democratic officials.

The coalition backing the measure is led by New Yorkers for Equal Rights and also includes Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the NAACP of New York and an SEIU local. The pledged investment will go toward promoting the measure in statewide broadcast and digital ads and dispatching canvassers for a grassroots voter education effort.

The amendment was passed by the Democratic-majority legislature in two consecutive state legislative sessions, which allows it to be voted on statewide. Lawmakers last year chose to put it on the 2014 ballot instead of this November in order to maximize turnout for it.

Exact ballot language text of the amendment will be released next year. It will add to the New York State constitution explicit protections against discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, according to the memo. The amendment needs only a simple majority of support to pass.

Democrats are increasingly turning to ballot measures for these types of protections, which were previously safeguarded by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. After the fall of Dobbs last year, state level actions, including direct-to-voter ballot initiatives, have become the main vehicles for abortion policy and have passed with large majorities.

The amendment “launches with a clear path to achieving a decisive statewide victory and activating a powerful statewide electoral coalition from every corner of the state and across demographics,” the memo about the referendum stated, noting they're targeting districts in Long Island, upstate and the Hudson Valley.

New York isn’t the only state trying to bring the issue directly to voters next cycle.

A separate coalition in Florida is currently collecting signatures for a citizen initiative to be on the ballot in 2024, where Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) signed a ban on abortion procedures after six weeks earlier this year.

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Prosecutors charge three men with insider trading scheme related to Trumps media company

Federal prosecutors in New York charged three investors on Thursday with an insider trading scheme in which they allegedly made more than $22 million in illegal profits by acting on information about a plan to take former president Donald Trump’s media company public.

The three men — Michael Shvartsman, Gerald Shvartsman and Bruce Garelick — were investors in a special purpose acquisition corporation called Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which had plans to take public Trump’s company Trump Media & Technology Group. As investors, they learned of the confidential plans for Trump’s media company and they were prohibited by non-disclosure agreements from disclosing or using the information to buy or sell securities, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.

The defendants used the information to buy millions of dollars of securities in the corporation “so that they could be in a position to profit after the merger was announced publicly,” according to the indictment. Prosecutors said in court papers that the defendants also disclosed the confidential information about the upcoming merger to their friends and employees, who bought tens of thousands of securities in the corporation.

Prosecutors charged the men with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and nine counts of securities fraud.

The defendants are set to make their initial court appearances in the Southern District of Florida on Thursday afternoon, according to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.

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AI Could Pay Dividends to Americans. Literally.

For four decades, Alaskans have opened their mailboxes to find checks waiting for them, their cut of the black gold beneath their feet. This is Alaska’s Permanent Fund, funded by the state’s oil revenues and paid to every Alaskan each year. We're now in a different sort of resource rush, with companies peddling bits instead of oil: generative AI.

Everyone is talking about these new AI technologies — like ChatGPT — and AI companies are touting their awesome power. But they aren't talking about how that power comes from all of us. Without all of our writings and photos that AI companies are using to train their models, they would have nothing to sell. Big Tech companies are currently taking the work of the American people, without our knowledge and consent, without licensing it, and are pocketing the proceeds.

You are owed profits for your data that powers today's AI, and we have a way to make that happen. We call it the AI Dividend.

Our proposal is simple, and harkens back to the Alaskan plan. When Big Tech companies produce output from generative AI that was trained on public data, they would pay a tiny licensing fee, by the word or pixel or relevant unit of data. Those fees would go into the AI Dividend fund. Every few months, the Commerce Department would send out the entirety of the fund, split equally, to every resident nationwide. That's it.

There’s no reason to complicate it further. Generative AI needs a wide variety of data, which means all of us are valuable — not just those of us who write professionally, or prolifically, or well. Figuring out who contributed to which words the AIs output would be both challenging and invasive, given that even the companies themselves don't quite know how their models work. Paying the dividend to people in proportion to the words or images they create would just incentivize them to create endless drivel, or worse, use AI to create that drivel. The bottom line for Big Tech is that if their AI model was created using public data, they have to pay into the fund. If you’re an American, you get paid from the fund.

