Mangione faces federal charges, death penalty in UnitedHealth executive's killing

  Luigi Mangione was indicted Thursday on a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a required step as prosecutors work to make good on the Trump administration's order to seek the death penalty for what it called a ''premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.''

Mangione's indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Manhattan, includes a charge of murder through use of a firearm, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. The indictment, which mirrors a criminal complaint brought after Mangione's arrest last December, also charges him with stalking and a gun offense.

Mangione's lawyers have argued that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi's announcement this month ordering prosecutors to seek the death penalty was a ''political stunt'' that corrupted the grand jury process and deprived him of his constitutional right to due process.

Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, faces separate federal and state murder charges after authorities say he gunned down Thompson, 50, outside a Manhattan hotel on Dec. 4 as the executive arrived for UnitedHealthcare's annual investor conference.

Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind. Police say the words ''delay,'' ''deny'' and ''depose'' were scrawled on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase commonly used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

The killing and ensuing five-day search leading to Mangione's arrest rattled the business community, with some health insurers deleting photos of executives from their websites and switching to online shareholder meetings. At the same time, some health insurance critics have rallied around Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations over coverage denials and hefty medical bills.

Mangione's federal indictment came just before a deadline Friday for prosecutors to either file one or seek a delay. It was not immediately clear when he will be brought to federal court in Manhattan for an arraignment.

A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for Mangione's defense team.

Bondi announced April 1 that she was directing federal prosecutors in Manhattan to seek the death penalty against Mangione. It was the first time the Justice Department said it was pursuing capital punishment since President Donald Trump returned to office Jan. 20 with a vow to resume federal executions after they were halted under the previous administration.

In her announcement, Bondi described Thompson's killing as ''an act of political violence."

Mangione's lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, countered in a subsequent court filing that ''the United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt.'' She wants prosecutors blocked from seeking the death penalty.

Friedman Agnifilo and her co-counsel argued that Bondi's announcement — which was followed by posts to her Instagram account and a television appearance — violated long-established Justice Department protocols and ''indelibly prejudiced'' the grand jury process that ultimately led to his indictment.

Mangione remains locked up at a federal jail in Brooklyn. His state charges carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Prosecutors have said the two cases will proceed on parallel tracks, with the state case expected to go to trial first. It wasn't immediately clear if Mangione's indictment Thursday will change the order.

Mangione was arrested Dec. 9 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York City and whisked to Manhattan by plane and helicopter.

Police said Mangione had a 9mm handgun that matched the one used in the shooting and other items including a notebook in which they say he expressed hostility toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives.

Among the entries, prosecutors said, was one from August 2024 that said ''the target is insurance'' because ''it checks every box'' and one from October that describes an intent to ''wack'' an insurance company CEO. UnitedHealthcare, the largest U.S. health insurer, has said Mangione was never a client.

Friedman Agnifilo has said she would seek to suppress some of the evidence.

https://www.startribune.com/unitedhealthcare-killing-suspect-luigi-mangione-indicted-on-death-penalty-eligible-charges/601333588

LA Times rolls AI-generated opposing viewpoint on columns months after edit board shakeup

 In a colorful commentary for the Los Angeles Times, Matt K. Lewis argued that callousness is a central feature of the second Trump administration, particularly its policies of deportation and bureaucratic cutbacks. “Once you normalize cruelty,” Lewis concluded in the piece, “the hammer eventually swings for everyone. Even the ones who thought they were swinging it.”

Lewis’ word wasn’t the last, however. As they have with opinion pieces the past several weeks, Times online readers had the option to click on a button labeled “Insights,” which judged the column politically as “center-left.” Then it offers an AI-generated synopsis — a CliffsNotes version of the column — and a similarly-produced opposing viewpoint.

One dissenting argument reads: “Restricting birthright citizenship and refugee admissions is framed as correcting alleged exploitation of immigration loopholes, with proponents arguing these steps protect American workers and resources.”

The feature symbolizes changes to opinion coverage ordered over the past six months by Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who’s said he wants the famously liberal opinion pages to reflect different points of view. Critics accuse him of trying to curry favor with President Donald Trump.

Soon-Shiong, a medical innovator who bought the Times in 2018, blocked his newspaper from endorsing Democrat Kamala Harris for president last fall and said he wanted to overhaul its editorial board, which is responsible for researching and writing Times editorials.

“If you just have the one side, it’s just going to be an echo chamber,” Soon-Shiong told Fox News last fall. He said broadening the outlook is “going to be risky and it’s going to be difficult. I’m going to take a lot of heat, which I already am, but I come from the position that it’s really important that all voices be heard.”

