By Devan Cole, CNN

(CNN) — A retired Tennessee law enforcement officer was held in jail for more than a month this fall after police arrested him over a Facebook post of a meme related to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Prosecutors eventually dropped the criminal charge brought against Larry Bushart, but his stint behind bars came to exemplify the country’s tense political and legal climate following the tragedy, when conservatives sought to stymie public discourse about the late controversial figure that it saw as objectionable.

Now, Bushart is suing over his incarceration.

In a 30-page lawsuit filed in federal court in Tennessee, Bushart argues he was unlawfully prosecuted over the meme and that officials violated his free speech rights, targeting him “simply for speaking his mind.”

“It is clearly established that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from arresting people for protected political speech,” lawyers for Bushart wrote in the complaint. He’s being represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Bushart’s legal woes started 10 days after Kirk, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump who worked last year to get him reelected, was fatally shot during an outdoor event at Utah Valley University on September 10. The former police officer shared a meme on Facebook about a vigil being held in Tennessee for Kirk.

“This seems relevant today,” read the meme, which included a photo of Trump and a quote the then-candidate made in 2024 following a shooting at Perry High School in Des Moines, Iowa.

“We have to get over it,” Trump is quoted as saying in the meme.

Four officers came to Bushart’s home the next day, arrested him and took him to jail for “threatening mass violence at a school.” Authorities at the time said that the post was understood locally to be a threat to an area school that has a similar name to the one where the 2024 shooting occurred, according to court records.

Bushart was held behind bars for 37 days because he was unable to pay the $2 million bond imposed on him. In late October, a district attorney in Tennessee moved to drop the single charge brought against him, and he was subsequently released.

“When Mr. Bushart posted the meme, he had no inkling or reason to think that anyone would take it as a threat of violence. And unsurprisingly, defendants … have produced no evidence that any person interpreted the meme as a threat,” the lawsuit states. “In fact, the Perry County School District has no records at all concerning Mr. Bushart or the meme.”

The lawsuit names as defendants Perry County, Tennessee,; Nick Weems, the county’s sheriff; and Jason Morrow, a county investigator involved in the probe into Bushart.

Weems, according to the lawsuit, directed local police to arrest Bushart, and both men “understood” the meme “as political commentary on the debate about guns in America, but orchestrated his arrest anyway.”

CNN has reached out to the county for comment. Weems and Morrow could not be immediately reached for comment.

Bushart is asking for a jury trial in the case, which seeks both monetary and punitive damages for the alleged violations of his rights.

His lawyers said in court papers that their client, who is the primary breadwinner for his house, lost his post-retirement job because of his time in jail and that the episode has stifled his “participation in online political conversation because he is afraid that something like his arrest and incarceration might happen to him again.”

SANTA MARIA, Calif. (KEYT) – The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors has officially denied the transfer of permits necessary to restart oil production locally to Sable Offshore during its meeting Tuesday.

In November, a majority of the Board voted to direct staff to prepare a report supporting the denial of the permit transfers which was adopted after Tuesday's vote.

"There is just too much evidence in the record that shows a pattern of noncompliance and either ignorance of our rules or just blatant disregard," explained Supervisor Lavagnino on his approval of the staff report after approving of the transfers earlier this year.

In February, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors were deadlocked on the permit transfer decision, previously approved by Planning Commission, on a 2-2-1 vote with one member, Supervisor Hartman, recusing herself as one of the involved pipelines lies beneath the property line of her Buellton home.

"They still have a pending application with no action taken on it," said Kelsey Gerckens Buttitta, public information officer for Santa Barbara County following the vote in February. "It hasn’t been approved or denied. It’s now up to Sable to decide what to do next."

In response, Sable Offshore filed a lawsuit in Santa Barbara County Superior Court over the permit transfers alleging violations of the County's Petroleum Code.

County Code Chapter 25B, adopted in 2001, allows for the Board of Supervisors to conduct a review of already-issued Final Development Permits (FDP) for transfers or changes in ownership that have been approved by the County Planning Commission if an appeal is filed.

That code states that after receiving an appeal or appeals of a Planning Commission decision, the Board, "shall affirm, reverse, or modify the planning commission's decision at a public hearing."

February's deadlock vote resulted in no action and the permits remained in limbo.

