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Judge Drops Terrorism Charges Against Luigi - The Wednesday AM Quickie 9/17/25

By Whitney Curry Wimbish —

And now a PSA. If you bought some Kirkland bubbly at Costco recently you should probably get rid of it because those bottles unexpectedly and spontaneously shatter and the company is recalling them in multiple states. Sad. Corey is back tomorrow. - Whitney

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THE BIG NEWS

Judge Drops Worst Charges Against Luigi 

A judge dismissed the state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione yesterday, including one count of first-degree murder that could have locked him up for life without parole for the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, the Daily News, NBC News and the NYT reported. New York State Judge Gregory Carro said the evidence supporting the terrorism charge was “legally insufficient.” 

“While the People place great emphasis on defendant’s ‘ideological’ motive, there is no indication in the statute that a murder committed for ideological reasons (in this case, the defendant’s apparent desire to draw attention to what he perceived as inequities or greed within the American health care system), fits within the definition of terrorism, without establishing the necessary element of an intent to intimidate or coerce,” Carro wrote. 

The ruling “has no bearing” on a separate federal case against Mangione, the Daily News reported. The Justice Department wants the death penalty. Mangione also faces second-degree murder, a charge that comes with an indeterminate sentence of 25 years to life. He will appear before Carro again on Dec. 1, almost exactly a year after the CEO was killed. 

Dozens of people showed up in front of the courthouse to support Mangione, holding “Free Luigi” signs and wearing Mario Bros. Luigi gear. Thousands of people have donated to his legal defense fund, which has surpassed $1.2 million, and the conversation about unaffordable healthcare in the United States has only gotten louder, thanks to the GOP’s deadly funding cuts that slash Medicare and Medicaid, and have already shuttered hospitals around the country. Meanwhile, insurance companies have continued to get rich, including UnitedHealthcare. In July, the company had such a rosy outlook that it announced it will make more money this year than it previously anticipated, adjusting its earning expectations from $445.5 billion to $448 billion. It expects next year to be even better. 

UN Says Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza

Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a United Nations inquiry commission said Tuesday, the BBC and NPR reported. The UN’s new report, written by a team of independent experts, found Israel has committed four of five genocidal acts defined under international law, including “killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.” The report also “cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence of genocidal intent.” According to NPR, one of the experts, Chris Sidoti, “said he hoped that the report would reach people in Israel, insisting they had been ‘betrayed’ by the government” in its refusal to rescue Israeli hostages and its perpetration of its “genocidal war.” Israel did not cooperate with the UN experts’ investigation and began a ground invasion Monday night to seize Gaza City. 

Most Domestic Terrorists Are Far-Right, Deleted DOJ Study Found 

Pamela Bondi’s Department of Justice removed from its website a study “showing that white supremacist and far-right violence ‘continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism’ in the United States,” 404 Media found. The study by the National Institute of Justice is saved via the Wayback Machine. Per 404 Media:

“The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance,” reads a message on the page where the study was formerly hosted. “During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
Shortly after Donald Trump took office he issued an executive order that forced government agencies to scrub their sites of any mention of “diversity,” “gender,” “DEI,” and other “forbidden words” and perceived notions of “wokeness.” The executive order impacted every government agency, including NASA, and was a huge waste of engineers’ time.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • GOP Releases 7-Week Stopgap Funding Bill Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is trying to cut Democrats off at the pass and discourage them from shutting down the government to reverse spending cuts; he said there’s “zero chance” Republicans would consider that and said such a debate is “a December policy issue, not a September funding issue.” Democrats should call his bluff. via NPR. 
  • Google Secretly Gave Student’s Gmail Account Info to ICE The tech giant turned over the information of a Cornell University graduate student without telling him or giving him the chance to appeal. via The Intercept.
  • Trump Sues New York Times for $15 Billion, Calling it a ‘Mouthpiece’ for Dems The wannabe autocrat’s defamation claim comes two months after he sued the WSJ for reporting on the existence of the unsettling drawing of a torso. via The Guardian.
  • Hong Kong Teens Who Peed in Hotpot Broth Must Pay More than $300,000 Their names are Wu and Tang, they’re 17 years old, one of them posted a video of their Act of Pee online, and now they have to pay up and apologize. via NBC News. 

SOME NUMBER

$10 billion

That’s the value of deals cooked up between the US and the UK ahead of Trump’s trip across the pond. The countries will celebrate their “special relationship” with a new “Transatlantic taskforce” that will benefit financial services, tech and energy companies. According to Reuters, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are along for the trip, and Google said it would invest 5 billion pounds to build a new data center near London so AI can guzzle up more energy for our increasingly depressing rolling blackout- and slop-filled future. 

ON THE SHOW TODAY

9/17: Emma is hosting the show solo today, and the guests are Michelle Eisen, organizing member of Starbucks Workers United, who will discuss the recent union busting efforts by Starbucks and a potential strike; and Dr. Zachary J. Foster, historian of Palestine and contributor to the Palestine Nexus newsletter.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Trump's "Radical Right Vs Radical Left" Narrative

Republicans want a war.

Bill Maher RIPS Ben Shapiro's Baseless Accusations About Kirk Suspect

Normally the FBI director doesn’t just say whatever goes through his podcast-addled brain.

PARTING WORDS

“I think you’re going to see more and more how families are going to be torn apart, how individuals with no criminal history, with pending forms of relief, pending applications are just going to be rounded up.”

--Alexandra Peredo Carroll, director of legal education and advocacy at the Boston-based Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice, speaking about Trump’s ‘Patriot 2.0’ raids in Boston. The administration won’t say how many people agents have detained. The Trump administration is “trying to fit folks into this narrative of being illegal or having broken the law, when in fact, many of these are individuals who are actually going through the legal process,” Carroll said.

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