Three of the six people who researched and wrote Times editorials, including editorials editor Mariel Garza, resigned in protest after the Harris non-endorsement. The other three have since left with the last holdout, Carla Hall, exiting after writing a last column that ran March 30 about homeless people she met while covering the issue. Soon-Shiong’s decision caused a similar unrest with subscribers as happened when Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided the newspaper would not back a presidential candidate.

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LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has overhauled the opinions section to feature a wide variety of views.AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File

The Times used to run unsigned editorials — reflecting a newspaper’s institutional opinion — six days a week. The paper lists only two editorial board members, Soon-Shiong and executive editor Terry Tang. They’re usually too busy to write editorials. Soon-Shiong has said he will appoint new board members, but it’s unclear when.

He also said he was seeking more conservative or moderate columnists to appear in the paper. Lewis, a self-described Reagan Republican who just began as a columnist, believes he’s part of that effort. Soon-Shiong has also brought up CNN commentator Scott Jennings, a Republican consultant who has already contributed columns for a few years.

Los Angeles Times spokeswoman Hillary Manning was asked recently about editorial policy, but reportedly lost her job in a round of layoffs before she could answer. There has been no reply to other attempts at seeking comment from Times management, including how readers are responding to “Insights.”

There were some initial questions about whether a “bias meter” as described by Soon-Shiong would apply to news articles as well as opinion pieces. But the publisher told Times reporter James Rainey in December it would only be included on commentary, as it has remained since “Insights” was introduced to readers on March 3

In practice, the idea feels like a gimmick, Garza, the former editorials editor, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I think it could be offensive both to readers … and the writers themselves who object to being categorized in simple and not necessarily helpful terms,” she said. “The idea of having a bias meter just in and of itself is kind of an insult to intelligence and I’ve always thought that the readers of the opinion page were really smart.”

The online feature created problems instantly when it was applied to columnist Gustavo Arellano’s piece about the little-noticed 100th anniversary of a Ku Klux Klan rally that drew more than 20,000 people to a park in Anaheim, California.

One of the AI-generated “Insights” said that “local historical accounts occasionally frame the 1920s Klan as a product of ‘white Protestant culture’ responding to societal changes rather than an explicitly hate-driven movement.” Another said that “critics argue that focusing on past Klan influence distracts from Anaheim’s identity as a diverse city.”

Some at the Times believe an ensuing backlash — Times defends Klan! — was inaccurate and overblown. Still, the perspectives were removed.

Often, “Insights” have the flat, bloodless tone of early AI. After contributor David Helvarg’s column about potential cuts to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the opposing viewpoint noted that Trump supporters “say it aligns with broader efforts to shrink government and eliminate programs deemed nonessential.”

A better way to improve opinion offerings is to hire more journalists and put them to work, said Paul Thornton, former letters editor for the Times’ opinion section.

Media columnist Margaret Sullivan argued in The Guardian that Soon-Shiong talks about promoting viewpoint diversity but really wants to push the newspaper toward Trump. “His bias meter should — quickly — go the way of hot type, the manual typewriter and the dodo,” Sullivan wrote.

Soon-Shiong, in his interview with Rainey, dismissed claims that he was scared of Trump or trying to appease him. People need to respect different opinions, he said. “It’s really important for us (to) heal the nation,” he said. “We’ve got to stop being so polarized.”

One writer who doesn’t mind “Insights” is Lewis — with one caveat.

“I like it,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect but I was pretty pleasantly surprised. It does provide additional context for the reader. It provides counterpoints, but I think they’re very fair counterpoints.”

Lewis, who once worked for Tucker Carlson’s “Daily Caller,” was amused to see “Insights” judge his most recent column as “center-left.” He figured it was because he was critical of Trump. Instead, Lewis said it points to the relative meaninglessness of such labels.

“I guess I’m a center-left columnist,” he said. “At least for a week.”

https://nypost.com/2025/04/17/media/la-times-offers-ai-generated-opposing-viewpoint-on-columns/

Afghan man living in Oklahoma admits to plotting Election Day ISIS terror attack

 An Afghan teenager accused of taking part in an Oklahoma plot to carry out an Election Day attack has pleaded guilty, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Abdullah Haji Zada, 18, a citizen of Afghanistan who was living in Moore, Oklahoma, pleaded guilty to knowingly receiving and conspiring to receive a firearm and ammunition to be used in a terrorist attack, court records show.

