WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a decorated veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in a protracted fight with the government over 12 months of G.I. Bill educational benefits.
The court ruled 7-2 that the Department of Veterans Affairs improperly calculated the educational benefits for James Rudisill, a retired Army captain who lives in northern Virginia.
Rudisill, who’s now an FBI agent, is in a category of veterans who earned credit under two versions of the G.I. Bill. One version applied to people who served before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. Congress passed new legislation after Sept. 11.
But Rudisill served both before and after the attack, including tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Each program gives veterans 36 months of benefits, and there’s a 48-month cap. Rudisill thought he had 10 months of benefits remaining under the old program, plus another year in the new system. But the VA denied the additional year.
Rudisill said the decision forced him to give up his plan to attend Yale Divinity School, be ordained as an Episcopal priest and reenter the Army as a chaplain.
His lawyers said the decision could affect roughly 1.7 million veterans, but the VA disputed that the number is “anything close” to 1.7 million, noting that his lawyers didn’t identify any other cases that presented the same issue.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump returned Tuesday to a New York courtroom as the jury selection process in his historic hush money trial enters a second day. The former president and presumptive GOP nominee began the day by railing against the trial and complaining about a gag order that bars him from from publicly commenting on jurors, potential witness and others related to his criminal cases.
“This conflicted, Trump Hating Judge won’t let me respond to people that are on TV lying and spewing hate all day long,” he wrote on his Truth Social network. “He is running rough shod over my lawyers and legal team.”
The first day of Trump’s Manhattan trial ended on Monday with no one picked to sit on the 12-person jury or as one of six alternates. Dozens of people were dismissed after saying they didn’t believe they could be fair, but a second batch of about 100 prospective jurors have yet to be questioned.
The criminal trial is the first of any former U.S. commander-in-chief and also the first of Trump’s four indictments to go to trial.
Trump is accused of falsifying internal Trump Organization records as part of a scheme to bury stories that he feared could hurt his 2016 campaign, particularly as his reputation was suffering at the time from comments he had made about women.
The allegations focus on payoffs to two women, porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged Trump had out of wedlock. Trump says none of these supposed sexual encounters occurred.
