Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 20, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba A16 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM NEWS I WORLD SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2025 Federal judge tosses Trump’s $15-B defamation suit against New York Times ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A Flor- ida federal judge on Friday tossed out a US$15-billion defamation lawsuit filed by U.S. President Donald Trump against the New York Times. U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday ruled that Trump’s 85-page lawsuit was overly long and full of “tedious and bur- densome” language that had no bearing on the legal case. The judge gave Trump 28 days to file an amended complaint that should not exceed 40 pages. “A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally,” Merryday wrote in a four-page order. “This action will begin, will continue, and will end in accord with the rules of procedure and in a professional and dignified manner.” Trump’s legal team plans to continue the lawsuit “in accordance with the judge’s direction on logistics,” spokes- man Aaron Harison said. The lawsuit named four Times jour- nalists and cited a book and three arti- cles published within a two-month per- iod before the last U.S. federal election. The Times had said it was meritless and an attempt to discourage independ- ent reporting. “We welcome the judge’s quick rul- ing, which recognized that the com- plaint was a political document rather than a serious legal filing,” spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said Friday. Merryday noted the lawsuit did not get to the first defamation count until page 80. The lawsuit delves into Trump’s work on The Apprentice TV show and an “extensive list” of Trump’s other media appearances. “As every lawyer knows (or is pre- sumed to know), a complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and in- vective — not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” wrote Merryday, an appointment of U.S. president George H.W. Bush. “Although lawyers receive a modicum of expres- sive latitude in pleading the claim of a client, the complaint in this action ex- tends far beyond the outer bound of that latitude.” The lawsuit named a book and an article written by Times reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig that focuses on Trump’s finances and his pre-presidency role in The Apprentice. Trump said in the lawsuit they “ma- liciously peddled the fact-free narra- tive” television producer Mark Burnett turned Trump into a celebrity — “even though at and prior to the time of publi- cations defendants knew that president Trump was already a mega-celebrity and an enormous success in business.” The lawsuit also attacked claims the reporters made about Trump’s early business dealings and his father, Fred. Trump also cited an article by Peter Baker last Oct. 20 headlined For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment. He also sued Michael S. Schmidt for a piece two days later featuring an interview with Trump’s first-term chief of staff, John Kelly, headlined As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator. Trump has also sued ABC News and CBS News’ 60 Minutes, both of which were settled out of court by the news organizations’ parent companies. Trump also sued the Wall Street Jour- nal and media mogul Rupert Murdoch in July after the newspaper published a story reporting on his ties to wealthy financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. — The Associated Press CURT ANDERSON Heavy rain in Southern California sparks mudslides, two-year-old drowns Y UCAIPA, Calif. — Sudden heavy rain east of Los Angeles unleashed mudslides that plowed into homes and trapped drivers for hours on road- ways while floodwaters swept away a vehicle carrying a father who was later rescued and his two-year-old son who drowned, authorities said Friday. Authorities rescued 10 people trav- elling in at least six vehicles who were stranded on state Route 38 in the area of Jenks Lake, near the San Bernardino National Forest, the fire district said. The route is narrow and winds through towering trees, curving back and forth up the mountainside and linking cit- ies east of Los Angeles with the resort town of Big Bear Lake. No one was hurt, and no one is re- ported missing, Christopher Prater, a public information officer for the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District, said Friday. Elsewhere in San Bernardino Coun- ty, a two-year-old boy drowned after his family’s vehicle was swept off the road by floodwater Thursday night in Barstow, according to a statement from the city. The boy’s father was separated from his son as they were both swept away by the water, and he was later res- cued, officials said. The boy’s body was found Friday. The mudslides affected the tiny mountain communities of Forest Falls, Oak Glen and Potato Canyon, the coun- ty’s fire protection district said in a statement. One home in Forest Falls had giant tree trunks flung in its yard and piled so high they reached the roof. Forest Falls was walloped by mud- slides three years ago. That was just two years after wildfires ripped through the area, leaving burn scars, or areas where there is little vegetation to hold the soil. Intense rain pounded the area for more than an hour Thursday afternoon as remnants of tropical storm Mario reached the mountainous region, the National Weather Service said. Kael Steel told KNBC-TV he was driving down the mountain from Big Bear to head to an amusement park when the rain started pounding. “Suddenly we started seeing rocks and stuff coming down the side of the mountain,” he said. Steel said cars were turning around telling him the road was blocked. So he headed back up the mountain, but was blocked again. He turned around once more and said the road he had crossed 30 seconds earlier had been wiped away. “There’s no road there anymore,” he said. The route was still closed as of Fri- day, the California Highway Patrol said. Authorities planned to assess the hill- side areas affected by the slides to de- termine the extent of the damage. “The community obviously has been impacted fairly significantly,” Prater said. “How bad, we don’t know yet.” With the possibility of more storms forecast for Friday, San Bernardino County fire officials asked residents to stay alert, and an evacuation warning was in effect for mountain commun- ities already impacted by Thursday’s storm. Forest Falls had3.8 centimetres of rain fall in an hour, and another 1.3 cm after that — far more than the arid re- gion usually sees, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in San Diego. The rain also fell much faster, Wheel- er said, adding the rainfall rates for summer thunderstorms in the region are more typically about a 1.3 cm per hour. “They got almost two inches (five cm) of rain in a two-hour time period,” Wheeler said. “The fact that it hap- pened in such a flood-prone location is just an unfortunate event.” — The Associated Press DAMIAN DOVARGANES AND AMY TAXIN JAE C. HONG / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Damage is seen from mudslides after storms in Yucaipa, Calif., on Friday. U.S. reports another fatal strike targeting alleged drug boat WASHINGTON — U.S. President Don- ald Trump said Friday the U.S. military has carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug smuggling ves- sel this month. Trump in a social media posting said the strike killed three and was carried out against a vessel “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the US- SOUTHCOM area of responsibility.” He did not provide more precise details about the location of the strike. The Pentagon deferred questions about the strike to the White House, which did not respond to a request for clarity about the origins of the vessel. