Laila Muhammad, Sophomore

Mayor Eric Adams was booed at a City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law graduation ceremony Friday, after referencing his history as a police officer.

As Adams delivered a short speech to the crowd, dozens of students began shouting when he mentioned his previous service in the New York Police Department (NYPD). 

The mayor had been an officer for 22 years, graduating from the New York City Police Academy in 1984.

Video on Twitter shows dozens of law graduates standing up and putting their backs towards Adams in protest of his speech.

COURT ORDER BLOCKS NYC PLAN TO MOVE MIGRANTS UPSTATE AFTER CITY AND COUNTY OFFICIALS FIGHT BACK

Mayor Eric Adams is pictured during briefing at the Javits Federal Building on April 17, 2023.  ((Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))

“These graduates that are here, that are now going to go into the field of law, some of them are going to craft policies on healthcare, some of them are going to work with the elected officials to determine legislation, some of them are going to move on, and even fill the role of what it is to be a public figure,” Adams said during his speech.

“Let’s be clear, for 22 years of my life, I wore a bulletproof vest and protected the children and families of this city as a police officer,” he added, as the crowd jeered. 

“So, I know what it is. I know what it takes to hold this city together. And we have a lot of challenges, a lot of things that need discipline,” Adams continued.

NEW YORK POL DEPLOYS POLICE TO BLOCK MIGRANT BUSES, THREATENS TO GRAB NYC MAYOR ‘BY THE THROAT’

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 10: New York City Mayor Eric Adams walks in the annual annual Columbus Day Parade, the largest in the country, in Manhattan on October 10, 2022 in New York City. Hundreds of attendees cheered from the sidewalks as local politicians, high school bands, Italian racing cars and groups associated with Italian heritage marched up Fifth Ave.  (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The students’ protests come as the city grapples with the killing of Jordan Neely on a subway train last week. Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who held Neely in a chokehold while he was acting erratically, was arraigned Friday.

The NYPD was criticized after releasing Penny without charges following the incident. Protestors and the NYPD clashed during demonstrations last week.

The CUNY Law speech was not the first time Adams was booed in public. During a Brooklyn Pride parade last June, Adams was heckled by attendees who reportedly shouted profanities and flipped him off with the middle finger.

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New York police officers respond to the scene where a fight was reported on a subway train, Monday, May 1, 2023, in New York. A man suffering an apparent mental health episode aboard a New York City subway died on Monday after being placed in a headlock by a fellow rider, according to police officials and video of the encounter. (Paul Martinka via AP)

Fox News Digital reached out to the New York City Mayor’s Office for a statement, but did not receive a response.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to move forward with holding Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena. The committee is aiming for a floor vote in early June, the panel’s Republican chairman told CBS News.

“It’s a path I would rather not take, but it’s necessary,” committee Chairman Michael McCaul said in an interview on the eve of the May 11 deadline to provide State Department records to the House Committee. 

The GOP-led committee issued a subpoena in late March for an internal confidential State Department document known as a “dissent cable,” which had been written by 23 of the department’s employees in Kabul, Afghanistan, that warned, according to the Wall Street Journal, that Kabul would fall after the Biden administration’s planned withdrawal deadline of Aug. 31, 2021. The Journal’s report also said that the cable pointed out the Taliban was gaining territory quickly and that the cable suggested ways of speeding up the evacuation.

McCaul has for weeks been warning that he would subpoena Blinken if he did not turn over the dissent cable and his response. 

“This would be the first time a secretary of state has ever been in contempt by Congress,” McCaul said. 

During the Trump administration, House Democrats threatened to hold then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in contempt for records related to a Senate investigation into Hunter Biden. The contempt threat was dropped after the documents were provided to the House committee.

Asked about the timeline for the  contempt resolution against Blinken, McCaul said he plans to move swiftly, with the committee scheduled to consider the measure May 24, which would be followed by a vote by the full House  by early June.

Still, McCaul said, “We are giving [Blinken] ample time to respond. It’s important to note this is criminal contempt as well … It would be voted out of the House and go into judicial proceedings after that.” 

As part of the committee’s efforts to reach middle ground with the State Department, McCaul said he had  offered to review the cable in a private setting, instead of requiring the document to be delivered to the committee. He had also suggested that the State Department could redact the names of the officials who signed the memo, the committee said.

