Health officials in Wisconsin have dropped a fine against a dance studio that staged a performance of ‘The Nutcracker’ in December 2020 despite COVID-19 restrictions on mass gatherings.

Public Health Madison and Dane County canceled the penalty pending against A Leap Above Dance on June 22, the Wisconsin State Journal reported Thursday. The studio is located in Oregon, a Madison suburb.

The health department has alleged that 119 people attended the performance even though the department had banned mass gatherings to slow COVID-19’s spread.

It’s unclear how much the fine totaled. With each of the 119 counts in the department’s complaint punishable by $200, it could have come to $23,800. But Morgan Finke, a spokesperson for the health department, told the State Journal on Wednesday that the maximum would have been $3,200.

Studio owner Natalie Nemeckay said fewer than 100 people were involved in the performance and they were divided into groups of 10 at the most. Photos show performers also wore masks.

The studio joined a lawsuit in February 2021 in which two parents alleged the health department’s order limiting mass gatherings inhibited their children’s ability to participate in indoor sports. The department’s gathering restrictions ended a few months later in June 2021.

The state Supreme Court upheld the health department’s ability to limit gatherings in July 2022 and sent the case back to Dane County Circuit Court. Finke said the court didn’t receive the case until last month after the department’s restrictions had expired and the national COVID-19 emergency had ended. She said it wasn’t in the public interest to continue pursuing the fine.

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Decades before the Supreme Court caused an uproar last week by rejecting affirmative action in higher education, the state of Florida unilaterally banned the use of race as a factor in college admissions, potentially providing an instructive forecast of what to expect in other parts of the country moving forward.

The Supreme Court ended affirmative action in a landmark 6-3 decision last Thursday. The case combined lawsuits brought against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina with the student activist group Students for Fair Admissions, arguing that the schools’ admissions programs discriminated against Asian applicants in violation of, respectively, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

‘A benefit to a student whose herit­age or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university,’ Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her ex­periences as an individual — not on the basis of race.

‘Many universities have for too long done just the oppo­site,’ Roberts added. ‘And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.’

Liberals from various media outlets and Democrats in Congress slammed the ruling as discriminatory, with some commentators attacking Asian Americans as tools of White people and even White supremacists themselves.

Many Republicans expressed support for the Supreme Court’s decision, including Florida Gov. and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, who touted the Sunshine State’s own approach to affirmative action when asked about the ruling.

‘Florida was one of the first states in the nation to ban race and gender preferences in college admissions. We are proud to have a system based on merit instead of woke politics,’ a DeSantis spokesperson told local ABC affiliate WPBF 25.

The Florida Board of Governors, the governing body for the State University System of Florida that includes all public universities in the state, also praised the decision, similarly noting the decision from years ago to prohibit the use of race as a factor in college admissions.

‘The U.S. Supreme Court issued a historic ruling declaring affirmative action in college admissions unconstitutional. This decision will have no impact on the State University System of Florida,’ the board said in a statement.

‘The Free State of Florida has not utilized affirmative action in our higher education system since the One Florida Initiative in 1999,’ the board added. ‘The State University System of Florida provides students equality of opportunity through color-blind admissions. In addition to being the No. 1 state in the nation for higher education, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report since 2017, Florida also has one of the most diverse systems in the country. Florida is proof that diversity can be achieved without affirmative action.’

In 1999, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed an executive order known as the ‘One Florida’ initiative, which was billed as an effort to increase diversity in the state without using discriminatory practices.

Among other measures, the order banned ‘racial or gender set-asides, preferences, or quotas’ in state hiring, contracting and public university admissions. Race-based university admissions were replaced with a program that guarantees admission into one of Florida’s public universities for students who graduate from high school in the top 20% of their class, irrespective of their race.

According to the Florida Board of Governors’ admissions regulations, all Florida universities must not include preferences based on ‘race [or] color’ during the admissions process.

