Supreme Court Sides With Wrongly Deported Migrant
A trial judge had ordered the Trump administration to take steps to return the migrant, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Mueren dos militares en un accidente de avión de entrenamiento en el occidente de México
Associated Press
CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (AP) — Dos militares murieron el jueves al estrellarse una aeronave perteneciente a la Escuela Militar de Aviación en el estado de Jalisco, en el occidente de México.
La Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional dijo en un comunicado que la aeronave de entrenamiento G-120 sufrió “un accidente” tras despegar de la Base Aérea Militar N 5 en el municipio de Zapopan, pero no ofreció más detalles.
En el evento fallecieron dos oficiales que estaban a bordo del avión, señaló el comunicado.
La Comisión de Investigadora y Dictaminadora de Accidentes Aéreos de la Defensa, así como la Inspección y Contraloría General del Ejército y la Fuerza Aérea, iniciaron las investigaciones para determinar las causas del accidente.
En julio del 2022, otros 14 marinos murieron tras desplomarse un helicóptero Black Hawk de la Marina en el estado norteño de Sinaloa durante la operación de captura del narcotraficante mexicano Rafael Caro Quintero, quien fue enviado el pasado febrero a Estados Unidos junto con otros 28 exlíderes de organizaciones criminales.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle acknowledges troubled tech overhaul
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Thursday acknowledged difficulties with the expensive, long-delayed and glitch-ridden computer overhaul of the county’s property tax system, but she insisted the endeavor was worthwhile to get critical county data off a dangerously outdated computer system.
“When I took this job in 2010, county operations were on a mainframe system, which put us maybe in the bottom quarter of counties in the country in terms of our technology,” Preckwinkle said after a county board meeting.
“And we have been working very hard over the last 15 years to upgrade our technology, and have made some substantial improvements in those upgrades,” she said. “We’re about at the point where we’re going to get off the mainframe, which was my goal when I walked in the door.”
The acknowledgment came days after the Tribune and Injustice Watch revealed a long-troubled relationship between county officials and the project’s contractor, Texas-based Tyler Technologies Inc. The investigation found the county’s initial contract lacked key accountability clauses and imposed few consequences for nonperformance, a shortcoming Preckwinkle acknowledged Thursday.
Asked whether she would recommend any other counties hire Tyler for a large project, Preckwinkle said she would tell those government officials to build milestones and penalties into their contract.
“Given our experience with them,” she said. “I think it’s going to be a bumpy ride no matter how you construct the contract.”
Preckwinkle’s technology chief, Tom Lynch, appeared alongside Preckwinkle to also address the contentious relationship with Tyler.
“Was it worth it?” Lynch asked. “I think the better question is, ‘What would have happened if we hadn’t done it?’ The cost of inaction and the risk to the county writ large is gigantic.”
“It’s fair to say none of us have any great love for Tyler,” Lynch said, but added, “we have stuck with the project because their product was the best on the market. That’s not to say that the vendor has been an easy partner to work with.”
Still, Lynch argued that the county board, his office, and other property tax stakeholders “have held this vendor accountable.”
In addition to the property tax systems contract, Tyler inked two other massive deals — one with the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court to digitize county court records and the other with the Illinois Supreme Court to create a unified dashboard linking the appellate courts with the state’s 102 county courthouses. Both deals were reached soon after the county’s property tax deal.
The combined initial $75 million price tag for the three contracts has climbed to more than $185 million. The county first approved the property tax contract in 2015 for $30 million, a cost that has grown to $38 million.
In addition, the county spent $80 million on upkeep to the old mainframe and to watchdog the troubled Tyler contract, bringing the total taxpayer cost so far to $265 million for all three deals, the investigation found.
While the project has been long delayed, all of the county’s offices are expected to be off of legacy and mainframe systems by July. Tyler’s upgrade of the county’s property tax offices, which was overseen by the county technology bureau in Preckwinkle’s office, is expected to be fully operational by late May, roughly five years late.
Several hundred other county functions have successfully moved off the mainframe over the last decade. The systems are so old that most of the employees with the best knowledge of legacy technology have retired and “the vendor which manages that legacy environment has increased its cost due to its increased risks,” Lynch said.
Tyler parlayed its three lucrative Illinois contracts to become a national powerhouse in the field of local government technology. The company reported 2024 revenue of $2.1 billion and net income of $263 million.
“This company is a virtual monopoly, and it’s very difficult when you’re dealing with a monopoly sometimes to try to get the service that you need and require. We’ve been pushing them all the way along to provide better service. That’s been a challenge,” Preckwinkle said.
Mark Hawkins, president of Tyler’s property and recording division, attended a county board committee hearing Wednesday but didn’t speak publicly and declined to comment afterward.
The cost overruns, failed rollouts and delays prompted some county leaders to call for Tyler’s ouster years ago. But Preckwinkle and other property tax leaders opted to stay the course to avoid more delays, according to heated correspondence obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Sean Morrison, a Republican and one of a handful of commissioners who has been on the board since the first Tyler contract was inked, said county leaders share the blame for the property tax project going over time and over budget.
