A Haitian-American man from South Florida Tuesday became the first U.S. citizen to plead guilty to conspiring to kill Haiti’s president, admitting that he attended key meetings to carry out the assassination more than two years ago.
In doing so, Joseph Vincent also became the fourth of 11 defendants charged in the Miami federal case to accept responsibility for his supporting role in the murder plot spanning South Florida, Haiti and Colombia.
Vincent, 58, admitted that he met with a group of co-conspirators in Haiti on the eve of the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on July 7, 2021, in a factual statement filed with his plea agreement. He also wore a U.S. State Department pin to make himself look official to his Haitian counterparts, the statement says. He also participated in a plan to stir up protests against Haiti’s leader and use them as a cover to remove Moïse by force using weapons.
And lastly, the statement says, he joined other co-conspirators in a vehicle that drove to the president’s home outside Port-au-Prince when a group of Colombian commandos killed him during the nighttime ambush.
U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez asked Vincent if all this information was “true” at Tuesday’s hearing.
“Yes, it’s true, your honor,” Vincent told the judge.
Faces up to life in prison
Vincent pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support in the assassination, providing that support, and conspiring to kill or kidnap a person outside the United States. He faces up to life in prison at his sentencing hearing before Judge Martinez on Feb. 9, 2024.
At the hearing, federal prosecutor Frank Russo highlighted his role in the murder conspiracy: “Vincent provided advice to his co-conspirators about the Haitian political landscape, attended meetings with important Haitian political and community leaders, and frequently wore a U.S. State Department pin, which had the effect of leading others to believe that he was employed by the U.S. State Department.”
Vincent, a former informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration, is expected to be a key cooperating witness against other co-conspirators, including fellow Haitian American James Solages. Solages is accused of collaborating with CTU Security, a Doral-based security company owned and operated by Antonio Intriago, a defendant in the case who met with Solages in South Florida and in Haiti before Moïse’s assassination.
Solages also drove the vehicle with top Colombian commandos, Vincent and others to the president’s home for the deadly attack, court records show. And Solages yelled it was a “DEA operation” as the assault was unfolding that night, a claim that authorities have denied.
Solages has pleaded not guilty to the murder conspiracy charges.
Vincent is also expected to provide inside information on Christian Sanon, a Haitian physician and pastor who was initially proposed as the successor to Moïse before the plotters abandoned him in favor of a member of the Haitian Supreme Court. Sanon has also pleaded not guilty, but to conspiracy charges accusing him of smuggling ballistic vests to the Colombian commandos in Haiti and to carry out a “military expedition” against a foreign country.
The plea agreement was signed by Vincent, his defense attorney, Kenneth Swartz, and federal prosecutors Andrea Goldbarg, Monica Castro and Russo.
In addition to Vincent, three other defendants have admitted to their supporting roles in the Miami federal case.
Others connected to the assassination
In October, former Haiti Sen. Joseph Joël John, who had been detained in Jamaica before being brought to Miami last year, pleaded guilty to the same charges in the killing of Haiti’s leader. He faces up to life in prison at his sentencing later this month, though he’s cooperating with authorities in the hope of receiving less severe punishment.
John, 52, acknowledged to FBI agents that he had met with some co-conspirators just before they “embarked on the mission to kill President Moïse” at his suburban home, according to court records. John admitted that he helped obtain rental vehicles, made introductions to Haitian gang members and tried to get firearms for the co-conspirators’ operation targeting the president, according to his statement filed with his plea agreement.
John attended meetings in South Florida and Haiti with the main suspects and tried to acquire weapons and ammunition for them, according to the statement and other court records. He’s believed to have been a link between the various groups. On the night of the killing, he was in communication with several suspects.
John’s goal was to become the prime minister under Moïse’s successor following the leader’s removal from office, according to court records.
In addition, retired Colombian army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera Garcia, aka “Colonel Mike,” 45, admitted that he met with several co-conspirators from Haiti and South Florida before leading a group of former Colombian soldiers to the Haitian president’s home to kill him. In October, Rivera was sentenced to life in prison, but he is hoping to get his sentence reduced with cooperation.
Also, Haitian businessman Rodolphe Jaar, 51, admitted to providing weapons, lodging and money in the conspiracy to assassinate Haiti’s president. A dual Haitian and Chilean citizen, Jaar was sentenced in June to life in prison but is hoping to get his prison term decreased with cooperation. He had previously been convicted of drug trafficking in the United States.