Hours before the May 11 deadline passed, a State Department spokesman told reporters, “The department has already offered a classified briefing and a summary of the dissent channel cable, as well as the department’s response. We believe that this information has been sufficient to meet what the committee has requested thus far, but we, again, will continue to engage with them.”

CBS News asked the State Department for further comment. A spokesperson referred to Thursday’s statement to the press. 

— Melissa Quinn and Rebecca Kaplan contributed to this report.

California’s reparations task force is recommending as part of its set of proposals to make amends for slavery and anti-Black racism that state lawmakers address what it calls “racially biased” artificial intelligence used in health care.

The task force, created by state legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, formally approved last weekend its final recommendations to the California Legislature, which will decide whether to enact the measures and send them to the governor’s desk to be signed into law.

The recommendations include several proposals related to health care, including some concerning medical artificial intelligence (AI), which the task force describes as “racially biased” and contributing to alleged systemic racism against Black Californians. 

Specifically, the task force calls for the legislature to fund either state universities or government agencies to study the “potential for harmful biases” in medical AI.

Female medical practitioner reassuring a patient (iStock)

CALIFORNIA REPARATIONS COMMITTEE CALLS FOR MANDATORY ‘ANTI-BIAS’ TRAINING TO GRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL

“The task force recommends that the legislature provide state funding to the California Department of Public Health, a University of California school, a California State University school, or another appropriate entity to study the potential for harmful biases in commercial algorithms and AI-enabled medical devices,” the committee writes in the final report outlining its proposals, adding that the study should also recommend how best to regulate medical AI tools in California.

The report additionally suggests the study should probe “‘evidence-based research into the use of devices and tools that recommend adjusting patients’ treatment or medication based on broad racial categories in the absence of information on genetics or socio-cultural risk factors.'”

The task force quotes from a recent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) paper that it cites several times. The paper provides examples of alleged racial bias in medical AI, such as a tool meant to decide how to best distribute the limited resource of extra care to new mothers at risk of postpartum depression that, according to the ACLU, directed care away from Black mothers and favoring White mothers. 

In California, meanwhile, the reparations committee recommends that the legislature require the state’s Department of Public Health to issue guidance to hospitals and other medical systems to ensure that AI-enabled medical devices “are not used for clinical applications without FDA approval or clearance, are not used on patient populations they were not intended for, and that cleared tools are not used outside of their intended use cases.” That recommendation is also in the ACLU paper.

The task force additionally wants the California Department of Public Health “to make and maintain a public list of software as a medical device (SaMD) products and provide demographic information about the subjects in which the devices were calibrated or trained.”

Digital image of the brain on the palm using artificial Intelligence technology. (iStock)

NEW AI TOOL HELPS DOCTORS STREAMLINE DOCUMENTATION AND FOCUS ON PATIENTS

A fourth proposal is to allocate positions and funding to the California Department of Justice to pursue claims against AI medical device manufacturers if their products have a “disparate impact” when providers use them according to manufacturers’ instructions or if the products “misleadingly promise fairness.”

Despite the task force’s claims, however, new AI tools have helped medical professionals treat patients in a variety of ways.

One such tool called RestoreU, for example, helps physicians create personalized care plans for patients with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia. Another tool known as DAX Express streamlines the note-taking process, a benefit that has reportedly helped doctors improve patient outcomes, work more efficiently, and reduce costs.

Beyond AI, the California Reparations Task Force is pushing several controversial health-related proposals, such as mandating “anti-bias training” and an assessment based on that training as graduate requirements for medical school.

The task force is also pushing a universal, single-payer health care system as a way to achieve health “equity” for Black residents in California.

Washington — In the same Washington, D.C., courthouse where the Justice Department has been convening grand juries to investigate former President Donald Trump’s actions around the 2020 presidential election and his handling of classified documents, federal prosecutors managing a separate case were successful Friday in their request to delay a Trump deposition that had been scheduled for later this month in a four-year-old civil lawsuit filed by former FBI officials. 

Former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and a one-time attorney at the Bureau, Lisa Page, sued the Justice Department after they were both fired during the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. In the course of the investigation, text messages exchanged by the two revealed anti-Trump sentiments. 