Overall representation of Black and Hispanic students at Florida’s public universities declined relative to population in the years immediately following the implementation of One Florida, but not everywhere. Some schools, such as the University of Florida, made gains in Black and Hispanic representation. More recently, however, the gap has widened between Black and Hispanic students and their White counterparts.

Critics of One Florida and proponents of affirmative action have especially pointed to the fact that the share of Black and Hispanic college students has decreased relative to their respective populations of high school seniors.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, for example, 23% of Florida public high school seniors were Black in 1999, and 18% of undergraduate university freshmen were Black. Eight years later, 22% of high school seniors were Black, but the share of freshmen had dipped to 15%, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

However, that decline was primarily driven by falling enrollment at Florida A&M University, the state’s historically Black public university. At most of Florida’s other public universities, the share of Black students actually increased. 

For example, the University of Florida, which boasts the state’s most rigorous admission standards, saw its share of Black students increase from 11% to 14% from 1999 to 2007. Meanwhile, the overall share of Black undergraduates spiked from 7% to 10%.

Some schools, such as Florida State University, experienced a slight dip in Black enrollment over the first decade in which race-conscious admissions were banned. 

More recently, from 2010 to 2021, Black and Hispanic students have become more underrepresented at Florida’s elite universities, according to National Center for Education Statistics data.

In the spring of 2021, 21% of seniors from Florida public high schools were Black. That fall, they made up just 10% of freshmen at one of Florida’s 12 public universities.

Proponents of affirmative action point to such trends as evidence that schools need to consider race in admissions to be fair and realize equality. Others who support the recent Supreme Court decision counter that true equality can only be found in a color-blind society, fluctuations are to be expected as par for the course and the overall result in Florida’s education system undermines the notion of any form of systemic exclusion in admissions based on race.

U.S. News & World Report has ranked Florida as the No. 1 state in the country for higher education every year since 2017, including this year. Florida officials have praised their top spot as a sign of the strength of their education system, while critics downplay the result, arguing U.S. News & World Report’s rankings are using flawed metrics that don’t paint an accurate picture of the education landscape.

Regardless of the rankings, Florida’s top-ranked university says it considers several factors when evaluating a candidate for admission, but race isn’t one of them. 

‘The University of Florida adheres to non-discrimination practices in admissions, and we do not consider race as a factor in our admissions decisions,’ Cynthia Roldán, the school’s director of strategic communications, said in a statement following the Supreme Court decision. 

‘We are guided by a comprehensive, holistic review process that evaluates the academic and nonacademic criteria of applicants, in addition to requirements under federal and state laws as well as the Florida Board of Governors’ regulations.’

In 1999, when One Florida was signed, 69% of freshmen students at the University of Florida were in the top 10% of their graduating class, according to university data and an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times. That number climbed to 82% by 2020, indicating Florida schools are becoming increasingly competitive.  

Florida also plans to extend its emphasis on non-race-based admissions decisions ‘even further’ beyond just affirmative action, according to DeSantis.

‘We have eliminated ‘DEI’ from our public universities,’ DeSantis said Friday while addressing a Moms for Liberty convention in Philadelphia. ‘They say it’s ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.’ But the way it’s practiced, it’s ideology imposed on the institution.’

Over the weekend, a new Florida law recently signed by DeSantis began taking effect that prohibits colleges and universities from spending state or federal money to promote, support or maintain programs that ‘advocate for’ diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI]. Under the law, schools can’t spend money on programs or activities that ‘promote or engage in political or social activism’ as defined by the State Board of Education or the Board of Governors.

Florida isn’t alone in banning the consideration of race in college admissions. Texas, Michigan, Washington and California are among the small number of other states that have done the same.

As for California, supporters of race-conscious admissions point to studies showing the gap between the share of high school graduates who were Black and the share of college freshmen who were Black quadrupled from 1994 to 2009. Others counter by citing data indicating race-blind admissions led to higher grades and fewer dropouts at colleges and universities.