"The Santa Barbara County Planning Commission approved the change of owner, operator and
guarantor last fall, and the efforts to overturn that ruling failed at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors earlier this year," argued Sable Offshore's Vice President on Environmental and Governmental Affairs Steve Rusch in reference to the County's non-decision. "The law is clear. The Planning Commission approved the permit transfer and its decision stands. Because the permits have yet to be transferred, Sable has asked a court to intervene and transfer the permits without delay."

Sable Offshore noted in its May lawsuit that in 2023, the Planning Commission approved the transfer of permits from Plains Pipeline L.P. to ExxonMobil and its subsidiaries.

That decision was also appealed under County Code Chapter 25B and on Sep. 19, 2023, the Board of Supervisors approved the Planning Commission's decision with Supervisor Capps noting during the hearing that it was important that the, "County permit actually matches the company that owns the pipeline."

Supe

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — Hours after a federal judge ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia released last week, an immigration judge — who is a Department of Justice employee — entered a document into the record correcting what they called a “scrivener’s error.”

What the immigration judge was describing as an error was the absence of any deportation order for Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who entered the US illegally around 2011 and whose detention and now-reversed rendition to Venezuela made him a public barometer for how far the Trump administration can push its aggressive anti-migrant agenda. Despite years of immigration proceedings dating back to 2019 and months of back-and-forth from Trump officials about which country he should be deported to, US District Judge Paula Xinis recently found that no final deportation order seemed to have been issued for Abrego Garcia in the first place.

The absence of this essential document, the immigration judge wrote in the December 11 filing, was a mere oversight. The official who was adjudicating Abrego Garcia’s case in 2019 had, the filing claimed, “erroneously omitted” the deportation order, so this new immigration judge — ostensibly having noticed this six years later — was now amending the record to retroactively add language ordering Abrego Garcia removed to El Salvador.

Specifically, the immigration judge invoked the narrow legal doctrine of the scrivener’s error. A scrivener — from the Latin word scriba, meaning scribe, via Norman French — is someone who transcribes official documents, like the titular character of Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener.”

While Bartleby’s occupation is all but obsolete today, the term endures to refer to mistakes in legal documents “of a very small kind that are easily reformed, involving the misprinting of a word or that sort of thing,” said Bryan Garner, a lexicographer and co-author of “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts” with former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

A scrivener’s error is typically a typo, like a lawyer or legislator writing “third partly” instead of “third party” or using the word “insure” in place of “ensure.” When this kind of minor mistake occurs, when it’s clear from context that the text differs from what the writer meant, judges can correct it, explained Ryan Doerfler, a professor of law at Harvard University who published a law article about the scrivener’s error.

But in Doerfler’s estimation, the absence of a deportation order in Abrego Garcia’s case is no scrivener’s error. Evan Bernick, an associate professor of law at Northern Illinois University, agreed: “You’re not fixing a typo. You’re literally creating a new order, out of nothing, that affects somebody’s rights.”

Garner declined to comment on the specifics of Abrego Garcia’s case, though he suggested the claim wouldn’t hold up in court. “For an appellate court to declare as a matter of law that something is a scrivener’s error that is anything beyond a mere, small inadvertence would be extraordinary,” he said.

For now, Judge Xinis has blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to re-detain Abrego Garcia. Though she didn’t weigh in on the newly created deportation order, she repeatedly set it off in quotes, referring to it as a “new ‘order’” or “this newest ‘order.’”

In “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Melville writes, “It is, of course, an indisp

Por Cesar Lopez, CNN en Español

La FIFA dio a conocer un monto récord de premios para la Copa Mundial de la FIFA 2026, a llevarse a cabo en Canadá, Estados Unidos y México, en medio de varios anuncios que promueven iniciativas para el desarrollo del fútbol juvenil y la creación de un fondo de recuperación posconflicto.

El Consejo de la FIFA aprobó una contribución financiera sin precedentes de US$ 727 millones para las selecciones participantes del Mundial 2026, un 50 % más que en la edición anterior, Qatar 2022, según publicó en un comunicado el máximo organismo del fútbol.

De este monto, afirmó que US$ 655 millones se repartirán como premio entre las 48 selecciones participantes, siendo el campeón el mayor beneficiario.

Cada selección se asegurará US$ 10,5 millones, US$ 9 por acceder a la fase de grupos y otros US$ 1,5 para gastos varios de preparación.

