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US

Minnesota governor signs bill codifying ‘fundamental right’ to abortion into law

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CNN
 — 

Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law Tuesday that enshrines the “fundamental right” to access abortion in the state.

Abortion is already legal in Minnesota, but in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the Protect Reproductive Options Act goes a step further by outlining that every person has the fundamental right to make “autonomous decisions” about their own reproductive health as well as the right to refuse reproductive health care.

“This is very simple, very right to the point,” Walz said Tuesday on “CNN Tonight.” “We trust women in Minnesota, and that’s not what came out of the [Supreme Court’s] decision, so I think it’s critically important that we build a fire wall.”

With the passage of the bill, Minnesota is now the first state to codify abortion via legislative action since Roe v. Wade was reversed, the office of the bill’s lead author in Minnesota’s state Senate, told CNN.

“Last November, Minnesotans spoke loud and clear: They want their reproductive rights protected – not stripped away,” Walz said in a news release. “Today, we are delivering on our promise to put up a firewall against efforts to reverse reproductive freedom. No matter who sits on the Minnesota Supreme Court, this legislation will ensure Minnesotans have access to reproductive health care for generations to come. Here in Minnesota, your access to reproductive health care and your freedom to make your own health care decisions are preserved and protected.”

The bill states that local government cannot restrict a person’s ability to exercise the “fundamental right” to reproductive freedom. It also clarifies that this right extends to accessing contraception, sterilization, family planning, fertility services and counseling regarding reproductive health care.

“The Pro Act also goes beyond just granting those rights to abortion, it really says all reproductive healthcare decisions aren’t our business, including access to contraception, including access to really anything that is related to personal and private decisions about your reproductive life,” Megan Peterson, the executive director of pro-abortion rights campaign UnRestrict Minnesota, told CNN following Walz’s signing of the bill.

In a letter to Walz ahead of the signing, Republican legislature leaders argued that the bill went too far and urged the governor to veto what they called “an extreme law.”

“As the PRO Act was being rushed through the legislature, Republicans offered reasonable amendments with guardrails to protect women and children,” state Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson and House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth wrote, “Sadly, each of these amendments were struck down by a Democrat majority.”

In 1995, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Gomez that abortion was a fundamental right protected under the state’s constitution. The Protect Reproductive Options Act ensures that even in the event of a new state Supreme Court reversing the ruling, the right to abortion will be protected under state law.

“By passing this law, Minnesotans will have a second layer of protection for their existing reproductive rights. A future Minnesota Supreme Court could overturn Doe v. Gomez, but with the PRO Act now in State law, Minnesotans will still have a right to Reproductive healthcare,” Luke Bishop, a spokesperson for Democratic State Sen. Jennifer McEwen, the bill’s author in the Senate, told CNN over email.

Following the governor’s signature of the bill, the White House applauded Minnesota’s efforts, pointing to the popular support for women’s rights to make their own health care decisions.

“Americans overwhelmingly support a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions, as so clearly demonstrated last fall when voters turned out to defend access to abortion – including for ballot initiatives in California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

“While Congressional Republicans continue their support for extreme policies including a national abortion ban, the President and Vice President are calling on Congress to restore the protections of Roe in federal law,” she wrote. “Until then, the Biden-Harris Administration will continue its work to protect access to abortion and support state leaders in defending women’s reproductive rights.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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Entertainment

Ghislaine Maxwell claims Prince Andrew photo with Virginia Giuffre is ‘fake’

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CNN
 — 

Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has said a decades-old photograph of Prince Andrew with his sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is “fake,” in a series of interviews from prison.

The disgraced British socialite is currently serving a 20-year sentence in US federal prison for carrying out a years-long scheme with her longtime confidante Jeffrey Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.

Speaking from a Florida jail to UK broadcaster TalkTV, which aired a special program on Monday night, the 61-year-old – who also appears in the photograph – said she doesn’t “believe it happened.”

“I don’t believe it is real for a second, in fact, I’m sure it’s not. There has never been an original. I don’t believe it happened and certainly, the way it’s described would have been impossible. I don’t have any memory of going to Tramp [nightclub],” Maxwell said.

Prince Andrew, who is one of King Charles III’s younger brothers, has strenuously denied Giuffre’s allegation that he was introduced to her at London’s Tramp nightclub in 2001 with Maxwell, before then-17-year-old Giuffre was allegedly forced to perform sex acts with the British royal.

Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in a US court in 2021 against Andrew, who is also known as the Duke of York, alleging sexual abuses while she was a minor on multiple occasions. Andrew later settled out of court for an undisclosed figure without admitting any wrongdoing and the case was dismissed. Still, the allegations against the senior royal severely tarnished his reputation. He stepped back from royal duties in late 2019 and was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages last year.

Maxwell appeared to show little remorse to Epstein’s victims and offered no apology in the interviews broadcast Monday. Instead, she said the victims should “take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities who allowed” the billionaire pedophile to die in prison.

Maxwell also told TalkTV that she believes Epstein was murdered – a conspiracy theory for which she offered no evidence. Authorities ruled Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing underage girls.

Regarding the victims, Maxwell said, “I hope they have some closure via the judicial process that took place.”

Maxwell acknowledged during her sentencing hearing last year that she had been convicted in the sex trafficking scheme but stopped short of taking responsibility. She did not testify in her defense during the trial in late 2021, which ended with her conviction on five counts, including sex trafficking of a minor.

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Health

First cases of gonorrhea resistant to several classes of antibiotics identified in the U.S.

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CNN
 — 

Public health officials says they have found two cases of gonorrhea that appear to have reduced susceptibility to every kind of antibiotic available to treat them. It’s the first time strains of gonorrhea this resistant to antibiotics have been identified in the United States.

Increased sexual activity during the pandemic, coupled with fewer people getting routine health screenings, supercharged the spread of sexually transmitted infections around the world.