Strzok’s lawsuit claims he was unjustly fired from the job for political reasons and seeks reinstatement at the FBI and back pay. Page argues the text messages were unlawfully released and violated her privacy. 

In a minute order issued Friday evening, Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in favor of the Justice Department’s request that FBI Director Christopher Wray be deposed before Strzok has a chance to question Trump. 

Both Strzok and Page have moved to depose numerous former and current government officials, and earlier this year, Jackson ruled Strzok had the right to interview Trump and FWray. But according to an emergency filing on Thursday, federal prosecutors say Trump’s deposition, which was supposed to take place May 24, was scheduled before any such meeting was set for Wray. The Justice Department said this violates long-standing norms that federal officials are to be questioned in order of their seniority. 

“Contrary to the request of the United States, Mr. Strzok seeks to depose former President Trump before Director Wray,” prosecutors wrote Thursday, “thereby making it impossible to determine if the Director’s deposition might obviate the need to depose the former President.”

They asked the judge to order a new schedule for the depositions and threatened to take the issue to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals if she did not agree. 

“The Solicitor General authorized the government to petition the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for a writ of mandamus as to this Court’s determination that former President Trump may be deposed in this matter,” the Justice Department revealed in the filing. Writs of Mandamus are rare orders issued by higher courts that supersede findings by lower court judges. 

“For decades, the D.C. Circuit and virtually every other court of appeals have recognized that subjecting high-level government officials—to say nothing of current or former Presidents— ‘to oral deposition is not normally countenanced,'” prosecutors wrote in their redacted motion. 

In her order Friday, Jackson wrote that “the parties have done nothing more than wrangle over the order of the two depositions.”

“The government seems chagrined that the Court did not order that the deposition of the FBI Director be completed first, but it may recall that it was the Court’s view that it was Director Wray, the only current high-ranking public official in the group of proposed deponents, whose ongoing essential duties fell most squarely under the protection of the doctrine in question,” Jackson wrote. “However, in order to get the parties — who apparently still cannot agree on anything — over this impasse, it is hereby ORDERED that the deposition of Christopher Wray proceed first, rendering the instant motion moot.”

Attorneys for both Strzok and Page’s legal team did not immediately respond to Jackson’s order when reached by CBS News. 

Earlier this year, the White House said it would not assert executive privilege over Trump’s testimony and thereby shield him from deposition, and federal prosecutors said the former president did not request the privilege. 

Strzok and Page’s text messages and involvement in the Russia investigation fueled much of Trump’s ire toward the FBI during the Mueller investigation, alleging anti-Trump views inside the Justice Department at the time. An inspector general report found that while the conduct was “completely antithetical to the core values of the department,” there was no evidence that any bias ultimately changed the outcome of the investigation. 

In his lawsuit, Strzok alleges “The FBI fired [him] because of his protected political speech in violation of his rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” And Page contends the release of the text messages was unlawful and led her to be the subject of “frequent attacks by the President of the United States, as well as his allies and supporters.” 

The Justice Department asked Judge Jackson to respond to their request to block Trump’s testimony by Tuesday.

“All of us who work in Democratic politics have been dreading this moment for two years,” said Lanae Erickson, who runs the public opinion and social policy division at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “It is very evident that Republicans still have an upper hand on immigration and people don’t think that Democrats particularly care about securing the border.”

Progressives seem to agree. “They should have undone Title 42 on the first day in office. They didn’t,” said Chris Newman, the legal director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Los Angeles. “Now they have to do what they should have done in the first day of office, and they’re doing it poorly.”

Polls show broad dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of immigration. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll earlier this year, just 28 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the southern border.

In a Fox News poll in April of registered voters, 66 percent of white voters without a college degree said that the White House was not tough enough on unlawful immigration. A majority of Hispanic voters, 55 percent, also said the president was not tough enough.

“Biden won the 2020 election not just because he got big shifts among white college voters, but he stopped the bleeding among white working class voters,’’ said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “What happens with those voters now that he’s going into 2024 with approval ratings in the low 40s, and then you add to that an emerging immigration problem — a problem these voters very much think matters?”

Other polling is more favorable to the administration. In Mr. Barreto’s recent surveys, conducted in seven battleground states for Immigration Hub, a pro-immigration group, there was broad support for Mr. Biden’s policies, including reversing Trump-era child separation and developing pathways to citizenship for Dreamers.

