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WASHINGTON (AP) — A Dallas man who tried to fly overseas to join the Russian military and fight against Ukraine was sentenced on Friday to six months in prison for violating the terms of his probation for storming the U.S. Capitol four years ago.

Kevin Loftus, a 56-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army, was stopped from boarding an Oct. 28 flight from Dallas to Tbilisi, Georgia, by way of Istanbul, Turkey, when Turkish Airlines identified a “security flag” associated with him, according to federal prosecutors.

Loftus didn’t have the court’s permission to travel internationally or to drive from Texas to Iowa, where the FBI arrested him three days after his flight plans fell apart, prosecutors said.

Loftus told the FBI that he had hoped to secure a 90-day visa to travel to Russia, where he intended to apply for temporary residency. Loftus said he had used the Telegram messaging platform to communicate with a man who would connect him with the Russian Territorial Defense Unit, a volunteer military corps.

“Loftus said he had already sent the man approximately $1200 to purchase equipment for Russian soldiers,” prosecutors wrote. “Loftus said his intent was to fight for Russia and against Ukraine.”

Loftus declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced him for the probation violation. The judge said Loftus has repeatedly violated court orders.

“He doesn’t think these rules should apply to him,” Friedrich said. “He wants to be above the law.”

Defense attorney Benjamin Schiffelbein said Loftus wanted to enlist in the Russian military because he “felt bad” for Russian soldiers and wanted to help them.

“He had no idea whether they could make use of him,” the lawyer said.

Loftus, a six-year Army veteran, intended to permanently relocate to another country, according to prosecutors.

“And his planned travel was for the express purpose of joining a foreign army to take up arms against one of this country’s allies and in opposition to this country’s foreign policy,” they wrote.

In January 2021, Loftus traveled from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C., to attend then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. After joining the mob of Trump supporters at the Capitol, he entered the building and took photographs. He spent approximately five minutes inside the Capitol.

Loftus was arrested at his Wisconsin home several days after the riot. He pleaded guilty in October 2021 to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

After his arrest, Loftus posted comments about his case on social media, referring to himself as “famous” and a “hero” for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack.

“Loftus also stated that he gained that fame by ‘standing up for all Americans’ because he ‘broke the law,’ and he would file lawsuits against unidentified persons after the criminal case was over,” prosecutors wrote.

Prosecutors recommended 30 days of imprisonment for Loftus, but Friedrich initially sentenced him to three years of probation.

For his probation violation, prosecutors requested a six-month prison sentence. They noted that Loftus, while on probation, also was arrested in December 2023 and charged with driving while intoxicated in Richardson, Texas. Loftus was required to attend a substance abuse program, but he avoided jail time for that violation.

Over 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. More than 1,000 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from a few days to 22 years.

Trump has repeatedly vowed to pardon Capitol rioters, but the district court judges in Washington, D.C., typically have refused to postpone sentencings, plea hearings and trials until after the president-elect returns to the White House.

Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.

Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.

Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.

And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.

“Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” Ziegler said in an interview Friday.

The lawsuit accuses New York Dr. Maggie Carpenter of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeks up to $250,000. No criminal charges are involved.

Texas bars abortion at all stages of pregnancy and has been one of the most aggressive states at pushing back against abortion rights. It began enforcing a state law in 2021 — even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door to state bans — that barred nearly all abortions by allowing citizens to sue anyone who provides an abortion or assists someone in obtaining one.

Paxton said that the 20-year-old woman who received the pills ended up in a hospital with complications. It was only after that, the state said in its filing, that the man described as “the biological father of the unborn child” learned of the pregnancy and the abortion.

“In Texas, we treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies, and this is why out-of-state doctors may not illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” Paxton said in a statement.

The state said the Texas woman received a combination of two drugs that are generally used in medication abortions. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of the second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen can be used to end pregnancies up through 10 weeks, but the drugs also have other uses and can help induce labor, manage miscarriages or treat hemorrhage.

The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, where Carpenter is co-medical director and founder, said in a statement that shield laws are essential to preserving abortion access.