Under this plan, hobbyists and American small businesses would be exempt from fees. Only Big Tech companies — those with substantial revenue — would be required to pay into the fund. And they would pay at the point of generative AI output, such as from ChatGPT, Bing, Bard, or their embedded use in third-party services via Application Programming Interfaces.

Our proposal also includes a compulsory licensing plan. By agreeing to pay into this fund, AI companies will receive a license that allows them to use public data when training their AI. This won’t supersede normal copyright law, of course. If a model starts producing copyright material beyond fair use, that’s a separate issue.

Using today’s numbers, here’s what it would look like. The licensing fee could be small, starting at $0.001 per word generated by AI. A similar type of fee would be applied to other categories of generative AI outputs, such as images. That’s not a lot, but it adds up. Since most of Big Tech has started integrating generative AI into products, these fees would mean an annual dividend payment of a couple hundred dollars per person.

The idea of paying you for your data isn't new, and some companies have tried to do it themselves for users who opted in. And the idea of the public being repaid for use of their resources goes back to well before Alaska's oil fund. But generative AI is different: It uses data from all of us whether we like it or not, it's ubiquitous, and it's potentially immensely valuable. It would cost Big Tech companies a fortune to create a synthetic equivalent to our data from scratch, and synthetic data would almost certainly result in worse output. They can’t create good AI without us.

Our plan would apply to generative AI used in the U.S. It also only issues a dividend to Americans. Other countries can create their own versions, applying a similar fee to AI used within their borders. Just like an American company collects VAT for services sold in Europe, but not here, each country can independently manage their AI policy.

Don’t get us wrong; this isn’t an attempt to strangle this nascent technology. Generative AI has interesting, valuable and possibly transformative uses, and this policy is aligned with that future. Even with the fees of the AI Dividend, generative AI will be cheap and will only get cheaper as technology improves. There are also risks — both every day and esoteric — posed by AI, and the government may need to develop policies to remedy any harms that arise.

Our plan can’t make sure there are no downsides to the development of AI, but it would ensure that all Americans will share in the upsides — particularly since this new technology isn’t possible without our contribution.

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Migration money feud infiltrates European Union summit

Leaders push for renewing relations with Turkey as the divisive migration issue is increasingly dominating Europe’s political agenda.

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Senate Republicans try to stop messy Montana primary

Senate GOP leaders got their dream recruit in Montana. Now they have to work to keep their 2018 loser out.

The race to take on Sen. Jon Tester, one of the most vulnerable Democrats on the ballot next year, kicked off Tuesday with a campaign launch by Tim Sheehy, a Navy SEAL-turned-aerial firefighter.

Within a day he had secured the support of the chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm and endorsements from three other senators — a clear show of force aimed at spooking Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), a likely primary rival, out of running.

“It’s great to see so many conservative senators rallying around Tim’s candidacy,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines told POLITICO, taking the unusual step of trying to gently but publicly nudge the congressmember out of the way. “I really like Matt Rosendale, which is why I am encouraging him to build seniority for the great state of Montana in the House and help Republicans hold their majority.”

That move by Daines, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, indicates just how eager top Republicans are to ward off Rosendale and a messy primary. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) threw their support behind Sheehy on Tuesday. A day later, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) endorsed him, praising his “courage and integrity” and his “remarkable career.”

A member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, Rosendale has privately told lawmakers he plans to make another run against Tester after failing to beat the incumbent five years ago. His lackluster fundraising and bruising past loss have left party strategists and donors nervous that Rosendale would struggle to win a general election in a state that is crucial to the GOP’s path to the majority.

Rosendale has taken no formal steps toward a campaign. But on Tuesday he appeared undeterred, taking a shot at Sheehy and yoking him to the Senate minority leader.

“Congratulations to Mitch McConnell and the party bosses on getting their chosen candidate,” he tweeted. “Now Washington has two candidates — Tim Sheehy and Jon Tester — who will protect the DC cartel.”