In Texas, meanwhile, Black enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin dropped significantly in 1997, when the state banned race-based criteria, according to a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights analysis.

However, that share recovered to about where it was before the ban once Texas implemented a plan similar to Florida’s guaranteeing admission for high schoolers in the top 20% of their class. The Texas version guaranteed admission for the top 10% of each high school’s graduating class.

According to the commission’s analysis, however, admissions for Black and Hispanic students outside that 10% decreased.

Leaders of education and parents rights groups across the country sounded off after first lady Jill Biden claimed that her husband, President Biden, will always be ‘the education president.’

‘I knew that Joe would always be the education president, because he knows that … the success of our nation starts with you, the educators who shape our students’ lives,’ Jill Biden told a crowd at the 2023 NEA teacher’s union’s annual meeting on Tuesday.

The first lady’s comment sparked criticism from education leaders across the country who took issue with the president’s record on education, including Sheri Few, president and founder of United States Parents Involved in Education.

‘In light of who her audience was, she was probably 100% accurate when it comes to Biden supporting the liberal NEA agenda,’ Few told Fox News Digital in a statement. ‘Biden is THE most anti-parent education president in the history of this country! And he is THE education president that carries the water for the NEA.

‘He is THE education president whose Department of Justice wanted to label parents as domestic terrorists for objecting to pornography and critical Marxist theories in schools.’

Few continued, ‘He is THE education president whose Press Secretary insisted that trans kids are ‘our kids’ and ‘belong to all of us.’ And he is THE education president who said, ‘There is no such thing as someone else’s child…Our nation’s children are all our children.’’

Jill Biden’s comment comes shortly after the ‘Nation’s Report Card’ showed that reading and math scores for 13-year-olds dipped to their lowest rate in decades exacerbated by school closures that Biden’s critics said he encouraged.

‘If being the education president means sharing a bed with the teachers’ unions, locking children out of their schools for over a year and vilifying their parents for objecting, and subsequently, presiding over the total evaporation of two decades of progress in reading and math, then yes, the title fits perfectly, and he deserves a crown,’ Erika Sanzi, director of outreach at Parents Defending Education and a former educator, told Fox News Digital.

Dr. Jameson Taylor, American Family Association senior fellow and director of policy for AFA Action, told Fox News Digital that Biden had a ‘once-in-a-generation opportunity’ to become ‘the education president’ but ultimately ‘failed America’s kids.

‘Instead, Biden took the easy way out of enabling the mediocre status quo,’ Taylor said. ‘He has also failed to prioritize the things that matter – reading, writing and math – and is preoccupied with making every school in the country comply with CRT and transgender ideologies that are compromising student safety.’

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

Some Wisconsin Republican voters are losing faith in former President Trump as a new statewide poll showed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis beating him by 16 points in a head-to-head primary matchup.

Wisconsin state Sen. Duey Stroebel, a Republican, said the poll shows voters in the state are doubting Trump’s electability amid his recent indictment, while DeSantis has taken a ‘more common sense, level-headed approach’ on the campaign trail.

‘Trump, of course, did a great job as president, but DeSantis is very, very impressive,’ Stroebel told Fox News Digital. ‘And I think more and more people really are doubting Trump’s ability to win a general election, and I think these results kind of prove it.’

The Marquette University Law School Poll released last week showed Trump leading DeSantis by only one percentage point in the crowded GOP primary field. But when asked who they would vote for in a head-to-head matchup between DeSantis and Trump, respondents chose DeSantis over Trump by a whopping 57% to 41%. 

John Righeimer, chairman of the Republican Party of Sawyer County, Wisconsin, said he’s noticed much more enthusiasm for DeSantis than Trump in recent months.

‘We just don’t think he can win the general,’ Righeimer said of Trump during an interview with Fox News Digital. ‘I think the Democrats want to run against Trump. I think they know they can beat Trump. Joe Biden stayed in the basement and beat Trump, basically just because of the dislike for Trump.’ 

