Prison guards charged in beating death of inmate go on trial

UTICA, N.Y. — Three former upstate New York prison guards on trial in the fatal beating of a Black handcuffed inmate took part in an act of “sheer, unimaginable brutality,” a prosecutor told a jury Tuesday.

Mathew Galliher, Nicholas Kieffer and David Kingsley are charged with murder and first-degree manslaughter in the death of Robert Brooks, whose beating by guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9 was captured in part on body-camera footage. The trio were among 10 corrections officers indicted in February on murder charges or for lesser crimes.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick told jurors in his opening statement that they would view sickening videos of Brooks’ treatment by a group of guards, and that each of the defendants was “intimately involved.”

Brooks was dead within an hour, before he even unpacked, Fitzpatrick said.

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Abortion providers say Missouri AG is trying to get patient records

Missouri’s Republican attorney general is trying to get the medical records of Planned Parenthood patients who’ve had abortions, officials who oversee clinics in Kansas City and St. Louis said in legal filings.

The fight over the subpoenas is playing out in a lawsuit filed last year by Planned Parenthood Great Plains, the abortion provider’s affiliate for Kansas City, and Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, the affiliate for St. Louis. Planned Parenthood officials argue that the state’s restrictions violate an amendment to the Missouri Constitution narrowly approved by voters in November to protect abortion rights.

The Missouri attorney general’s office issued subpoenas starting in late August to two employees of the Kansas City Planned Parenthood affiliate, a physician contracting with it, and two former board members of the St. Louis-area Planned Parenthood affiliate, according to Planned Parenthood court filings last month. One filing seeking to quash the subpoenas said the attorney general demanded patient records, reports on adverse events and communications about patient care, along with clinical protocols, equipment maintenance records, contract documents and records related to compliance with state requirements.

Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday requesting comment. But in a filing in June, the state questioned Planned Parenthood officials’ repeated statements that “abortion rarely involves medical complications” and that state requirements do not improve patients’ health.

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Judge blocks Trump effort to change teen pregnancy prevention programs

A judge Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from requiring recipients of federal teen pregnancy prevention grants to comply with Trump’s orders aimed at curtailing “radical indoctrination” and “gender ideology.”

The ruling is a victory for three Planned Parenthood affiliates — in California, Iowa and New York — that sued to try to block enforcement of a U.S. Department of Human Services policy document issued in July that they contend contradict the requirements of the grants as established by Congress.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, blasted the administration’s policy change in her written ruling, saying it was “motivated solely by political concerns, devoid of any considered process or analysis, and ignorant of the statutory emphasis on evidence-based programming.”

The policy requiring changes to the pregnancy prevention program was part of the fallout from a series of executive orders Trump signed starting in his first day back in the White House aimed at rolling back recognition of LGBTQ+ people and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.