“Ken Paxton is prioritizing his anti-abortion agenda over the health and well-being of women by attempting to shut down telemedicine abortion nationwide,” the group said. “By threatening access to safe and effective reproductive health care, he is putting women directly in harm’s way.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats, said they would defend reproductive freedom.

“As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” James said in a prepared statement. “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.”

It was not clear what specific actions Hochul or James would take.

While most Republican-controlled states began enforcing bans or tighter restrictions on abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned, most Democratic states have adopted laws that aim to protect their residents from investigation or prosecution under other states’ abortion laws. At least eight states have gone farther, offering legal protections to health care providers who prescribe abortion pills to patients in states where abortion is banned. That scenario makes up for about 10% of all abortions in the U.S., a survey for the Society of Family Planning found.

The New York shield law includes a provision that allows a prescriber who is sued to countersue the plaintiff to recover damages.

That makes the Texas lawsuit thorny.

Even if Paxton prevails in Texas court, Ziegler said, it’s unclear how that could be enforced. “Is he going to go to New York to enforce it?” she asked.

Still, anti-abortion groups cheered the filing and abortion rights supporters derided it.

Anti-abortion advocates, who legally challenged the Biden administration’s prescribing rules around mifepristone, have been readying provocative and unusual ways to further limit abortion pill access when Trump takes office next year. They feel emboldened to challenge the pills’ use and seek ways to restrict it under a conservative U.S. Supreme Court buttressed by a Republican-controlled Congress and White House.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group of anti-abortion doctors and their organizations lacked the legal standing to sue to try to have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone rescinded. But since then, the Republican state attorneys general from Idaho, Kansas and Missouri have sought to have some of the rules around the pills tightened — including to bar telemedicine prescriptions.

Also this year, Louisiana became the first state to reclassify the drugs as “controlled dangerous substances.” They can still be prescribed, but there are extra steps required to access them.

Lawmakers in at least three states — Missouri, New Hampshire and Tennessee — have introduced bills for next year that would bar or restrict use of the pills.

“I began to think about how we might be able to both provide an additional deterrent to companies violating the criminal law and provide a remedy for the family of the unborn children,” said Tennessee state Rep. Gino Bulso, who is sponsoring the legislation there targeting medications used in abortions.

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Associated Press journalists Amanda Seitz and Kimberlee Kruesi contributed to this report.

HOUSTON (AP) — Prosecutors in Texas announced Friday that they will seek the death penalty against two Venezuelan men who are accused of killing a 12-year-old Houston girl after they had entered the U.S. illegally.

The death of Jocelyn Nungaray was among several cases this year that became flashpoints in the debate over the nation’s immigration policies. Nungaray’s mother campaigned for President-elect Donald Trump, calling for better control of the border in the wake of her daughter’s death.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said her office would file an official court notice later Friday that prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Peña Ramos, 26. Each man has been charged with capital murder for Nungaray’s June 16 death. Martinez-Rangel and Peña each remained jailed on $10 million bonds.

“Jocelyn’s murder was as vile, brutal and senseless as any case in my tenure as district attorney,” Ogg said in a statement. “And it was made worse by knowing that these two men were here illegally and, had they been held after being captured at the border, they would never have had the opportunity to murder Jocelyn and destroy her family’s future.”

The Associated Press sent emails Friday seeking comment from attorneys for both men.

Prosecutors allege the two men kidnapped, sexually assaulted and strangled the girl before leaving her body in shallow water below a bridge. Her body was found in a creek on June 17. A medical examiner concluded she had been strangled.

Martinez-Rangel and Peña had been arrested earlier in the year near El Paso by the U.S. Border Patrol after entering the country without documentation. Both were released and given notices to appear in court at a later date.

Republicans used Nungaray’s death and other cases in which immigrants who entered the country illegally were accused of committing violent crimes to criticize how President Joe Biden managed the U.S.-Mexico border during his administration. In another case, Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan man, was sentenced to life in prison last month for the death of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.

Trump has alleged that migrants have caused skyrocketing crime rate. Multiple studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – Some early breast cancer patients can safely avoid specific surgeries, according to two studies exploring ways to lessen treatment burdens.