“There’s a lot of folks that weren’t playing together well in the sandbox,” he said. The county should have built in clawback provisions or penalties to prevent them from getting “stuck” with Tyler, he said.
The 2015 deal was the largest government contract in Tyler’s history. But company representatives have acknowledged that Cook County’s property tax project is now the most delayed in the company’s history.
Following the 2015 property tax contract, the county added protections to the deal for future negotiations, including a “standard expectation” that vendors are not paid until deliverables are met. The county added that standard in the Circuit Court clerk’s 2017 contract with Tyler, a contract that has cost $48 million so far.
The property tax project is still not finished. Lynch told commissioners at the Wednesday hearing of the county Technology and Innovation Committee that systems testing conducted that day found 27 defects. The Tyler project, he said, “remains in a challenging position, but we are actively testing and addressing the defects that we find through testing, as well as training our employees.”
Following board pressure late last year, Tyler dedicated 12 additional staffers to reach the finish line, he said. Those staffers will remain through testing stages to help each office fix those bugs, Lynch said.
“As we committed to this committee in February, the system will be technically ready in April this month, and the property tax stakeholder offices have each committed to go live in May,” he said.
Leaders of those county offices have raised concerns about further problems threatening to delay the mailing of second-installment property tax bills set to go out this summer.
Scott Smith, Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s chief of staff, told commissioners at Wednesday’s hearing that his staff was planning for any unexpected delays in the hopes of getting bills out on time.
“We are going line-by-line, detail-by-detail, talking about days — and in some cases, hours — about how long processes take … to try to prepare for the unexpected,” Smith said. “Unexpected things are probably going to occur.”
Injustice Watch reporter David Jackson contributed.
Trump Cabinet goes full quack on fluoride and autism
President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. teamed up in a Cabinet meeting Thursday to push more health misinformation.
Discussing autism in children, Trump resurfaced the false claim that external factors like vaccines could be to blame.
“There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this. You stop taking something, you stop eating something or maybe it’s a shot, but something’s causing it,” Trump said.
Meanwhile, Kennedy argued that there is an autism “epidemic” caused by “exposures.”
There is not an epidemic of autism. Because the condition is better understood, it has become easier to diagnose autism in recent years—but people have always been autistic. And there is absolutely no link between autism and vaccines.
This is a long-debunked hoax that has been investigated dozens of times. It does not exist. But Kennedy has spent years promoting a false vaccine-autism link and has even been blamed for deaths related to his unscientific advocacy.
Disturbingly, Kennedy recently hired a fellow anti-vaccine activist to purportedly investigate links between immunization and autism. These links do not exist.
During the meeting, Kennedy also said he was working with EPA administrator Lee Zeldin to change federal rules on the use of fluoride in drinking water.
“I’m working with Lee Zeldin to reassess the fluoride rules based upon the August release by the National Toxicity Program of new science that shows a direct inverse correlation between exposure to fluoride and IQ loss, particularly in children,” Kennedy said.
But the study Kennedy referenced was regarding natural exposure to fluoride, not fluoride that’s added to drinking water. Attacking fluoridation is a long-time obsession of right-wing conspiracy theorists like Kennedy.
The World Health Organization has approved the use of fluoride in drinking water, and studies show that it is a significant deterrent to tooth decay. In areas where fluoridation was halted, dental cavities increased in children. Since the 1940s, conservatives have attacked this practice, arguing that it’s part of a communist plot.
It isn’t.
Kennedy and Trump’s comments come as the country faces the worst measles outbreak in decades. A second unvaccinated child died from measles last week, while Kennedy continues to downplay the need to vaccinate children to protect them from infection.
Americans die while two of the most influential health policy leaders push medical quackery.
Corte Suprema de EEUU ordena al gobierno facilitar el regreso de un hombre deportado por error
WASHINGTON (AP) — La Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos determinó que el gobierno federal debe facilitar el regreso de un hombre de Maryland que fue deportado por error a El Salvador, rechazando la apelación de emergencia del gobierno.
El máximo tribunal estadounidense intervino en el caso de Kilmar Abrego García, un ciudadano salvadoreño que tenía una orden de un tribunal de inmigración que impedía su deportación a su país natal por temor a que enfrentara persecución de pandillas locales.
La jueza federal de distrito, Paula Xinis, había ordenado que Abrego García fuera devuelto a Estados Unidos antes de la medianoche del lunes. Por su parte, el presidente de la Corte Suprema, John Roberts, pausó la orden de Xinis para dar tiempo a la corte de considerar el asunto.
Ese plazo ya ha pasado y los magistrados pidieron a la jueza clarificar su orden, que pedía al gobierno “facilitar y efectuar” el regreso de Abrego García.
El máximo tribunal también indicó que el gobierno federal deberá estar preparada para compartir qué pasos ya ha tomado y qué más podría hacer.
El gobierno afirma que Abrego García es miembro de la pandilla MS-13, aunque nunca ha sido acusado ni condenado por un delito. Sus abogados dijeron que no hay evidencia de que fuera miembro de la MS-13.
El gobierno estadounidense ha admitido que cometió un error al enviarlo a El Salvador, donde está detenido en una prisión notoria, pero también argumentó que ya no podía hacer nada al respecto.
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Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.