Democrats point to recent electoral history as a counter to predictions that new scenes of disruption on the border will exact a political price. Republicans and their allies in the media have turned the prospect of caravans of migrants approaching the nation’s southern border into biennial programming designed to motivate a conservative base. But Democrats won convincing victories in 2018, Mr. Biden won the presidency in 2020 and the party over-performed expectations in last year’s midterm elections.

A “no compromise” gun rights group is suing the Biden administration over part of the bipartisan gun safety law enacted last summer, arguing that the law imposes unconstitutional waiting periods to purchase firearms on young adults under 21. 

Gun Owners of America (GOA) on Friday filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas challenging enhanced background check requirements established by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act last year. The lawsuit names Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI as defendants and argues that new requirements for the National Instant Criminal Background Check system to review juvenile records for adults aged 18-20 create a “de facto” waiting period that violates their Second Amendment rights. 

That bipartisan gun control law, spearheaded by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., was signed by President Biden last June. The effort to pass consensus gun safety reforms came in response to the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The law provides funding for states to create programs that could keep weapons away from people who are a danger to themselves or others, often called “red flag laws.” It also expanded background checks for gun purchasers under 21, requiring that the NICS system check juvenile criminal records and state mental health records, and seek additional records from local law enforcement where the buyer resides. 

FEDERAL JUDGE IN VIRGINIA STRIKES DOWN LAWS BANNING GUN SALES TO ADULTS UNDER 21

A worker shows a shotgun for sale to a customer at Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky, July 22, 2021. Gun Owners of America is suing the Biden administration after two of its adult members under 21 were allegedly delayed from purchasing shotguns by the expanded background check requirements under the bipartisan gun safety law enacted last year.  (Jon Cherry/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A Gun Owners of America supporter shoots a rifle at a range. GOA argues that “de facto” waiting periods created by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act are unconstitutional.  (Gun Owners of America)

The Associated Press reported in April that those who were flagged in the enhanced background checks and prevented from buying a gun included an 18-year-old in Nebraska who had made terroristic threats and was prone to violent outbursts, a 20-year-old drug dealer in Arizona and an 18-year-old in Arizona who had been previously charged with unlawful possession of weapons and was found carrying fentanyl. All were attempting to purchase long guns.

GOA argues that because local and state agencies are not always equipped to provide these records in a timely manner, several young gun purchasers with no criminal records are forced to wait for indefinite periods of time before their request to buy a gun is approved by NICS. 

The group says two of its members who are plaintiffs in the case were delayed from purchasing a firearm despite having no criminal or mental health records.

The first plaintiff is Ethan McRorey, a 20-year-old corrections officer with the Cooke County Sheriff’s Office in Gainesville, Texas, who had on May 12 attempted to purchase a 12 gauge shotgun from a licensed firearms dealer for self-defense. The complaint states that McRorey’s purchase was “immediately delayed by NICS” and that he was “forced to leave the store emptyhanded” while he awaits the agency’s determination on whether he can purchase a firearm.  

A second plaintiff, 19-year-old Kaylee Flores, attempted to buy a 20 gauge shotgun from a federally licensed dealer in Abilene, Texas, but her purchase was also delayed by NICS. 

TEXAS REPUBLICANS STALL BILL RAISING PURCHASE AGE FOR AR-STYLE RIFLES

President Biden signs into law S. 2938, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun safety bill, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

GOA claims that even if both young people are ultimately permitted to buy the shotguns, the case will not be moot, because other 18- to 20-year-olds who attempt to buy firearms will be similarly delayed by NICS under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act’s requirements. 

“The result of the Challenged Provisions is that all persons under 21 years of age who wish to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer are automatically delayed by a supposedly ‘instant’ check system, for an indefinite period up to at least 10 business days or possibly longer, while the NICS system sends inquiries to three different state and local agencies in the hopes that all three will respond, and respond in a timely fashion (while knowing that many will not respond timely and that some will never respond),” the lawsuit alleges. 

“Yet until all three state agencies respond, the Challenged Provisions do not allow a purchase to be approved – irrespective of the 3- and 10-day timelines therein – because the NICS system has an affirmative duty under the Challenged Provisions to determine whether a disqualifying juvenile or mental health record exists,” the complaint states.