One new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, examines whether removing lymph nodes is always necessary in early breast cancer. Another in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests a new approach to a type of breast cancer called ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS.

The research was discussed Thursday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

DCIS and active monitoring

Every year, about 50,000 women in the U.S. are diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, where the cells that line milk ducts become cancerous, but the nearby breast tissue remains healthy. Many choose to have surgery, although it’s unclear whether they could instead take a “wait-and-see” approach with more frequent monitoring.

The new study, based on two years of data, suggests that such active monitoring is a safe alternative to surgery for many of these women, though some doctors will want to see if the results hold up over time.

“This is an option that patients should consider for their DCIS,” said Dr. Virginia Kaklamani of the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, who was not involved in the research. “For a long time, we’ve had the feeling that we’re overtreating some patients with DCIS. This is a confirmation of what we suspected is happening.”

Taking a more cautious view, Dr. Monica Morrow of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study, said a two-year study isn’t long enough to draw conclusions.

The finding is based on following more than 950 U.S. patients randomly assigned to surgery or active monitoring. All had low-risk DCIS with no sign of invasive cancer. They had the type of DCIS that responds to hormone-blocking drugs and many in the study took those drugs as part of their treatment.

After two years, the rates of invasive cancer were low and did not differ significantly between the groups, with about 6% in the surgery group and about 4% in the monitoring group diagnosed with invasive cancer.

Among patients in the monitoring group, changes spotted on a mammogram would prompt a biopsy. They also could opt for surgery at any time for any reason.

Some study participants didn’t stick with the treatment they were randomly assigned. So in a separate analysis looking at those who actually had surgery or not, the rates of invasive cancer were about 9% for the surgery group and 3% for the monitoring group.

The researchers will continue to follow the patients to see if the finding holds up over a decade.

Tina Clark, 63, of Buxton, Maine, joined the study after being diagnosed with DCIS in 2019. Randomly assigned to the monitoring-only group, she was able to avoid surgery and radiation during a time when she was raising a teenage nephew and going through the illness and death of her husband.

“I feel just so grateful and fortunate that I found this study when I did,” Clark said.

She has mammograms every six months to keep watch on the DCIS in her right breast, which has not advanced. The mammograms spotted a small cancer in her other breast in 2023, unrelated to the DCIS. She had a lumpectomy to remove it.

“If you’re diagnosed with low-risk DCIS, you have time to understand more about your disease and understand what your options are,” said study author Dr. Shelley Hwang of Duke University School of Medicine.

Lymph nodes and early breast cancer

Women having surgery for breast cancer often also have what’s called a sentinel lymph node biopsy where a few lymph nodes in the armpit are removed to check for spreading cancer.

But removing lymph nodes can cause lasting pain and arm swelling, so research is underway to determine when it can be avoided. A study in Europe last year showed that older women with small tumors could safely avoid the added surgery.

In the new study, researchers in Germany looked at whether women with early breast cancer who were planning to have breast-conserving surgery could safely skip having lymph nodes removed. They followed 4,858 women who were randomly assigned to have lymph nodes removed or not.

After five years, about 92% of women in both groups were still alive and free of cancer.

“Removing lymph nodes does not improve survival, and the risk of cancer coming back in the armpit is quite low when lymph nodes are not removed,” said Morrow, who added that some women will still need the lymph node procedure to help determine which treatment drugs they should take after surgery.

MCALLEN (AP) — The Texas Legislature can be full of surprises.

But for the last eight sessions, there has been one constant: state Rep. Armando “Mando” Martinez ’s proposal to establish a public law school in the Rio Grande Valley.

For the Weslaco Democrat, establishing a law school would open the door to more job opportunities for Valley residents, curb the “brain drain” of young professionals leaving the area to find higher-paying jobs in bigger cities, and provide much-needed legal support for one of the state’s poorest regions.

“A lot of the bright people that work in other areas of the state and across the nation come from the Rio Grande Valley,” Martinez said.

The legislation has had mixed support over the years but has never gained traction in the Texas Senate. The cost of opening a law school could be one factor for the lack of support, legal experts and advocates said.