‘I don’t think Joe Biden can stay in the basement if someone like Ron DeSantis is running,’ he continued. ‘It will force the Democrats to have to come out and defend what they’re doing versus just hope that the undesirables for Trump is enough for them to carry themselves to victory.’

Stroebel, the state senator, argued that Trump has a tendency to take the more liberal position on issues like abortion, while DeSantis has been ‘pretty rock solid as a conservative.’

‘The people that are paying attention now are probably generally pretty serious observers, and when they look at the issues and the approach to those issues that DeSantis is taking versus Donald Trump, I think they’re seeing a distinct difference, frankly,’ he said.

‘I think it’s extremely important that we pick someone who can win,’ he continued. ‘And, you know, as much as Trump did a great job as president, there is a certain segment of this population that there’s just no way in hell they’re going to vote for Donald Trump. And I think without some of those people, we can’t win a general election with Donald Trump as our is our choice.’

Stroebel noted that the Marquette poll showed 21% of the respondents are ‘undecided’ on picking a Republican nominee.

‘I think it’s worth pointing out that if you’re undecided on a former U.S. president, I would think that would tend to favor someone else,’ Stroebel said. ‘And in this case, DeSantis is the person who’s basically running neck and neck. So I think you could probably say that the vast majority of those undecided voters would probably end up going to DeSantis.’

Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes in the Electoral College, is considered a crucial swing state in the 2024 presidential election, and the Marquette poll, which has been described as the ‘gold standard in Wisconsin politics,’ has a 80% accuracy rate, according to FiveThirtyEight.

In the poll, 68% of Republicans and independents who lean Republican said they view Trump favorably, followed by DeSantis at 67%, Pence at 52%, and Haley at 32%.

If the election were held today, with DeSantis being the Republican nominee against President Biden, it would be a pretty close race. Forty-nine percent said they would vote for Biden, with 47% saying the same for DeSantis.

As for an election rematch between Trump and Biden in 2024, a victory for Republicans is more bleak, according to the poll results. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they would vote for Biden, compared to 43% who said the same for Trump.

Fox News’ Kyle Morris contributed to this report.

MANCHESTER, N.H. – North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s far from a household name outside his home state.

And one month into his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Burgum is near the bottom of the field, registering at less than one percent in the most recent Fox News national poll in the GOP primary battle.

But the former software company CEO turned two-term governor of his native state seems far from concerned about his poll position with roughly six months to go until the start of the caucuses and primaries.

‘We don’t have to be leading today. We have to be ahead when the game starts next February,’ Burgum emphasized in a Fox Digital interview as he pointed to the start of the GOP presidential nominating calendar.

Burgum is concentrating his campaign efforts in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that for half a century have led off the Republican schedule. And Burgum, who’s one of the wealthiest candidates in the field of over a dozen GOP White House hopefuls – thanks to his tremendous success in the private sector – has already shelled out over $4 million of his own money to run ads in the two early voting states.

‘We’re very excited about where we are,’ Burgum said as he was interviewed in Manchester, N.H. ‘The reception in Iowa and New Hampshire has been great. And of course, we’re on ground. We’re up on TV and radio. We’re doing everything we can because we’ve got a great story to tell.’

Asked how much of his own money he’d invest into uphill climb towards the GOP nomination, Burgum wouldn’t give a dollar amount. But pointing to his business career, he said ‘I’ve never asked anyone to invest in what I’m doing unless I’m willing to put some skin in the game myself. And the same this on this.’

‘I’ll put dollars into this campaign to get it going,’ he noted before adding that ‘you can’t win races if you’re just trying to win races yourself. You can’t accomplish anything. It takes a whole team. We’re looking forward to running a fully funded campaign but that’s going to come from the people who care about America.’

Burgum is used to challenges. He steered his one-time small business, Great Plains Software, into a $1 billion software company. His business — and its North Dakota-based workers — were eventually acquired by Microsoft, and Burgum stayed on board as a senior vice president.