Another suspect recently arrested in Haiti — if extradited — may become the 12th defendant in the Miami federal case. In October, Joseph Félix Badio, a former government functionary who had been fired from his anti-corruption job, was apprehended by Haitian police at a grocery store in Petionville.
Badio is among several high-profile suspects who remained in hiding more than two years after the killing. There has long been widespread speculation that he was either the key person behind the scenes or a potential mastermind.
Among the first things 16-year-old Donald “Trey” Brown III picked up while training at Teen Line in the spring was how to ask another child if they were contemplating suicide.
This question is crucial, counselors at the youth-run crisis hotline say. Asking it directly saves lives, by naming the intense and often unspeakable desire to die that now haunts almost a quarter of American high school students, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“People who are not suicidal will be like, ‘No, no, no, no, I would never do that,’” said Mendez, 16, one of the crisis line’s volunteer “listeners,” whom the organization asked to be identified only by her first name.
“But other people might say something like, ‘Well, maybe…,’” she went on. “A lot of people will test the waters to make sure you’re a safe person” to tell.
Donald “Trey” Brown III is shown in a photo provided by his family. He was the third student at Harvard-Westlake High School to die by suicide since the spring of 2023. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Because suicide is impulsive, the jump from inchoate longing to lethal intent can be sudden, the leap from intent into action even faster, studies show.
“One study found that 71% of attempts happened within an hour or less of [someone] making the decision, and a quarter were five minutes or less,” said Janel Cubbage, a suicidologist and prevention expert.
Yet as California’s teen suicide rate has spiked, school administrators have shied from the word. Now many all but forbid the acknowledgment of student suicides, despite state laws mandating evidence-based suicide prevention and decades of evidence proving silence causes harm.
“The No. 1 myth I’ve dealt with forever is, ‘If we talk about it, it’s going to happen,’” said Dr. Richard Lieberman, lead suicide prevention expert for Los Angeles County’s Office of Education, who also works closely with Teen Line.
Lieberman and other experts are adamant: Most suicides can be prevented. For adolescents, prevention often starts with other teens.
“Kids tell other kids what they’re gonna do,” Lieberman said.
Donald “Trey” Brown III’s parents keep his phone charged so his friends can continue texting the number. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
This is the animating principle behind Teen Line, which connects children and adolescents in extremis with trained volunteers from Los Angeles high schools.
It’s also what drew Trey to the work. The Harvard-Westlake High School sophomore had long been a “therapist” for his friends. But after his classmate Jordan Park killed herself in March, he wanted to do more.
“He said he always meant to go up and say hi to her,” said his mother, Christine Brown. “He knew she was having a hard time and he felt responsible.”
Weeks later, senior Jonah Anschell died the same way Jordan had, followed almost immediately by Jordan’s father, Shaun Park. For Trey and other students at the prestigious prep school, the speed and the scale of the loss were dizzying. The fear of contagion — the viral spread of suicide through social groups — hung over the school like a miasma.
“I remember him saying after Jordan passed away, and then Jonah, there wasn’t a whole lot that they felt like they could do for each other,” Brown said. “When he got selected [for TeenLine] he was really excited. He felt like he could really be there” for his peers, she said.
People honor Donald “Trey” Brown III, 16, during the 25th annual “Alive Together: Uniting to Prevent Suicide” event, which includes a charity walk around Exposition Park in Los Angeles on Oct. 1, 2023. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
To his parents, the skills Trey was learning and his passion for the work felt like an inoculation against a deadly threat. They called it “an extra layer of defense.”
The program’s training regimen was rigorous.
Sixty hours. No absences, no tardies, loads of homework. It was a lot for a kid who was already commuting from Santa Clarita to Studio City each day, and competing in varsity sports on top of his schoolwork.
But Trey was invigorated by the challenge, his parents said.
“He felt like that was his calling,” said his father, Donald Brown Jr. “He really wanted to have a purpose, to feel like he was making an impact, and that was his way of doing it.”
Then, in the midst of his training, Trey killed himself too.
::
i’m writing to you because i’m scared….this is the third time it’s happened this year, and i’m terrified it’s going to happen again. it probably will.
This is one of scores of texts that Trey has received since he died June 30.
Some friends still text every day, his mother said. Others write once, and disappear. Increasingly, the texts come from strangers.
“I have kids saying, ‘School’s not the same without you here. I miss you every day,’” Christine Brown said. “I’ve talked to a psychiatrist [about] the fact that these people are still texting, and she said, ‘You leave them alone. When they get ready they’ll stop.’”
