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Almost 36 years after Erik and Lyle Menendez killed their parents with shotguns in a crime that captivated the nation, they appeared via video to address the Los Angeles judge who would decide whether they could ever be freed from prison.

“I killed my mom and dad,” Lyle Menendez, now 57, said at a resentencing hearing Tuesday. “I make no excuses. I take full responsibility.”

On Aug. 20, 1989, the brothers killed their parents, José and Kitty Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home. They were later sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But after a day of testimony, and after they were backed by support letters from prison officers, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic on Tuesday resentenced the brothers to 50 years to life — a change that will make them immediately eligible for parole.

Erik Menendez, who is now 54, said: “My actions were criminal, selfish, cruel and cowardly.” 

“I have no excuse, no justification for what I did,” he said. “I take full responsibility for my crimes.” 

The brothers admitted they lied to police after the killings. “After the killings, I denied all responsibility,” Erik Menendez said. “I am sorry for these lies. There is no excuse for my behavior.”

The pair have argued that they were sexually abused by their father.

Lyle Menendez said Tuesday that, “I was in a co-dependent relationship with my little brother” over shared trauma.

He said that after the killings, he still heard his father’s voice in his head and that he kept those secrets because he thought no one would believe the alleged sex abuse.

“Today, 35 years later, I am deeply ashamed of who I was,” Lyle Menendez said.

He said that he has had a personal evolution since 1996, when he and his brother were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.  

“I made a promise I would never use violence to solve a problem,” Lyle Menendez said.

If released, he said he plans to continue working with people who are incarcerated.

Jesic’s resentencing of the pair to 50 years to life in prison does not mean that they are freed yet.

Their parole will have to be approved by the state Board of Parole Hearings, which usually sets a hearing six months in advance. A decision to parole them would be up for review by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

That review process can take up to 150 days following a parole hearing, according to the governor’s website.

There is also a separate effort by the brothers to have Newsom grant them clemency, which would allow them to be released immediately, but that process is pending.

Members of the brothers’ family have sought their release from prison. Lyle Menendez on Tuesday apologized to his family members, saying, “I’m so sorry to each and every one of you.”

“I lied to you and forced you into a spotlight of public humiliation you never asked for,” he said.

CLEVELAND — Tyrese Haliburton scored 31 points, Pascal Siakam added 21 and the Indiana Pacers advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals for the second straight year with a 114-105 victory over Cleveland on Tuesday night, eliminating the top-seeded Cavaliers in five games.

Donovan Mitchell, who missed the second half of Sunday’s game due to a sprained left ankle, led Cleveland with 35 points. Evan Mobley added 24 points and 11 rebounds.

The fourth-seeded Pacers will now await the winner of the matchup between the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks. New York has a 3-1 advantage in the series with Game 5 on Wednesday night in Boston.

The Celtics swept the Pacers last year in the East finals.

Indiana rallied from a 19-point deficit in the first half and took control after halftime as it won all three games at Cleveland’s Rocket Arena.

It is the first time since a 2005 first-round series against Boston that the Pacers won three road games in a playoff series.

The Cavs dropped three home games in a postseason series for the first time.

Cleveland stormed out to a 44-25 lead with 8:10 remaining in the second quarter before Indiana rallied.

The Pacers got within 56-52 at halftime and then shot 14 of 22 from the field in the third quarter — including four 3-pointers — to go up 85-76 going into the final 12 minutes.

Indiana seized control with a 17-2 run over a five-minute span in the third when Siakam had eight points and Haliburton five. That was part of a 29-8 spurt that saw the Pacers take a 12-point lead late in the third.

Cleveland was just 7 of 26 from the field in the quarter.

Mitchell’s 3-pointer got the Cavs within 106-103 with 1:27 remaining, but Indiana closed it out by scoring eight of the final 10 points.

North Carolina head coach Bill Belichick shot down the notion that his relationship with 24-year-old Jordon Hudson has impacted his ability to properly lead the football program.

“That’s really off to the side,” he told ESPN on Tuesday from the ACC Spring Meetings. “It’s a personal relationship and she doesn’t have anything to do with UNC football.” 