Those infections, including gonorrhea, are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics available to treat them, a problem that is becoming a dire threat to public health.

Globally, infections that are resistant to antibiotics kill approximately 700,000 people each year. That number is expected to rise to 10 million deaths per year by 2050 if steps aren’t taken to stop the spread of resistant organisms.

Experts say it was never a question of when this highly resistant gonorrhea strain would reach the US, but when.

“The concern is that this particular strain has been circulating around the world, so it was only a matter of time before it would hit the US,” says Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a clinical professor of public health at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

“It’s a reminder that gonorrhea is becoming increasingly resistant, increasingly hard to treat. We don’t have any new antibiotics. We haven’t had new antibiotics to treat gonorrhea for years and we really need a different treatment strategy,” said Klausner, who sits on the CDC workgroup for gonorrhea treatment.

Gonorrhea is sexually transmitted, and one of the most commonly diagnosed infections in the US. It is caused by the bacteria Niesseria gonorrhoeae, which can infect the mucous membranes in the genitals, rectum, throat and eyes.

People can be infected without having symptoms. Left untreated, the infection can cause pelvic pain and infertility in women and blindness in newborns.

In addition to reduced susceptibility to ceftriaxone, the strains of gonorrhea identified in Massachusetts also showed reduced susceptibility to cefixime and azithromycin; the strains were resistant to ciprofloxacin, penicillin and tetracycline, according to a clinical alert sent to physicians by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

The MDPH says it hasn’t yet found any connection between the two cases.

In 2021, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended giving a double dose of the antibiotic ceftriaxone in an effort to overcome the bacteria’s building resistance to this antibiotic, and that seems to have worked in these cases, but that antibiotic is the last line of defense against this infection, and experts say a new approach is needed.

Klausner is hoping to win FDA approval for a test that would tailor antibiotic treatment to the genetic susceptibilities of the particular strain of gonorrhea that is infecting a person. This is called resistance-guided treatment, and Klausner says it works for HIV, TB and some other hospital acquired infections, but it’s never really been tried for gonorrhea.

This strain of gonorrhea has been previously seen in Asia-Pacific countries and in the United Kingdom, but not in the US. A genetic marker common to these two Massachusetts residents was also previously seen in a case in Nevada, though that strain retained sensitivity to at least one class of antibiotics.

The first symptoms of gonorrhea are often painful urination, abdominal or pelvic pain, increased vaginal discharge, or bleeding between periods, but many infections are asymptomatic, according to the CDC, making routine screenings important for catching the infection.

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US

Women living in states with abortion bans suffer greater economic insecurity

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New York
CNN
 — 

Women living in states that restrict or ban abortion face greater economic insecurity than those living in states where they have access, new research finds.

Since the nearly seven months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, half of all states – 26 in total – have implemented new abortion restrictions or all-out bans.

In nearly all 26 states, there are lower minimum wages, unionization levels, access to Medicaid and unemployment benefits, as well as higher rates of incarceration than states with more lenient abortion policies, according to new research by the Economic Policy Institute.

“These economic policies all compound on each other. And you add to that an abortion ban, it just compounds this financial stress, this economic insecurity,” said Asha Banerjee, an economic analyst with the institute and the author of the report.

Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a similar argument to the Financial Oversight Council.

“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Yellen told lawmakers in May.

The lack of abortion access has the greatest economic impact on women of color, especially those already in dire financial conditions, according to Banerjee.

“In many of these states, especially the states which have banned abortion, many of the women who are facing economic challenges already are also women of color,” she said.

Raising the minimum wage is a powerful tool that has been known to have significant impact on closing racial income gaps. But nearly two-thirds of abortion restrictive states have a $7.25 minimum wage, the lowest legal hourly wage for most workers in the United States.

The average minimum wage across the 26 states is $8.17, lower than the average $11.92 for states with no restrictions. (Many of those states also have a higher cost of living, however.)

“If the person denied an abortion is also working a minimum wage job, the negative economic effect is compounded,” the report states.

Many of those low-wage jobs also do not offer benefits like health care, which is why access to Medicaid is critical.

“Medicaid is a lifeline for low-income families and low-income women when jobs might not offer adequate healthcare. Medicaid in the immediate postpartum period is especially important,” said Banerjee.

Just 12 states have not expanded Medicaid benefits since the 2010 Obamacare law, and all of them have restrictive abortion policies.

However, some states with total abortion bans, with few exceptions, have expanded Medicaid, including Missouri. And in five other abortion restrictive states (Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota later this year) residents voted to expand the benefit.

Access to unemployment insurance is another key indicator of a state’s commitment to economic support for residents. Forty-two percent of residents have access to unemployment benefits in states that have abortion protections. Compare that to 30% in states with abortion restrictions.

Even if unemployment is accessible, the amount differs from state to state. For example, in Mississippi, a state with a total abortion ban with limited exceptions, weekly unemployment checks average $217. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, which has a more protective 24-week abortion ban – checks average $556 weekly.

“When you have unemployment insurance it helps create financial stability. These states which have abortion bans also have really terrible unemployment insurance systems with really low benefits which do not help one support oneself,” said Banerjee.

Although women make up a smaller percentage of those incarcerated than men, it is the economic category with the greatest difference between abortion protected and abortion-restricted states. The rate of incarceration in states with restrictive or total bans on abortion is more than one and a half times higher than the rate of incarceration for states with abortion protections.

“It’s very much a racial justice issue because Black and Hispanic women are very disproportionately incarcerated. And that has huge economic impacts on future earnings and the ability to get a job,” said Banerjee.

In some states with abortion restrictions and higher rates of incarceration – legislation has suggested also criminalizing women, doctors or anyone aiding a woman in seeking an abortion.

“The incarceration argument is especially important because in these states where abortion bans have come into play, there’s a huge criminalization aspect,” said Banerjee.