Many parents fall silent in the wake of a child’s death by suicide. Grief, guilt and the intense stigma of suicide loss cut them off from the world.
“That’s part of the stigma that goes with it, that there must have been something wrong, the parents must have been neglecting them,” Trey’s father said.
But many others told The Times they were warned not to speak out about their child’s death, to receive condolences from their friends, or to memorialize them at school, the epicenter of most children’s social world.
Although they are not supported by evidence, such responses appear more common since the passage of California’s first school suicide prevention law in 2016.
Harvard-Westlake and other private schools are not governed by the law.
“Clearly, our school is not immune to the growing mental health challenges faced by an increasing number of teens nationwide,” said Rick Commons, the school president. “While we don’t have reason to believe that these tragedies are linked to anything that happened at school, Harvard-Westlake is embarking on an even more expansive effort to address the current crisis in teen mental health.”
Though the school’s administrators would not share details of their response to the recent student deaths, social media, student newspaper stories and interviews with parents suggest a massive, schoolwide effort — parts of which conform to evidence-based practices, and parts of which do not.
With few restraints on what they could say or do after Trey’s death, the Browns threw themselves into suicide prevention.
They have been in almost constant contact with Teen Line, promoting the number to anyone who will listen.
They also started giving out Trey’s phone number, urging strangers who might be in crisis to tell someone they were considering suicide, and to text their son to let them know after they did.
Texting had been one of the things that tied Christine Brown and her firstborn together. If she didn’t answer him promptly, he would hail her in all caps: BIRTHGIVER.
So, hours after Trey was found, and hours before his body could be identified, she went back to the place he’d last been alive to look for his phone.
The cellphone helps her hold on to him, and to the hope that others will reach out from the depths of despair, accepting what they’ve called Trey’s Challenge.
Because their son knew what to do, his parents said. He’d helped others to do it.
“That’s one of the reasons it caught us so off-guard,” his father said. “He had just done a session with his volunteer [supervisor] at Teen Line, and [she] was like, he’s just phenomenal.”
His sister even started wearing his Teen Line shirt.
“It has a number,” Christine Brown said. “That’s telling people — she doesn’t have to open her mouth, it’s telling people they can get help.”
::
Oct. 1 would have been Trey’s 17th birthday. Early that morning, dozens of people in Harvard-Westlake gear huddled in a tight scrum around his parents and three siblings, preparing for a charity walk in his honor.
“Alive Together: Uniting to Prevent Suicide” is an annual suicide memorial and fundraiser for Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, which now runs Teen Line as part of its suicide prevention work.
The Harvard-Westlake contingent made up the single largest group. Most children had at least one parent by their side. Many came with both.
But even as they stood in solidarity with the Browns, parents remained frightened and ambivalent about what they or the school should do in the aftermath of so much death.
“I heard it’s impulsive,” said Dr. Kim Carvalho, a mom of two. “That’s what makes me as a parent really afraid. Because you think —”
“Well, they say it’s the model, perfect ones that fool you,” cut in fellow mom Kalika Yap, who runs a mindfulness group at the academy.
“That’s what I’m saying — everyone’s impulsive at that age.”
For these parents, the deaths felt closer and more personal than for many others at the tony prep school: Although Harvard- Westlake is majority white, two of the three suicides had been Asian or part-Asian children like theirs.
“I’m half-Asian, and I’m from Hawaii, and you don’t talk about your feelings,” Carvalho said. “You smile. Even if you’re hurting, you just suck it up and you don’t talk about it — you’re not allowed to.”
“We never told our kids, suicide runs in my family,” Yap added, nodding in agreement. “My husband was like, ‘Don’t say anything.’ He doesn’t want to give them the idea.”
In California, the suicide rate among Black and Asian youth has now overtaken the rate among those who are white, reaching about 10 per 100,000 and 8 per 100,000, respectively.
Trey was both.
Yet the way suicide threatens children of color, and how best to protect them, is not nearly as well understood as it is for white youth, experts said.
“Pretty much everything we have right now [in suicide prevention] is something that was developed and tested on primarily white populations, and they’re like, OK, this is evidence-based now,” Cubbage said. “But is it evidence-based if we don’t have evidence for everyone and if it works for everyone?”
Lieberman agreed.
“The vast majority who die by suicide are white, so we look at risk factors through a white lens,” he said.
What information does exist still doesn’t reach most parents — even highly educated and engaged parents such as Carvalho and Yap. The pair said they struggled to talk to their children about the suicides and fretted over how the school had handled them.