Belichick, 73, is considered one of the greatest coaches in football history. He led the New England Patriots from 2000-2023, helping the team claim six Super Bowl victories. After mutually agreeing to part ways with the franchise in January 2024, he was named head coach of the Tar Heels the following December. 

Belichick and Hudson’s relationship was first made public that same month, when they walked the red carpet together at the American Museum of Natural History Gala. Questions immediately rose due to the 49-year age gap.

They got much louder in late April when Belichick appeared on “CBS Mornings” ahead of the release of his memoir, “The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football.” When correspondent Tony Dokoupil asked how the couple met, Hudson, sitting in the background, said, “We’re not talking about this.”

Belichick has since released a statement saying they had nothing to hide about how they met.

“Some of the clips make it appear as though we were avoiding the question of how we met, but we have been open about the fact that Jordon and I met on a flight to Palm Beach in 2021,” he said.

NBC Sports reported last month that Hudson is “very involved” in Belichick’s role with UNC.

“From his coaching job at North Carolina to the program’s negotiations with NFL Films about a Hard Knocks-style documentary/infomercial, she is taking a very active role,” Mike Florio reported. “And exerting a very high degree of influence.”

Belichick, however, refuted that on Tuesday.

Asked by ESPN whether he has spoken with his team about “what’s going on off the field,” he said he has.

“We want to make the players the best they can be and provide them the best opportunity on and off the field,” he said. “That’s what we’re about at UNC and we’re going to do the best for every single player that we have.”

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — Former Uruguayan President José Mujica, a onetime Marxist guerilla and flower farmer whose radical brand of democracy, plain-spoken philosophy and simple lifestyle fascinated people around the world, has died. He was 89.

Uruguay’s left-wing president, Yamandú Orsi, announced his death, which came four months after Mujica decided to forgo further medical treatment for esophageal cancer and enter hospice care at his three-room ranch house on the outskirts of Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital.

“President, activist, guide and leader,” Orsi wrote of his longtime political mentor on social media. “We will miss you greatly, dear old man. Thank you for everything you gave us and for your profound love for your people.”

Mujica had been under treatment for cancer of the esophagus since spring 2024, when the affliction was diagnosed. His doctor reported that radiation had succeeded in eliminating much of the tumor, but Mujica’s autoimmune disease complicated his recovery. In January, Mujica’s doctor announced that the cancer in his esophagus had returned and spread to his liver.

A colorful history and simple philosophy

As leader of a violent leftist guerrilla group in the 1960s known as the Tupamaros, Mujica robbed banks, planted bombs and abducted businessmen and politicians on Montevideo’s streets in hopes of provoking a popular uprising that would lead to a Cuban-style socialist Uruguay.

A brutal counterinsurgency and ensuing right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Uruguay between 1973 and 1985 sent him to prison for nearly 15 years, 10 of which he spent in solitary confinement.

During his 2010-2015 presidency, Mujica, widely known as “Pepe,” oversaw the transformation of his small South American nation into one of the world’s healthiest and most socially liberal democracies. He earned admiration at home and cult status abroad for legalizing marijuana and same-sex marriage, enacting the region’s first sweeping abortion rights law and establishing Uruguay as a leader in alternative energy.

Through his remarkable political journey, Mujica captivated audiences with his humble tone, austere lifestyle and ideological earnestness.

Shunning the pomp and circumstance of the presidency, he drove a beat-up 1987 Volkswagen Beetle, wore rumpled cardigan sweaters and leather sandals with black socks and lived in a tiny tin-roof house outside Montevideo, where for decades he tended to chrysanthemums for sale in local markets.

“This is the tragedy of life, on the one hand it’s beautiful, but it ends,” Mujica told The Associated Press from his farmhouse in an October 2023 interview. “Therefore, paradise is here. As is hell.”

Tributes poured in from presidents, world leaders and ordinary people from around the world. The first to share remembrances were allied leaders who recalled not only Mujica’s accomplishments but also his hallowed status as one of the last surviving lions of the now-receding Latin American left that peaked when he assumed office two decades ago.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro praised Mujica as a “great revolutionary.” Bolivia’s former socialist president, Evo Morales, said that he “and all of Latin America” are in mourning. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called Mujica “an example for Latin America and the entire world.”