Given these circumstances, Gun Owners of America claims that the law unconstitutionally delays the right to buy a firearm for all adults under 21 “solely because of their age.” 

GUN RIGHTS GROUPS VOW TO FIGHT BACK AS ATF PISTOL BRACE RULE TAKES EFFECT

Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) talks to reporters after the Senate passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act at the U.S. Capitol on June 23, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Cornyn was the lead Republican negotiator on the bipartisan gun safety legislation, which passed the Senate 65-33. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“GOA repeatedly warned legislators and the public how this would grossly violate young Americans’ Constitutional rights, and yet Texas Senator John Cornyn compromised away those rights anyway,” said GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt. “Now we see young adults frequently and routinely being denied their right to purchase a firearm in a timely manner, and this right delayed is unjustly a right denied. Compromise is no way to legislate when dealing with people’s God-given rights.” 

An aide to Sen. Cornyn said 99% of NICS transactions are unaffected by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. 

“According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, just over 10% of all NICS checks were not completed immediately. Over 99% of transactions not completed immediately are resolved with the vast majority being resolved during the first three business days,” the aide said. 

“Waiting periods or ‘de facto’ waiting periods were explicitly rejected by Sen. Cornyn during negotiations and do not appear anywhere in the text,” the aide added. 

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment and typically does not comment on pending litigation. 

A 17-year-old migrant child from Honduras who arrived in the U.S. without a parent or guardian has died in government custody in Florida, officials said Friday, in what is believed to be the first such death in years. 

Enrique Reina, the Honduran secretary of foreign affairs, identified the child as Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza and called for an “exhaustive investigation” into his death. Reina said the child was being held at a shelter used to house unaccompanied children in Safety Harbor, Florida, a small city west of Tampa.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) acknowledged the death in a statement but provided few details about the circumstances.

“[The department] is deeply saddened by this tragic loss and our heart goes out to the family, with whom we are in touch,” the agency said. 

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is a division of HHS, is responsible for housing and caring for migrant children who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without legal guardians. Border officials are bound by federal law to transfer unaccompanied minors to ORR within 72 hours. The refugee office houses unaccompanied children in shelters and other facilities until they turn 18 or are claimed by a sponsor in the U.S.

The HHS statement noted that the ORR’s Division of Health for Unaccompanied Children is “reviewing all clinical details of this case, including all inpatient health care records” and said a medical examiner is conducting an investigation into the child’s death. The agency noted that children in ORR custody “have access to health care, legal services, translation services, and mental and behavioral health counselors and are able to connect with family through a phone call in a private area at a minimum of twice a week.”

As of Wednesday, 8,681 unaccompanied children were in the care of HHS, government figures show, and unaccompanied children spend an average of 29 days in ORR custody. In the last fiscal year, most of the minors referred to ORR — roughly 72% — were above the age of 14, and about 64% were boys. Unaccompanied children are typically matched with a sponsor, usually a relative, and released.

About 29% of children in ORR custody in fiscal year 2022 hailed from Honduras, like Espinoza. Nearly half came from Guatemala, and about 13% came from El Salvador.

News of Espinoza’s death comes as the U.S. implements strict new asylum and deportation policies meant to deter illegal migration following the expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-related restriction that expired at midnight on Thursday. Title 42 allowed border officials to quickly expel hundreds of thousands migrants without hearing their asylum claims, a policy that began in March 2020 under President Donald Trump.

Unaccompanied children were subject to expulsion under Title 42 until November 2020, when a federal judge put an end to the practice. Their exemption led thousands of children who had previously been expelled with their families to leave their loved ones in Mexico and attempt to claim asylum by themselves, a phenomenon that came to be known as “self-separation.” Government figures showed that more than 12,000 migrant children reentered U.S. border custody as unaccompanied minors after being expelled to Mexico in the year following the judge’s ruling.

Border Patrol officials encountered more than 152,000 unaccompanied minors in fiscal year 2022, and have encountered more than 70,000 since Oct. 1, 2022, according to government data.

Over an eight-month span in 2018 and 2019, six children died in U.S. custody or shortly after being released, including a 10-year-old girl who died while in the care of ORR. Her death was the first of a child in U.S. custody since 2010, officials said at the time.

Margaret Brennan contributed reporting.