“It’s like a Pandora’s box, they don’t want to open it up,” Yap said of her children. “But then when they’re in school, everyone’s crying. They were able to have that assembly — but I also heard assemblies are not good.”
“My son said he couldn’t be part of that,” Carvalho said. “I remember one of the assemblies they had, [he] was like, ‘Oh my God, it was too much.’”
“One of [my son]’s teachers said that when he found out they were doing an assembly, he was like, ‘Don’t do it,’” Yap agreed. “I don’t know why, but he said studies show” they’re harmful, she said.
Indeed, the evidence against assemblies is strong. Likewise, experts say schools should not close, and memorials need guardrails.
“The message to kids is, we totally have to memorialize your friend,” Lieberman said. But there are rules.
Rest in Peace T-shirts are gently discouraged — most guidelines say children who show up in them should be allowed to keep them on but asked not to wear them in the future. Candles, flowers and other temporary mementos should be cleared after the child’s funeral or public service, and classmates should be excused to attend such events if they want to.
Schools should have a written policy about candlelight vigils, graduation and yearbook tributes, trees, gardens, murals and other forms of permanent memorial that apply to all children who die, regardless of the manner, experts said.
But the best kind of memorial, Lieberman said, is one explicitly tied to suicide prevention.
For Donald and Christine Brown, that means continuing the work Trey left behind.
It means ensuring every child who knew their son knows this number: (800) 852-8336.
It seems that rowdy fans aren’t hurling objects at just musicians anymore. The unruly behavior has made its way to the movie world — more specifically, to Oscar nominee Florence Pugh‘s face.
Pugh, known for “Midsommar” and “Little Women,” joined co-stars Zendaya, Austin Butler and Timothée Chalamet to promote “Dune: Part 2” at the Brazil fan event CCXP over the weekend. CCXP ran from Thursday to Sunday and was held at São Paulo Expo.
During a panel for the forthcoming movie, the “Black Widow” actor, her co-stars and director Denis Villeneuve posed for a group photo. As the “Dune” team held their poses, an audience member seemingly hurled an object that resembled a pen at the stage, hitting the 27-year-old “Don’t Worry Darling” star in her right eye, a video circulating on X shows. After the impact, Pugh flinched, touched her right eye and bent down to examine the object.
Neither representatives for Pugh nor CCXP immediately responded to The Times’ request for comment on Monday.
In recent months, several musicians have spoken out against fans throwing objects on stage. Just last month both R&B singer Ari Lennox and Taylor Swift told their respective fans to hold back. “It really freaks me out when stuff gets thrown on the stage,” Swift told her crowd during a Buenos Aires concert on her Eras tour.
This year alone, musicians Harry Styles, Bebe Rexha, Pink, Ava Max, Drake and Kelsea Ballerini have been subject to similar fan behavior.
In June, “I’m Good” singer Rexha received stitches above her left eyebrow after a fan hurled his phone at the singer during a concert in New York. Concertgoer and New Jersey resident Nicolas Malvagna, who was arrested, allegedly said he chucked his device at the stage for entertainment, according to a criminal complaint.
“I was trying to see if I could hit her with the phone at the end of the show because it would be funny,” Malvagna allegedly said.
Pugh’s CCXP appearance was one of her first to promote the release of “Dune: Part 2,” which has been delayed to March 1, 2024. The highly anticipated sci-fi epic was initially set to premiere on Nov. 3, but was shelved for a later release amid the writers’ and actors’ strikes — which ended Sept. 27 and Nov. 9, respectively.
“Dune: Part 2” follows Chalamet’s Paul Atreides as he learns the way of the desert-dwelling Fremen to defeat the greedy Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård). Pugh, fresh off her “Oppenheimer” role, stars as Princess Irulan.
Rebecca Ferguson, Dave Bautista, Javier Bardem and Léa Seydoux also star in “Dune: Part 2.”
Inflation has sapped 40% of Americans of their pandemic savings, making consumer spending even more reliant on the job market.
Generous government stimulus payments and lock-downs that kept people at home led to “windfall” savings, Stephen Stanley, chief U.S. economist at Santander U.S. Capital Markets, said in a research note Monday. How much of it remains has been a moving target, with economists upping their estimate of pandemic-era savings last month after earlier saying it was nearly gone.
By Santander’s count, much of it still remains at least in nominal terms. Bank deposits and money market balances are up by 51% over 2019 levels for the top 1% of Americans by income, and up by 14% even for the bottom 40%, the bank said, citing Federal Reserve data.