Conservatives in the Senate, including Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas, have encouraged Rosendale to enter. And the anti-tax Club for Growth, an influential GOP outside group, has signaled it would likely back Rosendale again. The Club’s thinking has not changed since Sheehy’s entrance, according to a person close to the group, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal planning.

Rosendale lost to Tester by more than 3 points in 2018 after struggling to match the senator’s fundraising and brush off questions about his Montana roots. He raised just $6 million that cycle compared with Tester’s $23.3 million.

Some Montana donors allied with Sheehy are urging Rosendale not to challenge him. Their message has often taken the same tone as Daines’: They like Rosendale and hope he will continue his work in the House. They don’t want him to complicate their ability to win a Senate seat.

“I think the path forward to be effective across all elections is with Tim in the Senate seat,” said Eugene Graf IV, an influential donor in Montana who supported Rosendale in 2018 but is backing Sheehy this cycle. He said he thought Sheehy’s candidacy would “cause Matt to pause and think about that future.”

“Unfortunately, there’s some personalities that see a path for them instead of maybe the big picture for the state or for the country,” Graf said.

In response to those urging Rosendale to remain in the House, a Rosendale spokesperson, Aashka Varma, also pointed to a February poll commissioned by the congressmember’s campaign that showed him up 5 points over Tester and a Public Policy Polling survey that showed him with a 54-point lead over Sheehy in the primary.

“This is an attempt by McConnell and the DC cartel to dismiss the voters of Montana,” Varma said in a statement. “Rep. Rosendale has the trust and overwhelming support of Montana voters.”

Still, some supporters of Sheehy, who want to see Rosendale remain in Congress, are wary of donating to the congressmember out of concern that he would spend those funds against other Republicans.

“I personally won’t give Matt money until I know that my money is not going to be used to battle Tim,” said Brian Cebull, a Montana donor and businessman involved in the oil and gas industry.

When asked in a Wednesday morning TV interview, Sheehy also addressed Rosendale’s prospective candidacy.

“Matt’s obviously our House representative, and I hope he continues to do his good work there,” Sheehy said, “I hope it stays that way, but I can’t predict what’s going to happen.”

Sheehy is personally wealthy and is expected to invest heavily in his own campaign. He has seen some donor enthusiasm since his launch Tuesday. He easily outraised Rosendale’s first-quarter haul of $127,000, without self-funding, in less than 24 hours after announcing a run, according to a person close to the Sheehy campaign who was not authorized to disclose fundraising details.

But if Sheehy can outpace Rosendale’s finances, he may not escape carpetbagging attacks from Tester allies. Sheehy moved to Montana after leaving the Navy to start a business. He will also have work to become known among voters in the state. He is a political neophyte, which means he has no record to attack but also no base of support among the electorate.

Rosendale served for years in the Montana Legislature and as the state’s auditor before waging campaigns for the House and the Senate. His multiple statewide runs will likely give him a head start in any primary campaign.

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Lowell P. Weicker Jr. maverick senator during Watergate dies at 92

HARTFORD, Conn. — Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a Republican U.S. senator who tussled with his own party during the Watergate hearings, championed legislation to protect people with disabilities and later was elected Connecticut governor as an independent, died Wednesday. He was 92.

Weicker’s death at a hospital in Middletown, Conn., after a short illness, was confirmed by his family in a statement released by a spokesperson.

With a 6-foot-6-inch frame and a shoot-from-the-hip style, Weicker was a leading figure in Connecticut politics from his first election to the General Assembly in 1962 until he decided against running for a second term as governor in 1994.

He inspired strong feelings among many people he met. In one poll, opinion was split over whether Weicker was “decisive and courageous,” or “inflexible and arrogant.”

“I think he was just incredibly genuine, a little unfiltered,” Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat who considered Weicker a friend, told the Associated Press in 2021. “And we sort of miss that in this day and age with the teleprompter.”

Elected in 1990 to his single term as governor, Weicker restructured Connecticut’s revenue system, shepherding in a new income tax despite vocal opposition. He also helped craft a compact with the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation which ultimately brought casino gambling to eastern Connecticut.