El Consejo de la FIFA también confirmó la distribución de plazas para los torneos de los Juegos Olímpicos de fútbol de Los Ángeles 2028 y anunció que la primera Copa Mundial de Clubes Femenina se celebrará del 5 al 30 de enero de 2028.

Para la próxima justa olímpica, como se anunció en abril de 2025, el fútbol masculino tendrá una reducción de 16 a 12 selecciones en la rama masculina y en la rama femenina pasará de 12 a 16.

La FIFA confirmó las plazas para estas justas según las confederaciones:

-Fútbol Masculino: AFC (2), CAF (2), Concacaf (1), CONMEBOL (2), OFC (1), UEFA (3), Estados Unidos (por ser anfitrión).

-Fútbol Femenino: AFC (2,5), CAF (2), Concacaf (3), CONMEBOL (2,5), OFC (1), UEFA (4), Estados Unidos (por ser anfitrión).

También tras la reunión del Consejo se anunciaron nuevos torneos para impulsar el talento juvenil en 2026. El próximo año se lanzará un nuevo formato de torneos Sub-15 en estilo festival, abiertos a las 211 asociaciones miembro.

La primera edición será para equipos masculinos y en 2027 será para equipos femeninos. A partir de 2028, ambos géneros competirán anualmente en torneos separados, con partidos más cortos, campos reducidos y equipos de 7 a 9 jugadores.

Por otro lado, se creó un fondo de recuperación posconflicto para apoyar a comunidades que buscan su reconstrucción a través del fútbol.

El fondo estará abierto a donaciones de terceros y, según la FIFA, bajo una estricta supervisión.

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The post ¿Cuánto dinero recibirá el campeón del Mundial 2026? FIFA revela una cifra millonaria para el ganador y todas las selecciones appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Evan Perez, CNN

(CNN) — On Sunday morning, as investigators rushed to prepare a search warrant for a hotel room in Coventry, Rhode Island, FBI Director Kash Patel broke the news on social media celebrating that a person of interest had been detained in the Brown University mass shooting.

Around the same time, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley announced the man’s detention from a podium, telling residents they can “breathe a little easier.”

It turned out to be the wrong man.

Patel’s announcement, made in a post on X, highlighted the role of the FBI in using cellphone tower data to find the alleged person of interest. By that time, however, some investigators already knew that the person of interest’s cellphone was never identified at the scene of the shooting, casting doubt on the man’s involvement, three people familiar with the investigation told CNN.

Within hours, those doubts grew as investigators determined that tests on shell casings found at the scene of the shooting didn’t match the DNA of the person of interest, two of the sources said. Two handguns found in the hotel room of the person of interest also didn’t match ballistics of the casings, and a residue test on the man’s hands came back negative, the sources said.

The man detained was released later Sunday.

“It’s fair to say that there is no basis to consider him a person of interest,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said Sunday of the man who was detained. “So that’s why he’s being released.”

To be sure, the Brown University shooting is a local and state-led investigation and the FBI’s role is to assist. After tensions over the weekend, officials regrouped Monday and Patel dispatched more resources to Providence to support the investigation.

The FBI is now offering a $50,000 reward for tips leading to the identification and conviction of the shooter.

Patel’s Sunday night post on X, saying, “We activated the Cellular Analysis Survey Team, to provide critical geolocation capabilities,” projected precise investigative work and confidence that investigators were homing in on the person responsible.

Such cellphone tower data, which shows precise locations and movement of phones connecting to towers nearby, has been key to finding suspects in crimes, including the man charged in the probe of the Washington, DC, pipe bombs placed near the RNC and DNC headquarters in 2021.

The FBI director’s social media post angered local and state officials in Rhode Island who viewed it as premature and damaging to the probe.

A person familiar with the FBI director’s social media post said that Patel was referring to the use of the CAST data to pinpoint the person’s location at the hotel.

The FBI declined to comment.

The tweet and its backlash echoed an earlier episode in which Patel prematurely announced an arrest in the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Prior to becoming FBI director, Patel cultivated a large MAGA following with frequent podcast appearances and social media posts attacking the FBI with “deep state” conspiracies. Now, he continues to be quick to post on social media, even amid ongoing investigations.

Asked at a Senate hearing about his erroneous social media post in the Kirk investigation, Patel acknowledged