However, adjusting for inflation takes out a huge bite, with liquid assets among that bottom 40% cohort now down 1% compared with the pre-pandemic period. Stanley pegs the inflation rate at 15% over that period, based on the government’s Personal Consumption Expenditures index.
“The prevailing narrative is that households were presented with a windfall during the pandemic and proceeded to spend like drunken sailors until the money ran out,” Stanley said. Instead, “Unfortunately, households have seen their beefed-up nest eggs get eaten away by inflation over the past two years.”
Consumers’ lack of buying power helps explain poor consumer confidence, he said, with the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index sitting at a six-month low. Whether they continue to spend or cut back deeply depends even more on the labor market and income growth, Stanley said.
Worker pay didn’t keep up with inflation in 2021 and 2022, but workers enjoyed real disposable income gains of 4% in the first three quarters of this year. Stanley sees real consumer spending rising by a slow 1% in 2024 because of the effects of inflation and higher interest rates.
Actor Jamie Foxx, who was hospitalized while shooting a movie in Atlanta in April, made a surprise appearance Monday night at an awards show.
He accepted a Vanguard Award at the Critics Choice Association’s Celebration of Cinema & Television Honoring Black, Latino & AAPI Achievements to celebrate his performance in Amazon Prime’s “The Burial.”
After walking on stage, Foxx said, “It’s crazy, I couldn’t do that six months ago. I couldn’t actually walk.”
This is the first time Foxx has made an official public appearance since he fell sick. He has not said what caused him to end up in a hospital but he spent time at a physical rehabilitation center in Chicago that specializes in stroke recovery, traumatic brain injury rehab, spinal cord injury rehab and cancer rehabilitation, according to TMZ.
“I want to thank everybody. I’ve been through something,” the actor said, referring to his health scare. “I’ve been through some things.”
“I cherish every single minute now,” he added. “It’s different. I wouldn’t wish what I went through on my worst enemy because it’s tough when it’s almost over. When you see the tunnel, I saw the tunnel. I didn’t see the light.”
Foxx was nearly finished shooting a Netflix action comedy in Atlanta in April called “Back in Action” with Cameron Diaz when he landed in a local hospital. The producers used body doubles to finish the movie, which does not yet have a release date.
A Southern California poultry processor illegally employed children as young as 14 to debone meat with sharp knives and move pallets with power-driven lifts, the Labor Department said.
The poultry processor, which supplies grocery stores including Ralphs and Aldi, must pay nearly $3.8 million in fines and back wages after an investigation found the company employing children as young as 14 in dangerous jobs, retaliating against workers who cooperated with investigators and refusing to pay overtime wages, the agency said.
The Labor Department alleged that Exclusive Poultry Inc. and other companies owned by Tony Elvis Bran employed children who used sharp knives to debone poultry, operated power-driven lifts to move pallets and worked more hours than are allowed under child labor laws.
The company also allegedly cut the wages of workers who cooperated with investigators and did not pay workers proper overtime, according to the agency.
“Exclusive Poultry and owner Tony Bran willfully withheld workers’ hard-earned wages, endangered young workers and retaliated against employees to conceal their wrongdoing,” said Jessica Looman, administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, which investigated and litigated the complaint.
When reached by phone, Bran said he didn’t know if he was allowed to speak about the case and had to ask his lawyer if he could comment.
The Labor Department said its investigation included two poultry plants in City of Industry and La Puente, California, controlled by Bran, and that he set up “front companies” to employ workers at these plants. Those company names are Meza Poultry, Valtierra Poultry, Sullon Poultry Inc. and Nollus’s Poultry.
Bran, the companies and the listed owners of the front companies are now subject to a consent judgment that prevents them from violating labor laws, including paying workers less than minimum wage, paying inadequate overtime costs and allowing children under 16 to work too many hours.
The companies are also prevented from shipping any poultry that was produced in violation of labor laws governing minimum wage, overtime pay and child labor, or from any location where Labor Department investigators saw child labor occurring.
Bran and Exclusive Poultry will also be monitored for three years to ensure compliance, and workers who were fired from the plants after the investigators’ plant visit will get preferential hiring for any open positions, the Labor Department said.
The company supplied Ralphs, Aldi, Grocery Outlet and Sysco, among other companies, according to the Labor Department.
Grocery Outlet said it has never used Exclusive Poultry as a supplier, nor has it used any of the other companies associated with the Labor Department’s investigation.
