AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EDT

Legitimacy of ‘customer’ in Supreme Court gay rights case raises ethical, legal flags

A Christian graphic artist who the Supreme Court said can refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples pointed during her lawsuit to a request from a man named “Stewart” and his husband-to-be. The twist? Stewart says it never happened.

The revelation has raised questions about how Lorie Smith’s case was allowed to proceed all the way to the nation’s highest court with such an apparent misrepresentation and whether the state of Colorado, which lost the case last week, has any legal recourse.

It has served as another distraction at the end of a highly polarizing term for a Supreme Court marked by ethical questions and contentious rulings along ideological lines that rejected affirmative action in higher education and President Joe Biden’s $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce federal student loan debts.

Here’s a look at the legal questions surrounding the mysterious would-be customer, “Stewart:”

About a month after the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed the case in Colorado federal court in 2016, lawyers for the state said it should be dismissed partly because Smith hadn’t been harmed by the state’s anti-discrimination law. Smith — who did not plan to start creating wedding websites until her case was resolved — would first have to get a request from a gay couple and refuse, triggering a possible complaint against her, the state argued.

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Multiple people have been shot in Philadelphia and a suspect is in custody, police say

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Multiple people were shot and at least eight were taken to hospitals in Philadelphia on Monday night, according to police.

A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Police Department told The Associated Press there were “multiple gunshot victims” but said no other information on their conditions was immediately available.

Police spokesperson Miguel Torres told CNN a suspect was in custody and a weapon was recovered.

Police spokesperson Jasmine Reilly told the network six victims were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and two were taken to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The shooting occurred a day after gunfire erupted at a holiday weekend block party in Baltimore, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the southwest, killing two people and wounding 28 others.

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A year of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians just escalated. Is this an uprising?

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Airstrikes targeting Palestinian militants in a crowded residential area. Armored bulldozers plowing through narrow streets, crushing cars and piling up debris. Protesters burning tires. A mounting death toll.

Israel’s large-scale military raid into the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Monday had undeniable similarities with the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s — a period that claimed thousands of lives.

But the current fighting is also different from those intense years of violence. It’s more limited in scope, with Israeli military operations focused on several strongholds of Palestinian militants.

It’s also a symptom of a conflict with no foreseeable end. The Palestinian leadership is weakened, and the Israeli government has been accelerating the expansion of settlements that have eroded any chance of Palestinian statehood.

WHAT IS AN INTIFADA?

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A Texas man who went missing as a teen in 2015 has been found alive, his family and police say

HOUSTON (AP) — A Texas man who went missing as a teenager in 2015 after last being seen walking his dogs in Houston has been found alive, his family and police said Monday.

Police and firefighters found Rudolph “Rudy” Farias IV around 10 p.m. Thursday after getting a call of a person lying on the ground in front of a church in southeast Houston, police spokesman John Cannon said.

It was not immediately known where Farias had been the last eight years, Cannon said. Police investigators had not yet spoken with Farias, 25, who remained hospitalized.

“What we do know is at the time of his recovery, a good Samaritan located him unresponsive and immediately called police and 911. My son Rudy is receiving the care he needs to overcome his trauma, but at this time, he is nonverbal and not able to communicate with us,” Janie Santana, Farias’ mother, said in a statement.

In a tweet Monday afternoon, Houston police said it planned on speaking with Farias and his family on Wednesday.

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Elon Musk put new limits on tweets. Users and advertisers might go elsewhere

TikTok and Instagram users can scroll with abandon. But Twitter owner Elon Musk has put new curfews on his digital town square, the latest drastic change to the social media platform that could further drive away advertisers and undermine its cultural influence as a trendsetter.

Keeping up with a sports game, extreme weather conditions or a major news event is getting harder under Musk’s new rules, which cap the number of tweets you can view as part of an apparent attempt to relieve the company’s overloaded web infrastructure.

“The joke on Twitter is that people are going to go outside instead, but the reality is that they’re going to go to another app,” said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence. “By sending users elsewhere, Musk is killing the main proposition Twitter has had for advertisers — a highly engaged user base, especially around news and events.”

Musk recently hired longtime NBC Universal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s CEO to try to win back advertisers annoyed by a host of changes since Musk bought the platform for $44 billion last year. But she’s been silent about the new restrictions that lock users out if they view too many tweets in a day, leaving Musk to announce and explain them.

The moves are “remarkably bad for Twitter’s users and advertisers,” decimating the reach and engagement that advertisers depend on, according to a statement from Forrester analyst Mike Proulx.