Zada, who was 17 at the time of his arrest, is awaiting sentencing and faces up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

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The William J. Holloway Jr. United States Courthouse in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.Google Maps

Zada also agreed to be removed from the United States after he is released from prison, court records show.

Telephone and email messages left on Thursday with Zada’s attorney, Jeff Byers, were not immediately returned.

Zada’s co-defendant, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, who previously worked as a security guard for an American military installation in Afghanistan, is currently awaiting trial for conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group.

Prosecutors allege Zada and Tawhedi took steps to obtain AK-47 rifles and ammunition and planned to carry out an attack targeting large crowds on Election Day last year.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/17/us-news/afghan-teenager-charged-in-oklahoma-plot-for-election-day-attack-pleads-guilty/

Columbia’s ‘antisemitism’ squad is coming down hard — on Catholics

 Columbia University has told the Trump administration that it’s cracking down on antisemitic violence and intimidation and winding down DEI.

But behind closed doors, the university’s Office of Institutional Equity, a new bureaucracy supposedly set up to address campus antisemitism, is targeting me for expressing my Catholic faith.

I recently received an email from the OIE accusing me of “conduct that could constitute discriminatory harassment.”

The message included no details, and when I asked for clarification, OIE didn’t provide any.

But I’m familiar with how liberal institutions often operate, and I suspected that the matter concerned my public statements on social media.

I was right.

In a meeting this month with three OIE officials — who identified themselves as “investigators” — I was informed that I had been the subject of “multiple complaints.”

They insisted that their goal wasn’t to discipline me but to “make sure this doesn’t escalate into a disciplinary outcome.”

This process, they assured me, was “for my own benefit.”

How kind of them.

They then showed me screenshots of my social media posts, treating my public Catholic beliefs as if they were prohibited.

I smiled when I saw them.

I had nothing to regret.

One post read: “God does not teach us that we can change our gender.”

Another referenced a conversation with a Catholic friar in which I questioned his use of pronouns and challenged whether he believes in transgenderism.

In several posts, I celebrated how Republicans like Mike Pence and Nikki Haley supported bans on gender-transition surgery for minors.

The investigators also brought up my January appearance on the Timcast podcast, where I said that immigrants with facial tattoos who look like criminals should be screened more carefully.

The example I gave was that of a child sex trafficker.

Columbia thinks this approach is discriminatory. I think most Americans would call it common sense.

At the end of their presentation, I said, “I am totally open to at some point having said something I didn’t believe in . . . but in all the cases that you showed me, I absolutely stand by what I said.”

Apart from the statements on immigration, which were defensible on their own terms, the rest were basic expressions of my Catholic faith, not hate or harassment.

But to Columbia, voicing my Catholic faith was enough to make me the subject of an investigation.

The investigators warned me: Even though I have First Amendment rights, my posts could be “creating a hostile environment.”

My expressions of Catholic faith — “hypothetically, if you have a trans classmate that sees this” — could make someone feel unsafe even to “walk on campus,” they advised.

I responded, “If someone is offended, that’s not going to stop me from sharing what I believe. The overwhelming majority of people in this country agree with what I said . . . I just don’t believe men can become women and women can become men. It is crazy to me that in 2025 there are people reporting me for an opinion that 90% of humans share.”

They insisted that they weren’t policing speech — but that’s exactly what they were doing.

One of the investigators told me that posting about the decline of Christianity could make people of other religions feel excluded.

They asked, “Can someone else share their opinion with you the way you do?”

I answered, “Yes — and I’m offended by many opinions, but that doesn’t make them harassment.”

Columbia’s policy defines creating a “hostile environment” as any action that merely makes another person feel uncomfortable.

It’s impossible to apply such a vague and subjective standard fairly, as Columbia has demonstrated by enforcing it selectively against me.

At the end of the meeting, the investigators told me to “think about this conversation” before I post again.

I replied, “Can you understand that this sounds threatening?”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which defends free speech rights on college campuses, has stepped in to support me.

They have warned Columbia not to retaliate against me for expressing protected views.

The entire episode confirmed my worst fears: Columbia is willing to use bureaucratic pressure to silence students who express Christian beliefs.

That is not protecting students; it is excluding us.

To all students who have been told that their faith or conservative views amount to hate speech, here’s my advice: Don’t back down.

Your beliefs aren’t dangerous; they’re sacred.

And they remain essential to the American experiment in free expression and self-government.

No Ivy League bureaucracy can change that.

Daniel DiMartino is a Manhattan Institute fellow and a PhD candidate in economics at Columbia University. Adapted from City Journal.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/17/opinion/columbias-antisemitism-squad-comes-down-hard-on-catholics/