Sysco said that the findings of the Labor Department’s investigation of Exclusive Poultry represent “serious violations of legal and regulatory requirements and are inconsistent with the ethical standards outlined in Sysco’s Supplier Code of Conduct.” The food distributor said it was “evaluating the situation” and would take “appropriate remedial actions” to ensure its suppliers uphold company standards on labor and food safety.
Aldi and Ralphs owner Kroger didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Erica DeBoer, the chief nurse at America’s largest rural health network, thought she could finally offer some relief for her overworked staff and thousands of patients. More than 160 reinforcement nurses were supposed to arrive over the coming months across Sanford Health’s Midwest facilities from as far away as Manila and Lagos, Nigeria.
But now, only 36 are coming — if they’re lucky.
The U.S. is in the midst of a visa retrogression, when a surge in demand collides with annual caps, jamming up the processing queue. The delays are particularly bad for the main visa category that hospitals use. Today, government officials are only just starting to work on filings made two years ago — right around the time when many hospitals began hiring foreign nurses and applying for their visas.
Experts estimate that at least 10,000 foreign nurses have been delayed indefinitely — a holdup that’s almost certain to worsen an already dire national shortage. After the pandemic led 100,000 nurses to leave their jobs due to burnout or early retirement, U.S. hospitals looked abroad to fill the gap.
“We just can’t take as many patients,” said DeBoer, a 30-year nursing veteran, who plans to hire pricier contract staff in the short-term and push to see more patients online when possible. Foreign workers were a big part of the strategy to fill 1,000 open nurse roles across Sanford Health in the next few years. “We were counting on those international nurses,” she added.
Roller coaster
Karissa Canlas is one of them. The 37-year-old was supposed to be in Fargo, North Dakota, by now, working at Sanford Health’s hospital there. Instead, she’s stuck in her home country of the Philippines, working U.S. hours processing claims for a health insurer.
“It puts a stop to everything you’ve been planning. It’s really like a roller coaster ride for us workers who are here still waiting,” Canlas said in a Zoom interview from her home in Manila, where she lives with her husband and 2-year-old son. “I’m so close — that’s why it’s so painful.”
It takes several years to sponsor an employee on a green card. And it’s expensive, with starting costs of around $10,000 per applicant, not including skills and language training, flights, housing and other fees.
Patty Jeffrey, president of the American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment — which represents most industry staffing firms — said that among member companies, roughly 10,000 foreign nurses have been affected by the retrogression.
“It’s going to become a pretty bad situation,” Jeffrey said. “There’s already a shortage across the board — and then enter the visa retrogression.”
To fill the gap, Sanford Health plans to hire so-called travelers, or nurses who travel across the country for short-term contracts. But they cost about three times the roughly $39 hourly wage nationwide for regular nurses. While the temporary staff helps, it makes it tough to provide a consistent standard of care, according to Theresa Larson, the network’s vice president of nursing in Fargo.
Artificial intelligence
Sanford Health is also trying non-human options. Denny Sanford, the billionaire founder of First Premier Bank and namesake of the hospital network, invested $350 million in technological upgrades.
The health network uses “virtual sitters,” where cameras allow one nurse to monitor up to 16 patients at a time on-screen. Sanford Health also partnered with software company Flexwise to deploy an artificial-intelligence tool that predicts patient load and schedules accordingly.
The health network, which serves more than one million patients, is also piloting a program to bring two-room clinics to small towns, where a nurse provides basic care and connects with physicians via computer as needed. Next year, they also plan to open a facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that will serve as a hub for all this telehealth and virtual care. “There isn’t a cheap solution for us out there,” Larson said.
Indeed, these expensive solutions are out of reach for many hospitals. As many as two-thirds of the nation’s hospitals likely ended last year in debt, double the share from the end of 2019, according to the American Hospital Association. Nearly 30% of all U.S. rural hospitals are at risk of closing due to financial pressures, according to 2023 data from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform.
All this advanced technology also has its limits.
Hands-on
One afternoon in October at Sanford Health’s behavioral health unit in Fargo, four nurses gathered around a patient experiencing a breakdown.
Here, the hospital treats patients experiencing acute mental conditions like schizophrenia. The single-floor facility has been outfitted with smooth, harm-reduction door handles and accessing it requires passing through two separate sets of security doors. The 24-hour video surveillance is no replacement for hands-on treatment and monitoring by nurses.
Andrew Hidalgo, 40, is one of the nurses on the floor. A new arrival from Manila, he works about 36 hours a week. Sanford Health’s facilities are more advanced than the ones he’s used back home in the Philippines, where he struggled to find hospital work.