In 2016, the then first-time candidate and long shot convincingly topped a favored GOP establishment contender to secure the Republican nomination in North Dakota before going on to a landslide victory in the gubernatorial general election in the solidly red state. Burgum was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2020 to a second term as governor.

The upcoming Republican presidential primary debates – which kick off with a Fox News hosted showdown August 23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – could help Burgum alter his campaign’s trajectory.

The governors said he’ll ‘absolutely’ make the stage by reaching the tall contributor and polling thresholds required by the Republican National Committee. ‘We’ll have the 40-thousand donors. We’ll meet that threshold. And we’ll have the polling. That’s a no brainer. We’ll be there.’

Burgum and the rest of the field remain far behind former President Donald Trump, who’s the commanding GOP front-runner as he makes his third straight White House run. While some rivals regularly take aim at Trump, Burgum avoids opportunities to blast the former president.

‘I think America’s talking too much about the past and not enough about the future,’ Burgum said, in a indirect slight at Trump’s many grievances he amplifies on the campaign trail and his repeated re-litigation of his 2020 election loss to President Biden. 

‘If we keep talking about the past, this is what the Democrats want because they love it when Republicans talk about the past and about each other,’ Burgum highlighted. ‘You know who else loves it? China loves it. Russia loves it. Our adversaries around the world love it when we do all this infighting. We’ve got to come together as a nation and solve problems. That’s what we’ll do when I’m president.’

The governor then quickly pivoted to blasting which he labeled as President Biden’s failed policies.

Burgum is focusing his presidential campaign on three issues — the economy, energy, and national security. And you don’t hear him talk too often about the culture wars and anti-woke crusades, which are front-and center in the presidential campaigns of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur and political commentator Vivek Ramaswamy.

‘Each campaign, each candidate, can talk about what they want to talk about. We’re talking about the things that we know are the things that affect Americans the most and they affect all Americans. That’s what we’re talking about. And we’re also talking about the things that the president’s actually supposed to do,’ Burgum spotlighted.

He emphasized that ‘there’s a limited set of things the federal government is supposed to do. There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president, as a celebrity, is supposed to weigh in in every local issue that could be solved by the library board, could be solved by the city council, could by solved by a township board, or it could be solved by the parents…We don’t have to have the government involved in every aspect of our lives.’

Burgum then stressed that ‘there’s things that we need to do, including national security which includes border security. These are things the federal government is supposed to do. The Biden administration’s literally not doing the job they were elected to do.’

EXCLUSIVE: Several GOP lawmakers are accusing Hollywood of once again acquiescing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the ‘Barbie’ movie’s reported inclusion of a map that appears to endorse Beijing’s dominance of the South China Sea.

‘While it may just be a Barbie map in a Barbie world, the fact that a cartoonish, crayon-scribbled map seems to go out of its way to depict [China’s] unlawful territorial claims illustrates the pressure that Hollywood is under to please CCP censors,’ Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chairman of the House select committee on China, told Fox News Digital.

The upcoming summer blockbuster starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has found itself in the middle of one of today’s most heated geopolitical disputes. 

Vietnamese officials announced the Warner Bros. film would be banned within its borders over the inclusion of a map that purportedly supports China’s claim to vast parts of the South China Sea. Officials in the Philippines have signaled they could follow suit.

Gallagher called on Warner Bros. to speak out about the controversy to clarify ‘that the map was not intended to endorse any territorial claims and was, in fact, the work of a formerly plastic anthropomorphic doll.’

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., accused the U.S. film industry of flagrant ‘hypocrisy’ for pandering to China’s vast audience while ignoring its troubling human rights record.

‘This is yet another disgraceful example of Hollywood being in the pocket of communist China. Not only does it undermine our national security, but exposes the film industry’s blatant hypocrisy on social justice and human rights,’ Waltz told Fox News Digital.

The boundary line shown on the map represents China’s claim to a vast section of the South China Sea, which is also being fought over by Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan. The map’s inclusion in ‘Barbie’ underscores the growing controversy over Hollywood’s reliance on China, which has rivaled the U.S. for its biggest market in recent years.