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World

David Carrick: London Metropolitan Police officer admits to dozens of offenses against women, including 24 cases of rape

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London
CNN
 — 

A serving officer in London’s Metropolitan Police has admitted to 49 offenses, including 24 counts of rape over an 18-year period, reigniting calls for urgent reform in the United Kingdom’s largest police force.

David Carrick appeared at Southwark Crown Court in the British capital Monday to plead guilty to four counts of rape, false imprisonment and indecent assault relating to a 40-year-old woman in 2003, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.

At the Old Bailey criminal court in London last month, Carrick admitted to 43 charges against 11 other women, including 20 counts of rape, between March 2004 and September 2020, according to PA.

A series of recent scandals has shed light on what the UK police watchdog called a culture of misogyny and racism in London’s police service.

In September 2021, Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a case that horrified the nation and sparked debate about violence against women.

The Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Cressida Dick resigned from her post in 2022, after a damning review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct issued 15 recommendations “to change policing practice” in the country.

London’s Metropolitan Police are now investigating as many as 1,000 sex offenses and domestic abuse claims involving approximately 800 of its officers, the force’s Commissioner Mark Rowley admitted Monday.

“That’s 1,000 cases to look at. Some of those will be things of no concern in the end when we look at them because it will be an argument overheard by neighbors where inquiries show there’s nothing to be concerned about,” Rowley said in an interview with UK media.

“But in there, I’m sad to say, there will be some cases where in the past we should have been more assertive and looked to throw officers out and we haven’t done.”

“We are going to turn all those stones over, we’re going to come to the right conclusions and we’ll be ruthless about rooting out those who corrupt our integrity. You have my absolute assurance on that,” he said.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) called Carrick’s case one of the “most shocking” it’s ever seen.

“The scale of the degradation Carrick subjected his victims to is unlike anything I have encountered in my 34 years with the Crown Prosecution Service,” CPS Chief Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said.

“I commend every single woman who courageously shared their traumatic experience and enabled us to bring this case to court and see justice served,” Narwal continued while speaking outside Southwark Crown Court Monday.

The senior investigating officer in the case, Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor, called Carrick’s crimes “truly shocking.”

“The police service is committed to tackling violence against women and girls in all its forms,” Moor said, adding “no one is above the law.”

Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Barbara Gray also apologized on behalf of the police force to all the victims.

Gray said Monday that Carrick “should have been dismissed from the police service a long time ago.”

She later added: “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behavior and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organization. We are truly sorry that Carrick was able to continue to use his role as a police officer to prolong the suffering of his victims.”

“The duration and nature of Carrick’s offending is unprecedented in policing. But regrettably he is not the only Met officer to have been charged with serious sexual offences in the recent past,” she said.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Londoners will be rightly shocked that this man was able to work for the Met for so long and serious questions must be answered about how he was able to abuse his position as an officer in this horrendous manner.”

Khan commented that work to reform the culture and standards of the Met has already started following an interim review and that a new, anonymous police complaints hotline and anti-corruption team has recently been established by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley.

“But more can and must be done,” added Khan on Twitter. “It’s vital that all victims of crime have confidence in our police, and we simply must do more to raise standards and empower police leaders to rid the Met and all other police services of those officers who are clearly unfit to serve.”

Women’s rights organizations called for an inquiry into the Met following Carrick’s case.

UK domestic abuse charity Refuge called Carrick’s crimes “utterly abhorrent.”

“When a man who has been charged with 49 offences, including 24 charges of rape, is a serving police officer, how can women and girls possibly be – or feel – safe,” Refuge tweeted Monday.

UK organization End Violence Against Women also posted on Twitter: “This is an institution in crisis. That Carrick’s pattern of egregious behaviour was known to the Met and they failed to act speaks more loudly than their empty promises to women.”

“Solidarity with the victims & all who are feeling the weight of the traumatic details being reported,” it added.

The British Women’s Equality Party tweeted: “The Met knew about the allegations for TWENTY years. They did nothing as a serial rapist abused his power. They are complicit. Misogyny will never be stripped from the police without a nationwide, statutory inquiry.”

The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights, said on Twitter: “Any act of sexual violence is a disgrace. But it is particularly harmful when, yet again, these crimes have been perpetrated by a person who has additional responsibilities to keep the public safe.”

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Entertainment

How WWE’s Vince McMahon ruthlessly got his job back despite allegations of sexual assault and misuse of company funds

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Washington
CNN
 — 

Professional wrestling is known for its outlandish, dramatic stories that have captivated generations. It’s an athletic soap opera built on emotional drama with wrestlers sometimes scheming in the background for months only to make their move at the opportune moment, drawing crazed reactions from arenas packed with fans who have followed every beat.

But the real-life saga playing out in World Wrestling Entertainment’s corporate office over the last several weeks surpasses even what most of what those performers and their backstage colleagues could dream up.

Vince McMahon, the longtime force behind WWE at the corporate and creative levels, made a shocking return to the company on January 10, nearly six months after announcing his retirement. McMahon was alleged to have used company funds to pay millions to multiple women in order to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct.

But over a series of just a few days last week, McMahon engineered his return to the company’s board of directors, reshaped it by forcing out some members, replaced them with his own allies, and used that new boardroom power to install himself in his old job as executive chairman. His own daughter – the heir apparent to the company who had appeared groomed to take the job for years – resigned.

The stunning and swift developments have the wrestling world reeling, with rumors of a sale burning up Wrestling Twitter and people inside and outside the company wondering what it all means for the future of WWE and professional wrestling itself.

In July, Vince McMahon – an ever-present force in WWE and professional wrestling, the man who remade the business in service of a vision that upended generations of tradition, creating his own hegemony – retired. Or he resigned, depending on who you ask.