However, after more than a decade of trying, that dream might become a reality without the Legislature’s help. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is currently in talks with St. Mary’s School of Law to create a legal education program locally.

The talks are preliminary, said UTRGV spokesperson Patrick Gonzales, who added the university welcomes the opportunity to build upon those initial discussions.

If that program were to become a reality, it would be the culmination of yearslong efforts in the Valley, which is just one of several legally underserved areas in Texas.

In 2021, there was an average of one lawyer for every 310 Texas residents, according to an analysis by the State Bar of Texas. However, the average varied across the state. In the Valley, there was one lawyer for every 788 residents in the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metro area and one lawyer per 738 residents in the Brownsville-Harlingen region. Meanwhile, Travis County, which includes Austin, had one lawyer for every 118 residents and Harris County, which includes Houston, had one lawyer for every 192 residents.

Luz E. Herrera, a professor at the Texas A&M University School of Law, was among the authors of a 2022 research paper that looked into the Valley’s legal needs.

The paper argued that access to legal education plays an important role in access to justice, pointing out that law schools can integrate legal services into their curriculum and encourage graduates to develop affordable services for low-income communities.

Herrera pointed out that most law schools have training programs for their students such as law clinics through which they provide legal assistance to low-income people within the community surrounding the school.

“Students get credit for doing that work,” Herrera said. “They’re providing free services to people who need it and they’re learning something about being a lawyer.”

She had pushed to create a legal education program in McAllen but was unable to secure funding for it. However, the A&M law school was awarded grant funding for a two-year pilot program with a local hospital for a medical-legal partnership that is set to launch next year.

Through such partnerships, attorneys work in a health care setting to provide legal help to patients.

An existing medical-legal partnership in the Valley is headquartered at the Brownsville Community Health Center through a partnership with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, a nonprofit that provides free civil legal services.

Texas RioGrande Legal Aid works with low-income Texans in 68 counties, having served more than 17,000 clients and households in 2023.

The workload is heavy for the organization’s staff who work across 18 offices throughout the state. But that’s particularly true in the Valley that has the largest poverty population of any region they work in, according to Pablo Almaguer, pro bono counsel for TRLA.

“We are always understaffed and underfunded,” Almaguer said. “Whatever needs you see out there that might be noted in Texas as an average, that (need) would be greater in South Texas.”

Almaguer added there is a direct correlation between having a law school and meeting the legal needs of the community. As an example, he said if a hurricane were to hit the area, law clinics would be able to assist residents navigate guidelines to receive federal disaster assistance.

“There is a correlation between better legal services for the poor when there’s a law school in that area, geographically speaking,” Almaguer said.

A law school once existed in the Valley, if only briefly. It was named the Reynaldo G. Garza School of Law and operated from 1984 to 1993 with provisional accreditation from the Texas Supreme Court. It never received accreditation from the American Bar Association.

Bringing one back could bring lawyers and other professionals to a community, but it wouldn’t solve the systematic problems, said Pamela R. Metzger, executive director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.

“I don’t think it’s a fix-all solution,” Metzger said. “I think that it is a step but it’s not going to be a big enough step to the larger problem.”

Texas, like every other state in the country, struggles with legal deserts which are places where there aren’t enough lawyers to meet local needs, Metzger said.

However, Texas is unique in its struggle because of the vast distances between communities and the sheer number of counties because some jobs require a county or government affiliation.

To increase the number of attorneys in rural areas, Metzger said they needed to overcome the biggest challenges facing young attorneys such as large student loan debt that may only be paid back with a high-paying job in a major metro area. The other issue is attorneys need support staff to provide mentorship and guidance.

Metzger hopes state legislation will solve the issue of student loan debt by providing financial assistance to attorneys who work in rural communities and noted that the state provides similar assistance to physicians.

During the 2023 legislative session, lawmakers filed legislation in the House and Senate that would have established a student loan repayment program for attorneys who worked in rural counties.

Though the effort stalled, Metzger expects the debate will continue this session.

“We are hoping that this session, the Legislature will go ahead and fund those efforts and take the same care with making sure people’s legal rights are protected as it has with making sure that they’re getting the health care they need,” she said.