Critics of the movie industry have accused studio executives of ignoring Beijing’s human rights abuses for the sake of selling films there.

A GOP lawmaker who serves with Gallagher on the China committee, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., similarly accused studio heads of ‘carrying water’ for China’s various offenses.

‘We defeated the Soviet Union with Coke, Levi’s and James Dean. We need soft power superiority just as much as we need military superiority to win the new Cold War with China, and that’s impossible with Hollywood working alongside the Chinese Communist Party,’ Banks said. ‘Movie executives who carry water for the murderous communist regime are endangering our national security and must face consequences.’

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called the ‘Barbie’ movie’s inclusion of the pro-China map wrong on a legal and moral level.

An international tribunal at The Hague did say China’s claims to vast portions of the South China Sea had no legal merit in 2016, but Beijing dismissed the ruling at the time.

‘Hollywood and the left are, once again, more concerned with selling films in communist China than standing up to the regime’s egregious human rights abuses,’ Blackburn said. ‘The ‘Barbie’ movie’s depiction of a map endorsing Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea is legally and morally wrong and must be taken seriously.’

Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated ‘Central Park Five,’ has won a Democratic primary for a seat on the New York City Council, all but assuring him of eventual victory. It’s an improbable feat for a political novice who was wrongly accused, convicted and imprisoned as a teenager for the rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park.

The Associated Press refrained from calling the race on election night, but vote tallies released Wednesday showed him to be the clear winner to represent Central Harlem. Salaam is not expected to face a serious challenge in November’s general election, if any.

It is time, he said, for ‘a new Harlem renaissance.’

‘To have a voice from a person who’s been pushed into the margins of life — someone who has actually been one of those who has been counted out — is finally having a seat at the table,’ Salaam said in an interview Wednesday.

‘Harlem is such a special place that it is known as the Black Mecca,’ he said. What happens in Harlem ‘reverberates around the world.’

Salaam and the four other Black and Latino teens from Harlem became known as the Central Park Five after their arrest in 1989 in the headline-grabbing rape, one of the city’s most notorious and racially fraught crimes. He served nearly seven years in prison before the group was exonerated through DNA evidence.

His outsider campaign prevailed over two political veterans — New York Assembly members Inez Dickens, 73, and Al Taylor, 65 — in his first bid for public office. Democratic socialist Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent council member, dropped out of the race in May but remained on the ballot.

Salaam declared victory on election night with his vote tally barely exceeding 50%, although an unknown number of absentee ballots had yet to be counted. But his lead over Dickens, his nearest competitor, seemed insurmountable, and both she and Taylor conceded. New York City is still tabulating late-arriving mail ballots that could potentially push him back above the 50% threshold, in which case he will have won without the benefit of ranked-choice voting tallies.

‘When I think about the things that we need the most, of course on the top of everyone’s list are affordable housing, education and safe streets,’ Salaam told the AP.

While all three candidates focused on promoting affordable housing, controlling gentrification and easing poverty in Harlem, Salaam capitalized on his celebrity in neighborhoods that consider the Central Park Five — now the Exonerated Five — to be living symbols of the injustices faced by the Black and Latino residents who make up about three-fourth’s of the district’s population.

‘He comes from the neighborhood, and he was incarcerated then turned himself around,’ said voter Carnation France. ‘He’s trying to do something for the people.’

Others were looking for a change in leadership.

Zambi Mwendwa said she voted for Salaam because he is ‘a new face.’ She said her decision had nothing to do with the injustice in his past.

‘I’ve heard him talk. He seems to be talking about the things I care about,’ Mwendwa said on election day.

Salaam’s lack of experience in public office might have actually worked in his favor, according to Amani Onyioha, a partner at Sole Strategies, which ran phone banks and engaged residents on Salaam’s behalf.