From robbing banks to running Uruguay

Mujica never attended university and didn’t finish high school. But politics piqued his interest as early as adolescence, when the young flower farmer joined the progressive wing of the conservative National Party, one of the two main parties in Uruguay. His dramatic pivot to urban guerrilla warfare came in the 1960s, as leftist struggles swept the region in the wake of the Cuban Revolution.

He and other student and labor radicals launched the Tupamaros National Liberation Movement, which quickly gained notoriety for its brazen Robin Hood-style exploits aimed at installing a revolutionary government.

By 1970 the government cracked down, and the Tupamaros responded with violence, planting bombs in well-heeled districts and attacking casinos and other targets, ultimately killing more than 30 people.

Mujica was shot six times in a firefight with police in a bar. He helped stage a legendary prison break and twice escaped custody. But in 1973 the military seized power, unleashing a reign of state terror upon the population that resulted in the forced disappearance of some 200 Uruguayans and the imprisonment of thousands.

During his time in prison, he endured torture and long stretches in solitary confinement, often in a hole in the ground.

After power returned to civilians in 1985, Mujica emerged from prison under an amnesty that covered the crimes of the dictators and their guerrilla opponents. He entered mainstream politics with the Broad Front, a coalition of radical leftists and more centrist social democrats.

Elected to Parliament in 1995, he astonished parking attendants and the general public by arriving to work on a moped with ragged jeans and an unkempt beard.

Rapidly rising through the party ranks, Mujica charmed the country with his low-key way of living and penchant for speaking his mind.

In 2005 he was named Minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries. He held that post until 2008, when the Broad Front chose him as their presidential candidate. A year later, he was elected Uruguay’s 40th president with 52% of the vote, capping an extraordinary political transformation.

His wife, Lucía Topolansky, a former co-revolutionary guerrilla member who was also imprisoned before becoming a prominent politician, bestowed the presidential sash on Mujica at his inauguration — as is custom for the senator who had received the most votes. They married in 2005 and had no children.

“I’ve been with him for over 40 years, and I’ll be with him until the end,” she told a local radio station Sunday as Mujica’s condition worsened.

A folksy president who fascinated the world

Pepe’s bracingly modest and spontaneous style — delivering presidential announcements in sandals, distributing pamphlets in the streets against machismo culture, lunching in Montevideo bars — made him a populist folk hero and token of global fascination.

“They made me look like a poor president, but they are the poor ones … if you have to live in that government house with four floors just to have tea,” he told the AP.

As president, he presided over a period of comfortable economic growth, rising wages and falling poverty. In speeches, he pushed Uruguayans to reject consumerism and embrace their nation’s tradition of simplicity.

Under his watch, the small nation became known worldwide for the strength of its institutions and the civility of its politics — rare features most recently on display during Uruguay’s 2024 presidential vote that vaulted Orsi, Mujica’s moderate protégé, to power over the conservative incumbent.

Mujica’s greatest innovations came on social issues. During his tenure, Uruguay became the first country in South America to legalize abortion for the first trimester and the first in the world to legalize the production, distribution and sale of marijuana. His government also legalized same-sex marriage, burnishing Uruguay’s progressive image in the predominantly Catholic region.

Mujica’s government also powered a green energy revolution in Uruguay. Today Uruguay is considered among the world’s most environmentally friendly nations, generating 98% of its electricity from biomass, solar and wind energy.

His tenure was also not without controversy. The opposition complained of rising crime and a swollen fiscal deficit on his watch that forced his successor to raise taxes.

Some world leaders disapproved of his disdain for the established order. Conservative Uruguayans voiced outrage over his progressive policies.

Still, Mujica ended his tenure with a 60% approval rating. Ineligible to seek re-election because of the constitution’s ban on consecutive terms, he continued to wield considerable influence as an elected senator.

Despite his stardom as regional trailblazer and global sage, his humility defined him until the end.

“They ask you: ‘How do you want to be remembered?’ Vanity of vanities!” he exclaimed in his interview with the AP. “Memory is a historical thing. … Years go by. Not even the dust remains.”

Party leaders who long tiptoed around Joe Biden’s health and questions around his senility now seem to be settling on a new tack in explaining the 2024 loss to Donald Trump: It’s all Biden’s fault. 