It was a moment many wrestling fans and observers never thought would come. The longtime chairman and CEO of WWE was such an intense micromanager that he barely slept, rarely took vacations and almost never stopped putting his own spin on every single aspect of the company’s output. Many longtime followers of the company simply assumed he’d die in the role rather than retire.

But a series of revelations first reported in The Wall Street Journal about hush money payments to multiple women to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct seemed to bring McMahon’s legendary run as the head of wrestling’s most important company to an end. Additional reporting came in December, with additional women accusing McMahon of sexual assault, seemed to cement his status as being permanently gone from WWE.

WWE has always been a family business – Vince McMahon, Sr., handed over the reins to his son in the 1980s – and it seemed set to continue that way. Vince McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie, who only weeks before had taken a leave of absence from the company, stepped into the role of co-CEO with Nick Khan, a longtime executive in the entertainment and media industry.

And Paul Levesque – Stephanie McMahon’s husband and a Hall of Fame professional wrestler himself and better known by his ring name, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or Triple H – assumed the job as the head of creative, putting him in charge of WWE’s storylines and in-ring action, which his father-in-law had long managed.

That moment last summer signaled a sea change in the professional wrestling industry.

Vince McMahon was more akin to a king than a business executive in the world of WWE, his fingerprints on everything. Through his ruthless business practices, he had molded the industry in his image, running most of his competition out of business and turning his company into the destination for pro wrestling. For most of two decades, he had a monopoly on the business.

But his creative output cratered in recent years. Stars who left WWE described a frustrating creative process dominated by McMahon that stifled their visions and led to a homogenized product that felt miles away from the company’s peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

With the vast majority of company revenue coming from TV rights, instead of fans spending money on tickets or pay-per-view events, the need to give the people what they want was replaced by content production. Sometimes it seemed as if Vince McMahon’s creative decisions were meant to antagonize and annoy his audience, appearing to ram home his vision of “sports entertainment” whether they liked it or not.

A turning point for many was the 2015 Royal Rumble event. Fans were clamoring for their favorite Daniel Bryan, one of the most gifted wrestlers on the planet, to win the event’s namesake. To many fans, Bryan’s run symbolized hope that the company would promote their favorite wrestlers instead of McMahon’s chosen ones.

But Bryan was unceremoniously eliminated in the first half of the match. The crowd in Philadelphia booed throughout the second half, chanting Bryan’s name and refusing to celebrate when Roman Reigns – widely seen as McMahon’s choice to be the future of the company despite fan apathy – won.

Shrinking viewership numbers reflected that loss of hope. While TV ratings overall have dropped in the last several years, with some exceptions, WWE’s drop outpaced the general decline in overall viewership and in the key 18-49 demographic, according to Wrestlenomics, a website that tracks the business side of the industry.

Once considered a wrestling genius, critics have more recently come to consider Vince McMahon a creative liability. The elevation of Levesque and the Stephanie McMahon-Khan duo appeared to signal hope that a new era was dawning over the WWE and that its creative system would finally get the long-needed injection of new ideas, new faces and new energy.

In December, The Wall Street Journal reported McMahon was eying a comeback – the first rumblings that the new era might be on shaky ground.

According to the Journal’s reporting, McMahon was telling people around him that he had received bad advice to step aside after the paper reported he used company funds to pay more than $12 million in hush money settlements to women to cover up “allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity.”

The WSJ also reported McMahon believed the controversy would have blown over if he had just stayed on as head of creative and chairman of the company’s board of directors.

Then, in early January, McMahon made his move.

As revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McMahon said he had to return to the company because negotiations over media rights and a “strategic alternatives review” required his “direct participation, leadership and support.” He told the SEC he was putting himself back on the company’s board of directors, along with two longtime allies – both of whom McMahon had fired from the company in 2020.

How could he do this, despite retiring in disgrace and ostensibly being away from the company for months? McMahon never sold his stock in the company and remained WWE’s controlling shareholder.

“The only way for WWE to fully capitalize on this opportunity is for me to return as Executive Chairman and support the management team in the negotiations for our media rights and to combine that with a review of strategic alternatives,” McMahon said in a news release. “My return will allow WWE, as well as any transaction counterparties, to engage in these processes knowing they will have the support of the controlling shareholder.”

Over the course of just a few days, he had gone from ostracized former wrestling executive to once again running the company that he had taken from a regional player to a global power. It just was the kind of swerve one might have expected from “Mr. McMahon,” Vince McMahon’s devious on-screen character, who served as wrestling’s greatest heel for years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Just days after reinstalling himself on the company’s board, WWE’s board of directors unanimously returned him to his old job as executive chairman.

Not only that, his daughter, Stephanie McMahon – who had seemed groomed to take over the company for years and played prominent roles on screen and off – resigned as chairwoman and co-CEO of WWE, leaving it all together.

Nick Khan was left as the company’s lone CEO. But the corporate machinations over the last week showed that, once again, McMahon was the real power in WWE.

There are reports that McMahon is exploring selling the company, but it’s not clear if there’s any truth to them.

So far, all of McMahon’s statements about his intentions pertain to business negotiations. But Stephanie McMahon’s departure has cast a cloud over her husband’s future with the company.

As his father-in-law forced his way back into the company, Levesque was gearing up for his first major period in charge of WWE’s storytelling heading into its most important time of year. WrestleMania season kicks off with January 28’s Royal Rumble event and continues through the first weekend of April, when WWE runs a two-night WrestleMania event – its biggest shows of the year – at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. This was likely to be the first major test for Levesque’s creative vision for WWE and had been hotly anticipated by wrestling fans.

McMahon’s reemergence now leads to questions over how much influence the chairman will seek to exercise over the creative direction of the company, and how it might clash with Levesque’s own vision.