International nurses like Hidalgo are overrepresented in behavioral health, a grueling, sometimes dangerous job. “I cannot control what will happen every time I’m working but I can control my attitude,” Hidalgo said from a small meeting room at the facility. “I think about my family and what future I can give them.”
Hidalgo spends most of his time interacting directly with patients, about five per shift. As he walks down hallways, he waves to them and they call out his name. “You need to have a connection with your patients, in order for you to gain their trust,” he said.
Waiting game
Relying on internationally educated nurses like Hidalgo is only part of the solution, according to American Nurses Association President Jennifer Mensik Kennedy.
At the heart of the issue is nurse turnover, which still runs about 27% across the U.S. Kennedy’s organization presented more than 100 recommendations to fix the leading causes, including better safety policies and flexible scheduling, and hospitals have been slow to accept them, she said.
“We have to fix our working environment,” she said. “Why would we expect to be able to provide a less than good work environment for anybody, whether you’re foreign educated or U.S. educated?”
Back in Manila, Canlas tries to be optimistic despite the uncertainty. Her best friend, Kristel Saldivar, made it to Fargo in May and is preparing for her first North Dakota winter.
“Sometimes you question is it really God’s will for me to go to the States? But it’s my dream,” Canlas said. “So you don’t have any choice but to wait.”
Two lower courts have refused to throw out fines U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and two other Republicans received after they refused to wear masks on the House floor during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Now, the trio has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their case.
Greene and her co-defendants, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, each faced financial penalties after refusing to mask up during floor votes in 2021. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had implemented an escalating fine system for infractions.
While Massie and Norman protested only briefly, Greene continued to show up for votes without a mask for most of 2021 and into 2022. She eventually accumulated more than $100,000 in fines, which were docked from her $174,000 annual salary.
Greene, who said she declined to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, has downplayed the impact of the pandemic and accused Democratic elected officials of abusing authority during the period of lockdowns and mandates. She currently serves on a House select committee reviewing the government response to COVID-19.
In March 2022, a U.S. district judge in Washington threw out the lawmakers’ case. The judge rejected their argument that the fines amounted to an illegal reduction in their annual salary and said Pelosi and her staff cannot be sued for decisions made in their government capacity.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld that ruling in June. Now, the trio’s attorney is making some of those same arguments to the Supreme Court in hopes that enough justices will agree that their case deserves another look.
With Republicans now in the majority in the U.S. House, it is unclear who will respond on behalf of the former speaker, who remains in office but as a rank-and-file member. The deadline to do so is Dec. 27.
Eventually, the case will be passed along to justices and placed on the agenda for discussion at one of their private conferences. If justices agree to review the case, it will be scheduled for oral arguments in the coming months.
But the petition is a long shot. The Supreme Court receives 5,000 to 6,000 petitions for case reviews each term but usually agrees to hear 60 to 70 cases.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard a conservative challenge to Congress’ broad power to tax corporate wealth — a case that could shield wealthy Americans who invest their money overseas.
During two hours of argument, most of the justices said they wanted to resolve the tax dispute narrowly without making major changes in the law. But they also revealed a deep disagreement over the federal government’s taxing power.
The 16th Amendment in 1913 said Congress had the power to “collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.” That Progressive-era amendment was adopted to reverse a conservative Supreme Court ruling from 1890 that had struck down income taxes.
Undeterred, the court’s conservative majority in 1920 sharply limited the government’s taxing authority by ruling that wealth held in stocks could not be taxed as income if the taxpayer had not “realized or received any income” from their stock holdings.
That century-old dispute was at the center of Tuesday’s argument. Should federal income taxes be limited to “realized” gains, such as stock dividends and capital gains? Or can Congress continue to assess taxes on major investors in partnerships and corporations, even if they did not receive an annual share of the profits?
Washington lawyer Andrew Grossman urged the conservative majority to rule broadly that “unrealized gains are not income” and may not be taxed. “This is an essential check on Congress’ power to tax property,” he said.
He was representing Charles and Kathleen Moore, a Washington state couple who in 2005 invested $40,000 in a company in India that makes farm equipment. The company made healthy profits, but they did not receive dividends.
When the Republican-controlled Congress passed tax cuts in 2017, it included a one-time “mandatory repatriation tax” for American investors in foreign corporations because they would benefit from other changes in the law. This provision was due to bring in $330 billion.
The Moores paid their $14,729 tax bill and then sued. Their case, Moore vs. United States, put a spotlight on the question of whether the Supreme Court would prohibit new “wealth taxes” that have been proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and other progressives.