At least that was the chief reason put forward by Kamala Harris’ campaign manager David Plouffe in explaining what led to the November loss. 

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According to the forthcoming book “Original Sin,” which obtained by NBC News on Tuesday, Plouffe called the efforts to defeat Trump on a truncated timeline a “f—ing nightmare”  

“And it’s all Biden. He totally f—ed us,” Plouffe told the book’s authors, according to the excerpt. “We got so screwed by Biden as a party.” 

Plouffe did not respond to a request for comment. A Biden spokesperson said they had not reviewed every part of the book and would not comment on specific revelations.

“We continue to await anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he was unable to do his job. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite — he was a very effective president,” the spokesperson said.

Plouffe’s comments in the book followed those from a series of Democrats — from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on down — who have pointed to Biden, his decision to run for a second term and his subsequent late exit from the race, as much of the blame for 2024 loss to Trump.   

But that thinking is opening a new tension in the party, where some on the left say that to just blame Biden is papering over a more substantive issue of failures by the campaign and the party, and that leaders should share blame and reflect. Not doing so, they warn, may lead to further losses in the next presidential election and even possibly the midterms.

In response to Plouffe’s remarks in the book, longtime Democratic National Committee Finance Chair Chris Korge delivered his own stern words in an interview with NBC News. 

“To blame Biden now is to shift the accountability from the people who lost the race: the consultants, the so-called ‘gurus,’” Korge said. 

Korge said Democrats are better served if they looked forward but noted that they still needed to review what went wrong. He said the party had a “perfect convention, including a huge contingency of influencers and podcasts.” Harris also, he added, had a tremendous debate, and they raised a record amount of money — more than $1.4 billion.

“We had all the money we needed and we found a way to not use our money wisely,” Korge said of the campaign. “I find it rich that consultants who lost that election are now trying to blame Joe Biden.”  

Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, went further in saying that Harris was a flawed candidate and Plouffe’s remarks attempted to “whitewash” a bad campaign. 

“All the things being said about Biden — he should have dropped out earlier, and there’s likely a cover up — is probably true,” Green said. “But that’s too easy an excuse to distract Democrats from solving a very real problem, which is that the party is seen as clubby political insiders who are defending a broken economic system when we need anti-establishment candidates who stand for political and economic change.” 

The discussion around Biden is accelerating as a series of deeply reported books examining the Democrats’ 2024 loss have been released. “Original Sin,” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, to be publicly released later this month, purports to lay out aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment. “Fight,” a book by Jonathan Allen of NBC News and Amy Parnes of The Hill, gives anecdotes of Biden not recognizing high-profile party leaders and of the former first lady and others in his inner circle cocooning the then-president to obscure infirmities from the public. 

The new revelations seemed to prompt an offensive by Biden, who went on ABC’s “The View” last week to declare he was not in cognitive decline in office. Biden also hired Chris Meagher, a former White House aide, to handle his communications.

Meagher did not respond to a request for comment, but last week on X, he criticized one of the books saying, writing on X: “Yes, Biden was old, but that’s a lot different than an allegation of mental decline that kept him from being able to do the job, which there is no evidence of.”

Biden had long rebuffed attempts to stop him from seeking a second term, though he had implied his presidency would serve as a bridge for Democrats to a new generation. He then announced a second term, and he picked up support from party leaders and some White House officials who then moved to his campaign.

Once Biden had a cataclysmic debate performance against Trump in late June of last year, the tide turned for him to leave the race. Biden stepped aside and backed Harris, but by then there was just 107 days for her to mount a campaign against Trump.

“In a 107-day race, it is very difficult to do all the things you would normally do in a year and a half, two years,” Jen O’Malley Dillon said on “Pod Save America” last November.

Left unasked, however, was what role O’Malley Dillon — and others who were on Biden’s White House team before moving to campaign efforts — played in helping create the very predicament they were complaining about.

That included not putting Harris out in front early enough in the administration so she would be prepared to lead if necessary, as well as how much those running Biden’s White House then campaign efforts pushed for answers on his mental health. 