Upon taking control of creative, the WWE Hall of Famer re-signed scores of wrestlers who McMahon had released in recent years, including stars like Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, and given priority to other wrestlers who don’t fit McMahon’s typical vision of a professional wrestler – someone taller than 6-foot-3 inches, muscular, good looking and with actual wrestling ability considered optional.

The futures of those Levesque favorites now seem less certain than they did just a few weeks ago.

There are real questions over how fans will receive the news of McMahon’s return. A man once seen as a legend in the business is accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, then using the levers of corporate power to escape accountability. Fans have already tuned out from the company in droves in recent years and some may decide not to spend their money, time and attention on a product helmed by McMahon.

And then there’s the question of how McMahon’s return affects the pro wrestling industry as a whole.

All Elite Wrestling (AEW), an upstart promotion begun in 2019 by Tony Khan – the son of auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan and no relation to the WWE CEO – and several of independent wrestling’s biggest stars, has become the second-biggest wrestling company in the world by simply being what WWE is not.

Its focus on long-term storytelling, great matches, charismatic stars and less sanitized production has allowed AEW to break WWE’s monopoly on the wrestling industry and become a verified player in the business.

As such, it had become a home for some of the highest profile wrestlers in the industry who had been burnt out on WWE’s corporate culture and bending to McMahon’s whims. His departure back in July and Levesque’s ascension to the WWE creative throne led many observers to wonder if AEW stars would be looking to jump ship and head to WWE.

There were some hopes among WWE diehards that Levesque’s new regime might be successful enough to snuff out AEW’s rise. McMahon’s return may toss some doubt into the minds of AEW wrestlers who were thinking about moving to WWE in the future.

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Entertainment

How WWE’s Vince McMahon ruthlessly got his job back despite allegations of sexual assault and misuse of company funds

Leave a comment


Washington
CNN
 — 

Professional wrestling is known for its outlandish, dramatic stories that have captivated generations. It’s an athletic soap opera built on emotional drama with wrestlers sometimes scheming in the background for months only to make their move at the opportune moment, drawing crazed reactions from arenas packed with fans who have followed every beat.

But the real-life saga playing out in World Wrestling Entertainment’s corporate office over the last several weeks surpasses even what most of what those performers and their backstage colleagues could dream up.

Vince McMahon, the longtime force behind WWE at the corporate and creative levels, made a shocking return to the company on January 10, nearly six months after announcing his retirement. McMahon was alleged to have used company funds to pay millions to multiple women in order to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct.

But over a series of just a few days last week, McMahon engineered his return to the company’s board of directors, reshaped it by forcing out some members, replaced them with his own allies, and used that new boardroom power to install himself in his old job as executive chairman. His own daughter – the heir apparent to the company who had appeared groomed to take the job for years – resigned.

The stunning and swift developments have the wrestling world reeling, with rumors of a sale burning up Wrestling Twitter and people inside and outside the company wondering what it all means for the future of WWE and professional wrestling itself.

In July, Vince McMahon – an ever-present force in WWE and professional wrestling, the man who remade the business in service of a vision that upended generations of tradition, creating his own hegemony – retired. Or he resigned, depending on who you ask.

It was a moment many wrestling fans and observers never thought would come. The longtime chairman and CEO of WWE was such an intense micromanager that he barely slept, rarely took vacations and almost never stopped putting his own spin on every single aspect of the company’s output. Many longtime followers of the company simply assumed he’d die in the role rather than retire.

But a series of revelations first reported in The Wall Street Journal about hush money payments to multiple women to cover up infidelity and allegations of sexual misconduct seemed to bring McMahon’s legendary run as the head of wrestling’s most important company to an end. Additional reporting came in December, with additional women accusing McMahon of sexual assault, seemed to cement his status as being permanently gone from WWE.

WWE has always been a family business – Vince McMahon, Sr., handed over the reins to his son in the 1980s – and it seemed set to continue that way. Vince McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie, who only weeks before had taken a leave of absence from the company, stepped into the role of co-CEO with Nick Khan, a longtime executive in the entertainment and media industry.

And Paul Levesque – Stephanie McMahon’s husband and a Hall of Fame professional wrestler himself and better known by his ring name, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, or Triple H – assumed the job as the head of creative, putting him in charge of WWE’s storylines and in-ring action, which his father-in-law had long managed.

That moment last summer signaled a sea change in the professional wrestling industry.

Vince McMahon was more akin to a king than a business executive in the world of WWE, his fingerprints on everything. Through his ruthless business practices, he had molded the industry in his image, running most of his competition out of business and turning his company into the destination for pro wrestling. For most of two decades, he had a monopoly on the business.

But his creative output cratered in recent years. Stars who left WWE described a frustrating creative process dominated by McMahon that stifled their visions and led to a homogenized product that felt miles away from the company’s peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

With the vast majority of company revenue coming from TV rights, instead of fans spending money on tickets or pay-per-view events, the need to give the people what they want was replaced by content production. Sometimes it seemed as if Vince McMahon’s creative decisions were meant to antagonize and annoy his audience, appearing to ram home his vision of “sports entertainment” whether they liked it or not.

A turning point for many was the 2015 Royal Rumble event. Fans were clamoring for their favorite Daniel Bryan, one of the most gifted wrestlers on the planet, to win the event’s namesake. To many fans, Bryan’s run symbolized hope that the company would promote their favorite wrestlers instead of McMahon’s chosen ones.

But Bryan was unceremoniously eliminated in the first half of the match. The crowd in Philadelphia booed throughout the second half, chanting Bryan’s name and refusing to celebrate when Roman Reigns – widely seen as McMahon’s choice to be the future of the company despite fan apathy – won.

Shrinking viewership numbers reflected that loss of hope. While TV ratings overall have dropped in the last several years, with some exceptions, WWE’s drop outpaced the general decline in overall viewership and in the key 18-49 demographic, according to Wrestlenomics, a website that tracks the business side of the industry.