“He was a leader who constantly challenged the status quo. He didn’t want to win any popularity contests,” said Republican state Sen. Ryan Fazio, who represents Greenwich, the town where Weicker once served as first selectman. Such independent mindedness was praised Wednesday by Republicans like Fazio as well as Democrats, who control state government and the state’s congressional delegation.

“He did immense good for Connecticut and our country, and he did it his way,” said Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Former Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy praised Weicker for being “tough and compassionate at the same time.”

Nationally, Weicker’s political marquee burned brightest during the 1973 hearings of the Senate’s special committee on Watergate. One of three Republicans on the seven-member panel, the freshman senator was not afraid to criticize President Richard Nixon, his own party or the attempted cover-up.

In his 1995 autobiography “Maverick: A Life in Politics,” Weicker said he didn’t volunteer for a spot on the committee to be an “anti-Nixon man,” or a “tough prosecutor,” acknowledging that he supported Nixon politically and how Nixon campaigned for him in 1968 and 1970.

“More and more, events were making it clear that the Nixon White House was a cauldron of corruption,” Weicker wrote. “And even as disclosures kept coming, more and more national leaders were acting as though nothing especially unusual had happened.”

Barry Sussman, a former Washington Post editor who worked with Weicker on his autobiography, credited Weicker with taking the Watergate scandal more seriously than his Senate colleagues and for investigating whether Nixon underreported his income.

“None of the other Republican senators had any interest in doing any probing, period,” Sussman said. “That was basically true of the Democrats, too.”

Weicker was born in Paris in 1931, to Lowell P. Weicker Sr. — whose family founded the pharmaceutical giant E.R. Squibb and Sons — and the former Mary Bickford, a daughter of a prominent British family.

After college, law school and service in the Army, Weicker was elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1962 and served three terms. His national political career began in 1968 with election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Two years later, he moved up to the U.S. Senate.

Besides serving on the Watergate committee, Weicker worked for passage of the War Powers Act. The father of a child with developmental disabilities, he sponsored the Protection and Advocacy for the Mentally Ill Act in 1985 and 1988 and introduced legislation that would later become the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But Weicker was at odds with the conservative wing of his party on social issues such as school prayer, busing and abortion.

Irritated Republicans in 1988 backed then-Democrat Joe Lieberman and denied Weicker a fourth term in the Senate. But two years later, he was back in politics with a new affiliation. He won the governor’s office, sworn in as the state’s first — and last — independent governor since the Civil War, heading a new independent political party called A Connecticut Party.

When he took office, Connecticut’s budget deficit was $963 million. During the 1990 campaign, Weicker opposed instituting a personal state income tax, saying it would be like “pouring gasoline on a fire.” But his budget secretary convinced him the tax was the only fiscally responsible choice.

Weicker vetoed three state budgets passed by legislators until he got his way. On Aug. 22, 1991, lawmakers finally passed a budget with a 4.5 percent flat income tax and a reduction in the sales tax from 8 to 6 percent, coupled with spending cuts.

An estimated 40,000 protesters packed the state Capitol grounds in Hartford on Oct. 5, 1991, demanding lawmakers “axe the tax.” Some hanged him in effigy. Meanwhile, others, including furloughed state workers, protested Weicker’s budget cuts. A nun said she would “pray that he burns forever in the fires of hell” for trying to slash state aid to parochial schools.

Weicker’s favorability rating plummeted but the income tax prevailed and the state ended the 1992 fiscal year with a $110 million surplus.

The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation awarded Weicker a Profiles in Courage Award in 1992.

He said his decision against seeking a second term was a matter of family and money, not politics. Weicker said he wanted to spend more time with his third wife, Claudia Testa, his seven children and his grandchildren. He said he also wanted to make more money than the governor’s annual salary at the time, $78,000.

Weicker considered running for president as an independent in 1996 and was back in the spotlight in 1999 when former wrestler and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura encouraged Weicker to run for the Reform Party nomination. Weicker turned him down

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