Many Democrats today express some regret over how the process turned out.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who made a bid for the White House in 2020, also recently said that the party could be in a different place today if it had held a real primary.

“You know, everything we look at in a rearview mirror after you lose an election. Yes, we would have been served better by a primary. But we are where we are,” Klobuchar told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist, said the party would be well served to evaluate its mistakes but also quickly adjust to the new political landscape before them.

“There are a lot of lessons to be learned from 2024 beyond just whether Biden should have run, and it’s important that we continue to have a spirited conversation inside the family about what went wrong and what we can learn from it,” Rosenberg said. “But the real next chapter for us is going to be the 20 or 30 political leaders in our party charting a new course, having a big debate, and we’re having a big debate and charting a new course for our party over the next few years.”

Rosenberg added that the playing field is quickly changing with Trump in the White House. 

“That’s where the real action is going to be, because Trump has already created a whole new dynamic, and the politics that generated 2024 are no longer with us,” Rosenberg said. “We now have a new set of realities that we have to respond to and build from and so what’s going to be more important.” 

WASHINGTON — The conservative activist named by President Donald Trump as the head of the Justice Department’s “Weaponization Working Group” said Tuesday he planned to “name” and “shame” individuals the department determines it is unable to charge with crimes, in what would amount to a major departure from longstanding Justice Department protocols.

Ed Martin described himself at a press conference as the “captain” of the group that is investigating prosecutors who launched past investigations into Trump and his allies.

“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them,” Martin said. “And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work. And so that’s, that’s how I believe the job operates.”

During Trump’s first tenure, the justification given for Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey was that Comey had given a press conference in which he released “derogatory information” about then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously,” then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote in a memo, adding that he believed Comey had given a “textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.”

Martin’s remarks came on his last full day as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on Tuesday. Trump announced last week that he was naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as interim U.S. attorney following Martin’s 120-day tenure, instead making Martin the pardon attorney, associate deputy attorney general, and director of the “Weaponization Working Group” that Attorney General Pam Bondi established at the Justice Department in response to one of Trump’s executive orders.

That group is due to examine work including that of former Special Counsel Jack Smith; any federal cooperation with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted Trump’s hush money case, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a civil case against the Trump Organization; the Justice Department’s handling of cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack; and criminal prosecutions of anti-abortion activists, among other issues.

“When it comes to the problem of weaponization, the first part of it must be transparency,” Martin said. “We have to show our fellow Americans what went on, because when you hide it and then you prosecute, you look like your target. That’s what the Biden administration, they didn’t tell you what they were doing they just targeted people.” 

Justice Department protocols state that officials generally shouldn’t confirm the existence of or otherwise comment on ongoing investigations. Martin said it was important to get “the truth” out when asked whether his past comments — and the plans he laid out on Tuesday — would run afoul of those protocols

“I will say that the prosecutor’s role, and at this moment in our history, is to make clear what the truth is and to get that out,” Martin said. “It can’t be that the system is stifling the truth from coming out because of some procedure.”

Martin said he would have a “more public-facing” role as director of the Weaponization Working Group. 

“When I was asked to switch over here, I was told, you know, this job, you need to be out more and talk about what’s going on. So I think we’ll be a little bit more outward facing in terms of talking about what’s happening,” Martin said. 

Martin had no prosecutorial experience when Trump named him to the U.S. attorney position on Inauguration Day, the same day the president mass-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants. Soon, some prosecutors who worked on Capitol attack cases were fired, Martin opened a probe into the office’s handling of an obstruction charge used against some of the rioters, and Martin demoted others who played a key role in the prosecutions.

As the first Catholic pope from the United States, Pope Leo XIV has an ancestry that traces back to the Creole and free people of color from Louisiana, illustrating complex and interconnected issues of race and class in American history.

“His rise is not just a religious milestone, it’s a historical affirmation,” genealogist and former official Louisiana state archivist Alex DaPaul Lee said of the man previously known as Cardinal Robert Prevost.

When Lee first heard about the pope’s Creole roots from fellow genealogist Jamarlon Glenn, he responded, “There’s no way,” Lee said with a laugh. “But then I began going down a rabbit hole of research.”