Once considered a wrestling genius, critics have more recently come to consider Vince McMahon a creative liability. The elevation of Levesque and the Stephanie McMahon-Khan duo appeared to signal hope that a new era was dawning over the WWE and that its creative system would finally get the long-needed injection of new ideas, new faces and new energy.

In December, The Wall Street Journal reported McMahon was eying a comeback – the first rumblings that the new era might be on shaky ground.

According to the Journal’s reporting, McMahon was telling people around him that he had received bad advice to step aside after the paper reported he used company funds to pay more than $12 million in hush money settlements to women to cover up “allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity.”

The WSJ also reported McMahon believed the controversy would have blown over if he had just stayed on as head of creative and chairman of the company’s board of directors.

Then, in early January, McMahon made his move.

As revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, McMahon said he had to return to the company because negotiations over media rights and a “strategic alternatives review” required his “direct participation, leadership and support.” He told the SEC he was putting himself back on the company’s board of directors, along with two longtime allies – both of whom McMahon had fired from the company in 2020.

How could he do this, despite retiring in disgrace and ostensibly being away from the company for months? McMahon never sold his stock in the company and remained WWE’s controlling shareholder.

“The only way for WWE to fully capitalize on this opportunity is for me to return as Executive Chairman and support the management team in the negotiations for our media rights and to combine that with a review of strategic alternatives,” McMahon said in a news release. “My return will allow WWE, as well as any transaction counterparties, to engage in these processes knowing they will have the support of the controlling shareholder.”

Over the course of just a few days, he had gone from ostracized former wrestling executive to once again running the company that he had taken from a regional player to a global power. It just was the kind of swerve one might have expected from “Mr. McMahon,” Vince McMahon’s devious on-screen character, who served as wrestling’s greatest heel for years in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Just days after reinstalling himself on the company’s board, WWE’s board of directors unanimously returned him to his old job as executive chairman.

Not only that, his daughter, Stephanie McMahon – who had seemed groomed to take over the company for years and played prominent roles on screen and off – resigned as chairwoman and co-CEO of WWE, leaving it all together.

Nick Khan was left as the company’s lone CEO. But the corporate machinations over the last week showed that, once again, McMahon was the real power in WWE.

There are reports that McMahon is exploring selling the company, but it’s not clear if there’s any truth to them.

So far, all of McMahon’s statements about his intentions pertain to business negotiations. But Stephanie McMahon’s departure has cast a cloud over her husband’s future with the company.

As his father-in-law forced his way back into the company, Levesque was gearing up for his first major period in charge of WWE’s storytelling heading into its most important time of year. WrestleMania season kicks off with January 28’s Royal Rumble event and continues through the first weekend of April, when WWE runs a two-night WrestleMania event – its biggest shows of the year – at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. This was likely to be the first major test for Levesque’s creative vision for WWE and had been hotly anticipated by wrestling fans.

McMahon’s reemergence now leads to questions over how much influence the chairman will seek to exercise over the creative direction of the company, and how it might clash with Levesque’s own vision.

Upon taking control of creative, the WWE Hall of Famer re-signed scores of wrestlers who McMahon had released in recent years, including stars like Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman, and given priority to other wrestlers who don’t fit McMahon’s typical vision of a professional wrestler – someone taller than 6-foot-3 inches, muscular, good looking and with actual wrestling ability considered optional.

The futures of those Levesque favorites now seem less certain than they did just a few weeks ago.

There are real questions over how fans will receive the news of McMahon’s return. A man once seen as a legend in the business is accused of sexually assaulting multiple women, then using the levers of corporate power to escape accountability. Fans have already tuned out from the company in droves in recent years and some may decide not to spend their money, time and attention on a product helmed by McMahon.

And then there’s the question of how McMahon’s return affects the pro wrestling industry as a whole.

All Elite Wrestling (AEW), an upstart promotion begun in 2019 by Tony Khan – the son of auto parts billionaire Shahid Khan and no relation to the WWE CEO – and several of independent wrestling’s biggest stars, has become the second-biggest wrestling company in the world by simply being what WWE is not.

Its focus on long-term storytelling, great matches, charismatic stars and less sanitized production has allowed AEW to break WWE’s monopoly on the wrestling industry and become a verified player in the business.

As such, it had become a home for some of the highest profile wrestlers in the industry who had been burnt out on WWE’s corporate culture and bending to McMahon’s whims. His departure back in July and Levesque’s ascension to the WWE creative throne led many observers to wonder if AEW stars would be looking to jump ship and head to WWE.

There were some hopes among WWE diehards that Levesque’s new regime might be successful enough to snuff out AEW’s rise. McMahon’s return may toss some doubt into the minds of AEW wrestlers who were thinking about moving to WWE in the future.

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US

Trump Org. fined $1.6 million after conviction for 17 felonies, including tax fraud

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New York
CNN
 — 

The Trump Organization was fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge Friday for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme, a symbolic moment because it is the only judgment for a criminal conviction that has come close to former President Donald Trump.

Two Trump entities, The Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp., were convicted last month of 17 felonies, including tax fraud and falsifying business records.

Under New York law, the most the companies can be fined is about $1.6 million, a penalty the Trump Organization can easily afford.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass asked Judge Juan Merchan to make the Trump Org. pay the maximum fine, though he admitted that it will have a “minimal impact” on a multibillion-dollar company.

“We all know that these corporations cannot go to jail as Allen Weisselberg has,” Steinglass said Friday, referring to the Trump Organization’s long-time chief financial officer who was sentenced to five months in jail earlier this week as part of a deal he reached with prosecutors. “The only way to effectively deter such conduct is to make it as expensive as possible.”

New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, told CNN that the fine against the Trump Org. is important but he also wants lawmakers to raise the fines for companies that break the law.

