Black student dragged from his car and punched by Fla. officers says he was scared

(AP) — A Black college student is still recovering after being punched and dragged from his car by Florida law officers during a traffic stop in February. His lawyers said Wednesday that William McNeil Jr. suffered a concussion and a pierced lip. The encounter has sparked nationwide outrage. Footage that went viral over the weekend shows McNeil asking to speak to a supervisor before officers broke his window and forcibly removed him from the vehicle. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is defending the officers, suggesting the video was shared to create division. The sheriff says the State Attorney’s Office cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing.

Judge bars ICE from immediately taking Abrego Garcia into custody if he’s released from jail

(AP) — A federal judge in Maryland has prohibited the Trump administration from taking Kilmar Abrego Garcia into immediate immigration custody if he’s released from jail in Tennessee while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the U.S. government to provide notice of three business days if Immigration and Customs Enforcement intends to deport him. The judge also ordered the government to restore the federal supervision that Abrego Garcia was under before he was wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador in March. That supervision had allowed Abrego Garcia to live and work in Maryland.

9 New Orleans inmates who broke out of jail plead not guilty to escape charges

(AP) — Nine of the 10 men accused of breaking out of a New Orleans jail in May after slipping through a hole behind a toilet and scaling a barbed wire fence have pleaded not guilty to escape charges. The 10th inmate is still at large. The pleas on Wednesday came despite officials repeatedly pointing to video surveillance of the brazen escape, one of the largest jailbreaks in recent U.S. history. All 10 men are charged with simple escape, which is tacked on top of previous criminal counts that initially landed them in jail. Inmate Derrick Groves remains on the lam.

Muscogee Nation court rules descendants of enslaved people are entitled to citizenship

(AP) — The Muscogee Nation Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that two descendants of people once enslaved by the tribe are entitled to tribal citizenship. The court found that the tribal nation’s citizenship board violated an 1866 treaty when it denied the applications of Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy in 2019 because they could not identify a lineal descendant of the tribe. “Are we, as a Nation, bound to treaty promises made so many years ago? Today, we answer in the affirmative, because this is what Mvskoke law demands,” the court wrote in its opinion..