Lee, the founder of Alex Genealogy and Southwest Louisiana Genealogy Researchers, discovered troves of documents in his collection and gathered records from his network of genealogists that confirmed information about Pope Leo’s background. It also showed generations of Catholicism within Prevost’s family.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize that he was a Creole from the seventh ward of New Orleans, Louisiana, which was a prominent place for Louisiana Creoles,” he said.

The news of the pope’s Creole roots was also noted by genealogist Jari C. Honora. Leo’s brother John Prevost confirmed the connection to The New York Times and said he and his brothers had never talked about it. “It was never an issue,” John Prevost told the Times.

Although his paternal surname, “Prevost,” is common in Louisiana, Lee said a strong Creole connection was actually found in Pope Leo’s maternal ancestry: His great-great-grandmother Celeste Lemelle was the daughter of two free people of color, Louis Lemelle and Celeste Olimpie Grandpres. They married in Opelousas, Louisiana, in 1798, and were legally classified as “quadroons.”

 “That meant they would have a fourth African ancestry or it could have been Native American ancestry,” Lee said. 

The Creole community emerged in Louisiana due to the blending of cultures there. French, Native American, Spanish, German and descendants of West African countries all cohabitated in the region during the pre-colonial era when France and Spain owned the Louisiana territory. 

In Louisiana during the 1700s, there were three main racial categories: the enslaved, Gens de Couleur Libres (free people of color/Creoles of color) and the white planter class, according to Lee.

The classifications within the Creole community were based on legal status and racial identity, with other categories like “mulatto” and “octoroon” often showing up within historic documents, Lee said. He added that there were also Creoles of color who owned enslaved people at the time. Documentation shows that the Lemelle family once owned enslaved people.

Lee said the Lemelle family, which traced its wealth to cattle ranching, became one of the most prominent Creole families during the Antebellum period in Louisiana.

The pope’s great-great-grandmother Celeste Lemelle was a free woman of color and documents show she was given earnings from a business owned by Ferdinand Gayarré in December of 1833. In addition, she was also given land in 1850 from Frédéric Guimont, a merchant whom she had several children with. The transaction was irrevocable as a way to protect her ownership of it, Lee said.

“One of the most significant things about Louisiana was that women could own property and they have been owning property since its early inception, especially free women of color,” Lee said.

Lee pointed out where the change of racial identity can be seen within Pope Leo’s family during the 1800s.  

Celeste Lemelle’s son Ferdinand David Baquie, born in New Orleans on Oct. 10, 1837, was listed as “mulatto” in the 1870 census. But in 1880, he and his entire family were listed as white.  

In terms of how Pope Leo’s family ended up in Illinois, Lee said his family was likely part of the hundreds of other Louisiana Creoles who migrated north during the first wave of the Great Migration in the early 1900s.

“Illinois was once part of the Louisiana territory. They had an old post by the name of Kaskaskia where they had some of the earliest Creole people,” Lee said, adding that people of color would have had more job opportunities and better civil liberties in the northern state. 

“Considering the fact that many of these families passed for white in Chicago meant they were going to have more success, regardless, because of their appearance.”

Lee said it’s notable that the pope’s racial background reflects the diverse blends of cultures that have historically merged to form the unique identity of Louisiana.

“In America, a lot of people think everything is just Black or white,” he said. “But it’s important to note that the pope’s ancestry represents a more inclusive view of what it means to be a Catholic, and what it means to be an American with Louisiana Creole ties. This is more than just genealogy, it’s a legacy.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There have been years when Jordan Spieth arrived at the PGA Championship and wasn’t even asked about the prospect of completing the career Grand Slam.

He didn’t find it insulting. In fact, he kind of understood it.

“A lot of times,” he said, “I wasn’t in very good form.”

But that’s not the case this year, and it was fitting, a month after Rory McIlroy finally checked off the final leg of the Slam, that Spieth on Tuesday kicked off the player interviews here at Quail Hollow.

This will be Spieth’s ninth attempt to win the fourth and final leg. McIlroy needed a record 11 attempts (the previous high was three) to finally claim the Masters.

“It’s always circled on the calendar,” Spieth said. “For me, if I could only win one tournament for the rest of my life, I’d pick this one for that reason.