“It’s important regardless of who the defendant is, because it’s cheating and greed and cheating the taxpayers,” Bragg said. “It obviously becomes more consequential given that it involved the former president’s corporation and CFO. It sends a message – I hope it sends a message to New Yorkers that you know we’re one system of justice and that this kind of conduct, regardless of who you are, won’t be countenanced in Manhattan.”

But, Bragg said, the fine isn’t enough of a penalty.

“It isn’t sufficient. Plain and simple,” Bragg said, saying the law should “reflect what I think many of us see, particularly those who sat through the trial and saw the 13 year you know pattern of deep greed and misconduct laid bare, we should have stiffer penalties for conduct like that.”

The Trump Org. entities have 14 days to pay the fine.

The real estate business is not at risk of being dismantled because there is no mechanism under the law to dissolve the company. No individual will go to jail based on the jury’s verdict. However, a felony conviction could impact the Trump Organization’s reputation and ability to do business or obtain loans or contracts.

Trump and his family were not charged in this case, but the former president was mentioned repeatedly during the trial by prosecutors about his connection to the un-taxed benefits doled out to certain executives, including company-funded apartments, car leases and personal expenses. One prosecutor said Trump “explicitly sanctioned” tax fraud.

One of the jurors told CNN that the jury saw a “culture of fraud,” at the Trump Organization, but referred to Trump as a nondescript “Bob Smith” at times when talking about the company owner’s awareness of the crimes in relation to the charges.

Weisselberg last year pleaded guilty to 15 felonies related to the tax fraud scheme and agreed to testify truthfully against the company at trial.

He remained on paid leave at the Trump Organization, where he was compensated a little more than $1 million a year, until Tuesday when he was sentenced. Weisselberg received a severance package that one person familiar with the deal called “generous.”

Merchan, who sentenced Weisselberg, said at the time that but for the deal he would have given Weisselberg more time in jail after listening to the evidence at trial.

Merchan said he found most “offensive” a $6,000 payroll check Weisselberg had made out to his wife, who never worked for Trump, so she could become eligible for Social Security benefits.

A Trump Org. spokesperson said that Weisselberg “is a victim,” as is the company and former president.

“New York has become the crime and murder capital of the world, yet these politically motivated prosecutors will stop at nothing to get President Trump and continue the never ending witch-hunt which began the day he announced his presidency,” the spokesperson said. “We did nothing wrong and we will appeal this verdict.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office continues to investigate the company’s business practices.

Prosecutors are conducting a wide-ranging investigation and in recent months their focus has returned to the company’s involvement in hush-money payments made to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels from going public with an affair with Trump just before the 2016 election, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has denied the affair.

Prosecutors are also looking into potential insurance fraud after new material came to light from the New York attorney general’s civil investigation into the accuracy of the Trump Organization’s financial statements, the people said.

The biggest threat currently facing the company could be New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil lawsuit, which has alleged Trump, his three eldest children, Weisselberg and others defrauded lenders, insurers and tax authorities by inflating the value of multiple Trump Org. properties for more than a decade.

In addition to money, James, a Democrat, is seeking to permanently bar Trump and the children named in the lawsuit from serving as a director of a business registered in New York state. She is also seeking to cancel the Trump Organization’s corporate certificate, which if granted by a judge, could effectively force the company to cease operations in New York state.

The judge overseeing the lawsuit put an independent monitor in place to review the Trump Organization’s financial statements and business decisions. He recently denied motions to dismiss the case and said he considered sanctioning Trump’s attorneys. The trial is set for October.

Trump has denied wrongdoing and said the lawsuit is politically motivated.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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Health

US cancer death rate drops 33% since 1991, partly due to advances in treatment, early detection and less smoking, new report says

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CNN
 — 

The rate of people dying from cancer in the United States has continuously declined over the past three decades, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society.

The US cancer death rate has fallen 33% since 1991, which corresponds to an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted, according to the report, published Thursday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The rate of lives lost to cancer continued to shrink in the most recent year for which data is available, between 2019 and 2020, by 1.5%.

The 33% decline in cancer mortality is “truly formidable,” said Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

The report attributes this steady progress to improvements in cancer treatment, drops in smoking and increases in early detection.

“New revelations for prevention, for early detection and for treatment have resulted in true, meaningful gains in many of the 200 diseases that we call cancer,” Knudsen said.

In their report, researchers from the American Cancer Society also pointed to HPV vaccinations as connected to reductions in cancer deaths. HPV, or human papillomavirus, infections can cause cervical cancer and other cancer types, and vaccination has been linked with a decrease in new cervical cancer cases.

Among women in their early 20s, there was a 65% drop in cervical cancer rates from 2012 through 2019, “which totally follows the time when HPV vaccines were put into use,” said Dr. William Dahut, the society’s chief scientific officer.

“There are other cancers that are HPV-related – whether that’s head and neck cancers or anal cancers – so there’s optimism this will have importance beyond this,” he said.

The lifetime probability of being diagnosed with any invasive cancer is estimated to be 40.9% for men and 39.1% for women in the US, according to the new report.

The report also includes projections for 2023, estimating that there could be nearly 2 million new cancer cases – the equivalent of about 5,000 cases a day – and more than 600,000 cancer deaths in the United States this year.

During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, many people skipped regular medical exams, and some doctors have seen a rise in advanced cancer cases in the wake of pandemic-delayed screenings and treatment.

The American Cancer Society researchers were not able to track “that reduction in screening that we know we all observed across the country during the pandemic,” Knudsen said. “This time next year, I believe our report will give some initial insight into what the impact was in the pandemic of cancer incidence and cancer mortality.”

The new report includes data from national programs and registries, including those at the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

Data showed that the US cancer death rate rose during most of the 20th century, largely due to an increase in lung cancer deaths related to smoking. Then, as smoking rates fell and improvements in early detection and treatments for some cancers increased, there was a decline in the cancer death rate from its peak in 1991.