U.S. Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth B. Prelogar strongly defended Congress’ taxing power on Tuesday and said investors have long been required to pay taxes on their shares of corporate wealth, even if they received no dividends. She said the 1920 decision limiting taxes on “unrealized” income has not been followed in later rulings, and the court should not return to it now.
She said it “would cause a sea change” in the tax code and “cost several trillion dollars in lost tax revenue” if the court were to strike down the taxes on undistributed business earnings.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out the 16th Amendment does not include such a strict limit based on the idea of “realization.” It says taxes may be imposed on incomes “from whatever source derived.”
At a key moment in the argument, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh suggested the tax paid by the Moores could be upheld on the grounds that they were major shareholders in a company that had annual profits.
“There was realized income here, and it can be attributed to the shareholders,” he said. “We have long held Congress may attribute the income of the corporation to the shareholders.”
Afterward, several justices said the court could rule narrowly by following Kavanaugh’s proposal.
A NYPD captain who commanded a Brooklyn police precinct has been charged with an assault in New Jersey that left a woman with “serious injuries,” prosecutors said Thursday.
Capt. Hariton Marachilian faces counts of kidnapping, assault, criminal restraint and criminal coercion in the Dec. 10, 2022, incident in Paterson, the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release. The most serious charge in the criminal complaint, first-degree kidnapping, under New Jersey law carries a possible penalty of 15 to 30 years in prison.
Prosecutors say they will ask that Marachilian be held while awaiting trial. He was due to appear in court in Paterson on Thursday.
Marachilian, the president of the NYPD’s Middle East & Turkic Society, was suspended by the NYPD Nov. 30 and arrested Dec. 1 after the department learned a warrant for his arrest had been issued, said a Police Department source. He was held at Rikers Island until he was transported to New Jersey on Wednesday.
The name of Marachilian’s victim was withheld in accord with New Jersey law.
Marachilian and a police source told the New York Daily News last week that the NYPD removed him as commander of the 90th Precinct in Williamsburg, stripped him of his gun and badge, and moved him to a desk job after a New Jersey woman filed an order of protection against him.
The woman, a belly dancer, had performed at events for the Turkic & Middle East Society, Marachilian said. He claimed she had misinterpreted the meaning of their relationship.
”She thought it was more than what it was,” Marachilian told the Daily News in an interview Nov. 29, the day before his arrest. The woman “found out I was still married — that’s what sparked her anger.
“She alleged a verbal dispute,” Marichilian said. “But I’m confident — my lawyer is confident — that it will be thrown out. There’s nothing there.”
Marachilian, who joined the NYPD in 2004, also told the Daily News he had just filed his retirement papers.
Upon his arrest Nov. 30, the NYPD suspended Marachilian without pay, putting his pension and other benefits at risk if he leaves the department while still under investigation.
Lawyer Joshua Stevens, who represented Marachilian at his arraignment in New York City before he was sent to Rikers Island, said the captain “surrendered to local authorities and has been fully cooperative.”
Marachilian’s New Jersey lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
The belly dancer referred requests for comment to her lawyer, who said he had no comment.
It wasn’t clear if she is the victim Marachilian allegedly attacked last December, or if the woman is someone else.
Marachilian was removed from commanding the 90th Precinct in July.
In August, the NYPD did the same to the commanding officer of the 50th Precinct in the Bronx, Capt. Filastine Srour. She moved from commanding the precinct that covered Riverdale and other sections of the western Bronx and was transferred to an office.
Marachilian said Srour is like his “little sister.”
Sources said she could face departmental charges, possibly for unauthorized computer searches related to her relationship with Marachilian.
Srour didn’t respond to a request for comment and Chris Monahan, head of the Captains Endowment Association, said he had no comment on either Srour or Marachilian.
In his phone interview with the Daily News, Marachilian said he wanted to retire to spend more time with his family — not because he did anything wrong.
“If there was an issue I would have left right away, when I was modified,” he said. “I’m leaving to raise my kids, basically.
“In the end, the only people who remember you work late are your kids.”
Marachilian has had disciplinary and legal troubles related to his police career.
In 2022, another cop, Capt. Sharon Balli, settled for $800,000 a lawsuit in which she accused a top police commander of not investigating claims of sexual harassment she made against other cops, including Marachilian.
Balli claimed that when Marachilian was assigned to Manhattan South Narcotics, Marachilian told her she needed “more sex in her life.” “Sex is good for stress,” Marachilian allegedly told her.
Marachilian was transferred out of Manhattan South Narcotics in 2020.