“Watching Rory win after giving it a try for a number of years was inspiring. Most of the time he makes it look a lot easier; so obviously that was on the forefront of his mind. Something like that has not been done by many people, and there’s a reason why. But I’d like to throw my hat in the ring and give it a chance come the weekend.”

Since his first attempt in 2017 (also here at Quail Hollow), Spieth has not come particularly close. His only top-10 finish was in 2019, when even he admitted that he needed to “fake it” around Bethpage Black without anywhere near his best stuff and Brooks Koepka staked to a significant lead.

Throughout his career, Spieth has long believed that the PGA Championship would be the second-most difficult major for him to win. He acknowledged that he was perhaps fortunate that the tournament he least expected to win, the U.S. Open, came at an atypical venue in Chambers Bay in 2015 and with some assistance from a late Dustin Johnson three-putt. Meanwhile, the PGA, with its preference for big ballparks with thick rough, has not typically fit Spieth’s profile. But improvements to his driver have imbued him with a new sense of confidence that he can handle this major’s unique demands. This season he has increased both his ball speed and his accuracy off the tee while posting three top-10s in his comeback from wrist surgery.

“Because of my driver becoming a weapon more than it used to be,” he said, “that leaves me in a position where I feel a little more comfortable on these courses.”

Throw in the fact that he has seen Quail Hollow before during the regular PGA Tour stop — four tries, zero top-25s — and features wall-to-wall, sloped Bermudagrass that he grew up on in Dallas, and this could represent one of Spieth’s best chances to join golf’s most exclusive club.

“It’s a good opportunity this week, for sure,” he said.

The longtime Indiana University doctor accused of sexually abusing basketball players has died, but the lawsuit accusing the school’s trustees and a former athletic trainer of turning a blind eye to the alleged abuse lives on.

Dr. Bradford Bomba Sr., who has been accused of performing unnecessary rectal examinations on several generations of Hoosiers players, died on May 8 while receiving hospice care in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, according to his obituary. He was 89.

His death comes a week after a law firm hired by the university concluded that the doctor did not act “in bad faith or with an improper purpose” when he performed the exams on hundreds of young players during routine physicals.

But in the same report, medical experts brought on by the Jones Day law firm to help conduct the independent investigation wrote that “it was uncommon” for physicians to perform invasive exams like this on “college-age student athletes without pertinent history of complaints.”

Kathleen DeLaney, who represents five former Indiana players in the federal lawsuit, said Bomba’s death does not derail their case. Bomba is not named as a defendant.

In December Bomba testified via video in a deposition ordered by the federal judge presiding over the lawsuit. During the deposition, Bomba invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination dozens of times, according to a transcript of his testimony.

“We will be able to use that testimony, so we do not believe that Dr. Bomba’s death will impact our case,” Delaney wrote in an emailed response Tuesday to NBC News. “IU does not challenge that Dr. Bomba systematically and over decades penetrated the rectums of young, healthy male elite athletes.”

IU did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the death of Bomba, who provided medical care to all of its sports teams from 1962 to 1970 and was the men’s basketball team physician from 1979 until the late 1990s.

Born in Chicago, Bradford played football for Indiana University and was drafted by the Washington Redskins in 1957 but left the team after four preseason games to attend IU’s school of medicine, his obituary states.

Bomba was long retired when Haris Mujezinovic and Charlie Miller, who played for the Hoosiers in the 1990s under legendary coach Bob Knight, said in a lawsuit filed in October in U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana that the coaches and trainers were aware that Bomba was subjecting basketball players to unnecessary prostate examinations and did nothing to stop him. 

Knight, who was described as a “close friend” in Bomba’s obituary, died two years ago at age 83.

The former Hoosiers players sued under Title IX, a federal law that requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funds to put safeguards in place to protect students from discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Since October, three other former players joined the class action lawsuit against the IU trustees and former athletic trainer Tim Garl.

Both the IU trustees and Garl have filed motions seeking to dismiss the lawsuit against them, court records show. Garl, who had been the head men’s basketball trainer at the school since 1981, was informed in April that IU would not be renewing his contract.

The Jones Day report called Garl’s behavior “unprofessional” for “razzing” players about the rectal exams at the hands of Bomba.