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known nar- cotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans,” Trump said in the post. Trump also posted a video of the latest strike that shows a vessel speed- ing through water before it appears to be struck by a pair of missiles from overhead and sink in a fiery explosion. “It was at this moment, the narco- terrorists knew they screwed up,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said on X in a posting with the video. Trump on Monday announced the U.S. military had carried out a strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela. That strike also killed three on board. That followed a Sept. 2 military strike on what the Trump administration said was a drug-carrying speedboat that killed 11. Trump claimed the boat was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang, which was listed by the U.S. as foreign terrorist organization earlier this year. The Trump administration has justi- fied the military action as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. But several senators, Democrats and some Republicans, as well as hu- man rights groups have questioned the legality of Trump’s action. They view it as a potential overreach of executive authority in part because the military was used for law enforcement pur- poses. The Trump administration has yet to explain how the military assessed the boat’s cargo and determined the passengers’ alleged gang affiliation before the attacks on the vessels. Na- tional security officials told members of Congress that the first boat taken out was fired on multiple times after it had changed course and appeared headed back to shore. The strikes follow a buildup of U.S. maritime forces in the Caribbean. It marks a dramatic shift in how the U.S. is willing to combat drug traffick- ing in the Western Hemisphere. In Venezuela, some are speculating whether the strikes are part of a plan to try to topple President Nicolas Maduro, a notion the Venezuelan leader has echoed. Maduro claimed after the first strike that a U.S. video released by Trump was created with artificial intelligence and that a boat of that size cannot ven- ture into the high seas. But earlier this week, Maduro lashed out at the U.S., accusing the Trump ad- ministration of using drug trafficking accusations as an excuse for a military operation whose intentions are “to in- timidate and seek regime change” in the South American country. — The Associated Press AAMER MADHANI DNA testing underway on remains linked to killing of three sisters LEAVENWORTH, Wash. — Author- ities were using DNA testing on Friday to determine whether they have found the skeletal remains of Travis Decker, an ex-soldier wanted in the deaths of his three daughters, in the mountains of Washington state. The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office announced Thursday that preliminary findings suggest the remains belong to Decker. They said they hope to have re- sults of the forensic testing soon. “While positive identification has not yet been confirmed, preliminary find- ings suggest the remains belong to Tra- vis Decker,” the statement said. The remains were found near Grind- stone Mountain, the sheriff’s office said Friday. That’s close to where a sheriff’s deputy on June 2 found Decker’s truck and the bodies of his three daughters — nine-year-old Paityn Decker, eight- year-old Evelyn Decker and five-year- old Olivia Decker — at a campground outside Leavenworth. Three days earlier, he failed to re- turn the girls to their mother’s home in Wenatchee, about 160 kilometres east of Seattle, following a scheduled visit. Decker, 32, was an infantryman in the army from March 2013 to July 2021 and deployed to Afghanistan for four months in 2014. He had training in navigation, survival and other skills, authorities said. More than 100 officials with an array of state and federal agencies searched hundreds of square miles, much of it mountainous and remote, by land, water and air during the on and off search. A dive team searching several hundred yards of Icicle Creek found a key fob “consistent with the key fob that would belong to Decker’s truck,” the U.S. Marshals Service said. In September 2024, Decker’s ex-wife, Whitney Decker, wrote in a petition to modify their parenting plan that his mental health issues had worsened and he had become increasingly unstable. He was often living out of his truck, and she sought to restrict him from having overnight visits with their daughters until he found housing. — The Associated Press Haitian gang attacks town, kills teacher, burns buildings PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A Haitian gang attacked a small town northwest of Haiti’s capital, killing, kidnapping and burning down buildings as gang violence devours the Caribbean nation. Gunmen opened fired on the streets of Bassin Bleu around noon on Thurs- day, killing at least one high school teacher, according the Catholic Church and local leaders. The surge of violence stirred panic in the community as gang members burned the police station, the town hall and a number of other buildings and looted a credit union. It was the first attack of this scale in the community, which has large- ly gone untouched by spiralling gang violence besieging Haiti. Such brutal attacks on rural communities have grown increasingly common as gangs have gradually expanded their control across the country. “Many people in Bassin Bleu man- aged to escape, and were forced to flee their homes and cross a river with a powerful current just to not be suffo- cated by the violence,” the office of the bishop in northwestern Haiti wrote in a statement. “What can we do because now we have nowhere to run.” Local leaders blamed the attack on the gang Kokorat San Ras, which has a firm grip on the region. The gang is part of a larger gang coalition known as Viv Ansanm, be- hind some of the worst atrocities in the Caribbean nation in recent years. — The Associated Press ;