‘In a time like this, when people are looking for a hero, they’re looking for somebody who can relate to them,’ Onyioha said.

‘I think people saw him as a survivor,’ Onyioha said. ‘He was vindicated and the system eventually ended up working out for him.’

Salaam moved to Georgia shortly after he was released and became an activist, a motivational speaker, an author and a poet. He returned only in December to launch his campaign.

Salaam was 15 when he was arrested along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, who served between five and 12 years in prison before prosecutors agreed to reexamine the case. DNA evidence and a confession ultimately linked a serial rapist and murderer to the attack, but he wasn’t prosecuted because too much time had passed. Their convictions were vacated in 2002 and the city ultimately agreed in a legal settlement to pay the exonerated men a combined $41 million.

A 2012 Ken Burns documentary called ‘The Central Park Five’ rekindled public attention on the men’s childhood saga. More recently, a 2019 television miniseries, ‘When They See Us,’ drew attention again, just before the Black Lives Matter Movement was launched in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Donald Trump, who in 1989 placed ads in four newspapers before the group went on trial with the blaring headline ‘Bring Back the Death Penalty,’ later refused to apologize, saying all five had pleaded guilty — a reference to their coerced confessions. Salaam reminded voters of that in April, putting out his own full-page ad headlined ‘Bring Back Justice & Fairness,’ in response to one of Trump’s indictments.

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EXCLUSIVE: Republican presidential candidate and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott will launch a massive seven-figure ad buy in the early caucus state of Iowa on Thursday, Fox News has learned.

The ad, titled, ‘Winning,’ is part of a larger $6 million buy, and includes Scott pushing back on the ‘victim’ state of mind he says exhibits what President Biden’s administration has given to America. It also acts as a response to First Lady Jill Biden referring to her husband as ‘the education president.’

‘Playing football taught me that it’s good to fight, but it’s better to win,’ Scott says in the ad, referencing his days as a high school and college football player. ‘In Joe Biden’s America, everybody gets a participation trophy, and everybody is a victim.’ 

‘The radical left is indoctrinating our children, teaching CRT instead of ABC, punishing excellence by eliminating honors classes and promoting a transgender ideology that’s ruining women’s sports. I’m Tim Scott and I approve this message because, as president, I’ll fight back, and I’ll win,’ he says.

Scott excelled at football in high school before earning a scholarship to play at Presbyterian college.

During a Tuesday event at the White House, Jill Biden told members of a teachers union, ‘I knew that Joe would always be the education president because he knows the success of our nation starts with you, the educators, who shape our students’ lives,’ despite the U.S. having decades low reading and math scores.

Scott is one of 13 candidates in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and is one of two candidates from South Carolina – the other being former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

A June Fox News poll showed Scott tied in fifth place at 4% alongside former Vice President Mike Pence. Former President Donald Trump has maintained his front-runner status at 56%, followed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a distant second at 22%.

A proposed amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution is being decried as an attack on parental rights by prominent pro-life groups.

The amendment, which was drafted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio, declares that ‘every individual has the right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions’ on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care and abortion.

A coalition of pro-abortion groups submitted the required number of signatures Wednesday to get the amendment on the ballot in November. State officials must now review the signatures for potential errors before voters can decide on it.

‘This amendment is dangerous for the women and children of Ohio,’ Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement. ‘It removes parents from some of their minor children’s most important health decisions such as parental notification before an abortion. It would eliminate basic health and safety standards for women. And it would permit late term abortion after the baby can feel pain and even right up until birth.’ 

‘This amendment is too extreme for Ohio,’ said Logan Church, director of CatholicVote Ohio. ‘As part of its unrelenting attack on parents, the ACLU’s proposed amendment seeks to cut parents out of their child’s most important and life-altering health decisions – including abortions and sex change operations.’

‘On top of that, the amendment would nullify existing and future health and safety protection for women and permit abortions in Ohio through all nine months of pregnancy, well after the point at which the unborn child can feel pain,’ Church added.