Since then, the pace of the decline has slowly accelerated.

The new report found that the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers combined has increased from 49% for diagnoses in the mid-1970s to 68% for diagnoses during 2012-18.

The cancer types that now have the highest survival rates are thyroid at 98%, prostate at 97%, testis at 95% and melanoma at 94%, according to the report.

Current survival rates are lowest for cancers of the pancreas, at 12%.

The finding about a decreasing cancer death rate shows “the continuation of good news,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, an oncology professor at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the research.

“The biggest reason for the decline that started in 1991 was the prevalence of smoking in the United States started going down in 1965,” said Brawley, a former chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

“That’s the reason why we started having a decline in 1991, and that decline has continued because the prevalence of people smoking in the United States has continued to go down,” he said. “Now, in certain diseases, our ability to treat has improved, and there are some people who are not dying because of treatment.”

Although the death rate for cancer has been on a steady decline, the new report also highlights that new cases of breast, uterine and prostate cancer have been “of concern” and rising in the United States.

Incidence rates of breast cancer in women have been increasing by about 0.5% per year since the mid-2000s, according to the report.

Uterine corpus cancer incidence has gone up about 1% per year since the mid-2000s among women 50 and older and nearly 2% per year since at least the mid-1990s in younger women.

The prostate cancer incidence rate rose 3% per year from 2014 through 2019, after two decades of decline.

Knudsen called prostate cancer “an outlier” since its previous decline in incidence has reversed, appearing to be driven by diagnoses of advanced disease.

On Thursday, the American Cancer Society announced the launch of the Impact initiative, geared toward improving prostate cancer incidence and death rates by funding new research programs and expanding support for patients, among other efforts.

“Unfortunately, prostate cancer remains the number one most frequently diagnosed malignancy amongst men in this country, with almost 290,000 men expected to be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year,” Knudsen said. Cancer diagnosed when it is confined to the prostate has a five-year survival rate of “upwards of 99%,” she said, but for metastatic prostate cancer, there is no durable cure.

“Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death for men in this country,” she said. “What we’re reporting is not only an increase in the incidence of prostate cancer across all demographics but a 5% year-over-year increase in diagnosis of men with more advanced disease. So we are not catching these cancers early when we have an opportunity to cure men of prostate cancer.”

Breast, uterine and prostate cancers also have a wide racial disparity, in which communities of color have higher death rates and lower survival rates.

In 2020, the risk of overall cancer death was 12% higher in Black people compared with White people, according to the new report.

“Not every individual or every family is affected equally,” Knudsen said.

For instance, “Black men unfortunately have a 70% increase in incidence of prostate cancer compared to White men and a two- to four-fold increase in prostate cancer mortality as related to any other ethnic and racial group in the United States,” she said.

The data in the new report demonstrates “important and consistent” advances against cancer, Dr. Ernest Hawk, vice president of cancer prevention and population sciences at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, said in an email.

“Cancer is preventable in many instances and detectable at an early stage with better outcomes in many others. When necessary, treatments are improving in both their efficacy and safety. That’s all great news,” Hawk wrote.

“However, it’s well past time for us to take health inequities seriously and make them a much greater national priority. Inequities in cancer risks, cancer care and cancer outcomes are intolerable, and we should not be complacent with these regular reminders of avoidable inequities,” he said. “With deliberate and devoted effort, I believe we can eliminate these disparities and make even greater progress to end cancer.”

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Sports

Los Angeles Dodgers officially cut ties with pitcher Trevor Bauer who served suspension for violating MLB policies

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CNN
 — 

The Los Angeles Dodgers have officially cut ties with pitcher Trevor Bauer, the team announced Friday.

The former Cy Young award winner was previously suspended by Major League Baseball for violating the league’s joint domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse policy, but was reinstated last month when an arbitrator reduced his suspension from 324 games to 194, effective immediately.

Bauer has not played since June 2021, after a San Diego woman claimed he had sexually assaulted her. The pitcher, whom a prosecutor in Los Angeles declined to charge with a crime, has denied the sexual assault allegations and maintained his encounters with the woman were consensual.

“The Dodgers organization believes that allegations of sexual assault or domestic violence should be thoroughly investigated, with due process given to the accused,” the team said in a statement Friday. “From the beginning, we have fully cooperated with Major League Baseball’s investigation and strictly followed the process stipulated under MLB’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy.

The team said “two extensive reviews of all the available evidence in the case,” performed by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and another by a neutral arbitrator, “concluded that Mr. Bauer’s actions warranted the longest ever active player suspension in our sport for violations of this policy. Now that this process has been completed, and after careful consideration, we have decided that he will no longer be part of our organization.”

Bauer said on Twitter on Friday that he talked to “Dodgers leadership” in Arizona on Thursday and he was told they wanted him to pitch there next season.

“While I am disappointed by the organization’s decision today, I appreciate the wealth of support I’ve received from the Dodgers clubhouse,” he wrote. “I wish the players all the best and look forward to competing elsewhere.”

CNN Sports has reached out to the Dodgers for further comment

Bauer was placed on administrative leave by the league in July 2021 and in April he was suspended for 324 games. But on December 22 an arbitrator reduced the suspension, making him eligible to play next season.

At the time his attorneys – Jon Fetterolf, Shawn Holley, and Rachel Luba, – said: “While we are pleased that Mr. Bauer has been reinstated immediately, we disagree that any discipline should have been imposed. That said, Mr. Bauer looks forward to his return to the field, where his goal remains to help his team win a World Series.”

According to league rules, the Dodgers had 14 days from reinstatement – until Friday – to decide whether to put Bauer back on the team’s 40-man roster.

According to the team website, Bauer was designated for assignment, which means a player can be traded or released within seven days. If Bauer was released, any of the other 29 teams can sign him.



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