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Leandro De Niro Rodriguez, grandson of Robert De Niro, dies at 19

NEW YORK (AP) — Leandro De Niro Rodriguez, a grandson of Robert De Niro, has died at 19.

His mother, Drena De Niro, announced the news Monday in an Instagram post.

“I don’t know how to live without you but I’ll try to go on and spread the love and light that you so made me feel in getting to be your mama,” she wrote. “You were so deeply loved and appreciated and I wish that love alone could have saved you.”

Drena De Niro shared Leandro with artist Carlos Mare, who posted black squares sans caption on his Instagram accounts.

“I’m deeply distressed by the passing of my beloved grandson Leo. We’re greatly appreciative of the condolences from everyone. We ask that we please be given privacy to grieve our loss of Leo,” Robert De Niro said in a statement.

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Mexico’s old ruling party fractures following election loss

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s old ruling party fractured Monday, with four leading senators resigning amid internal disputes and the loss of the last major state the party governed.

The Institutional Revolutionary Parties held the presidency and almost all statehouses in Mexico without interruption for 70 years.

But the PRI, as the party is known, has been reduced to a shadow of its former self by the rise of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Morena party, which won the governorship of the last major PRI bastion, the State of Mexico, last month.

Morena has seized on the combination of handout programs and nationalism that the PRI once espoused, and has largely replaced it.

On Monday, four leading PRI senators and dozens of supporters announced they are quitting the party. Senators led by former interior secretary Miguel Osorio Chong announced they will form a new group called “Congruence for Mexico.” The new group will not be able to compete in the 2024 presidential elections.

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Activists spurred by affirmative action ruling challenge legacy admissions at Harvard

WASHINGTON (AP) — A civil rights group is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University, saying the practice discriminates against students of color by giving an unfair boost to the mostly white children of alumni.

The practice of giving priority to the children of alumni has faced growing pushback in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action in higher education. The NAACP added its weight behind the effort on Monday, asking more than 1,500 colleges and universities to even the playing field in admissions, including by ending legacy admissions.

The civil rights complaint was filed Monday by Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, on behalf of Black and Latino community groups in New England, alleging that Harvard’s admissions system violates the Civil Rights Act.

“Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” said Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, the group’s executive director. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”

Opponents say the practice is no longer defensible without affirmative action providing a counterbalance. The court’s ruling says colleges must ignore the race of applicants, activists point out, but schools can still give a boost to the children of alumni and donors.

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Maternal deaths in the US more than doubled over two decades. Black mothers died at the highest rate

Maternal deaths across the U.S. more than doubled over the course of two decades, and the tragedy unfolded unequally.

Black mothers died at the nation’s highest rates, while the largest increases in deaths were found in American Indian and Native Alaskan mothers. And some states — and racial or ethnic groups within them – fared worse than others.

The findings were laid out in a new study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers looked at maternal deaths between 1999 and 2019 — but not the pandemic spike — for every state and five racial and ethnic groups.

“It’s a call to action to all of us to understand the root causes — to understand that some of it is about health care and access to health care, but a lot of it is about structural racism and the policies and procedures and things that we have in place that may keep people from being healthy,” said Dr. Allison Bryant, one of the study’s authors and a senior medical director for health equity at Mass General Brigham.

Among wealthy nations, the U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality, which is defined as a death during pregnancy or up to a year afterward. Common causes include excessive bleeding, infection, heart disease, suicide and drug overdose.

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The aftermath of mass shootings infiltrates every corner of survivors’ lives

CHICAGO (AP) — More than a year after 11-year-old Mayah Zamora was airlifted out of Uvalde, Texas, where she was critically injured in the Robb Elementary school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers, the family is still reeling.

Knocks on the door startle Mayah into a panic. The family is skipping Fourth of July celebrations to avoid booming fireworks. An outing to the Little Mermaid movie requires noise-canceling headphones.

Since 2016, thousands of Americans have been wounded in mass shootings, and tens of thousands by gun violence, with that number continuing to grow, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Beyond the colossal medical bills and the weight of trauma and grief, mass shooting survivors and family members contend with scores of other changes that upend their lives.

Survivors talked to The Associated Press about the mental and physical wounds that endure in the aftermath of shootings in Uvalde; Las Vegas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, during a Fourth of July parade last year.

They describe staggering medical bills that in Mayah’s case top $1 million, abandoning a dream career after 20 years, uprooting families and struggling to hold down a job, walk pets or even leave the house.