The amendment doesn’t mention sex-change operations, but critics argue that its ‘loosely defined’ language, which prohibits any law that ‘directly or indirectly’ would ‘burden’ or interfere’ with ‘reproductive decisions,’ would leave parents out of the conversation if their child chooses to pursue an abortion or sex change surgery. 

Protect Women Ohio (PWO), which is leading the fight against the amendment, points to comments made in February by Jessie Hill, an attorney for the ACLU of Ohio, who told local media that conflicting laws ‘should not be enforced,’ as evidence of the organization’s offensive position regarding parental rights.  

‘When you pass a constitutional amendment, it doesn’t just automatically erase everything and start over,’ Hill said. ‘But it would mean that laws that conflict with it cannot be enforced, should not be enforced.’

PWO spokesperson Amy Natoce accused the ACLU and pro-abortion groups of deceptively collecting the signatures needed to get on the ballot.

‘The ACLU’s extreme anti-parent amendment is so unpopular that they couldn’t even rely on grassroots support to collect signatures,’ Natoce said. ‘The ACLU paid out-of-state signature collectors to lie to Ohioans about their dangerous amendment that will strip parents of their rights, permit minors to undergo sex change operations without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and allow painful abortion on demand through all nine months. The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous.’ 

ACLU Ohio did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Kendall Tietz contributed to this report.

Former President Donald Trump has a commanding polling lead in the crowded race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but his fundraising is also robust.

The former president hauled in more than $35 million during the April-June second quarter of 2023 fundraising, Trump’s campaign confirmed to Fox News on Wednesday.

That’s nearly double the $18.8 million the Trump campaign brought in during the January-March first quarter of fundraising.

The massive haul appears to be an indicator that the former president’s mounting legal troubles have helped fuel his 2024 White House campaign.

During the second quarter of fundraising this year, Trump become the first sitting or former president in U.S. history to be charged with a crime. 

Trump pleaded not guilty in early April in New York City to charges brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The former president was indicted for allegedly giving hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to keep her quiet ahead of that year’s presidential election over her claims she had sexual encounters years earlier with Trump. The former president denies sleeping with Daniels and denies falsifying business records to keep the payment concealed.

Trump was indicted and arraigned early last month for his alleged improper retention of classified records. He pleaded not guilty in federal court in Miami, Florida to criminal charges that he illegally retained national security records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, following the end of his term as president and that he obstructed federal efforts to recover the documents. In total, Trump faces 37 felony charges.

Trump’s campaign touted that they hauled in $7 in the first four days following the New York City indictment, which spanned the end of the first quarter and the start of the second. And the campaign announced another huge fundraising infusion immediately following last month’s federal indictment.

Trump is the first of the Republican contenders to announce his second quarter fundraising. Candidates have until July 15 to file reports with the Federal Election Commission.

The latest evidence of the former president’s fundraising prowess comes as he holds a commanding lead in the latest GOP presidential nomination polls.

Trump, who is making his third straight White House run, stands at 56% support in the latest Fox News national poll of likely GOP primary voters, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 22% and everybody else in the large field of candidates in the singe digits. Trump’s lead has steadily expanded since the late winter.

The former president also enjoys large double-digital leads in the most recent surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire — the two states that lead off the Republican presidential nominating calendar.

‘We’ve always firmly believed that President Trump would be the clear and away front-runner in this race and once he started to campaign and travel around the country and engage with voters that it would be clear that he’s in the driver’s seat,’ said a top Trump campaign adviser, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely.

Trump’s second quarter haul includes funds for his official presidential campaign and Save America, which is his political action committee.

Trump aides didn’t provide a percentage breakdown of how much of the fundraising went to the campaign and to the PAC. But according to the latest fundraising emails, 90% of donations go to the campaign with the remaining 10% to the PAC. 

Save America spends its money on Trump’s non-campaign activities, including paying former president’s expensive legal bills.

News of Trump’s second quarter fundraising was first reported by Politico.