Today is Saturday, December twenty eighth, the 363rd day of 2024. There are three days left within the 12 months.

Today in history:

On December 28, 2015, a grand jury in Cleveland declined to indict two white cops within the killing of black 12-year-old Tamir Rice. He was shot while carrying a toy gun.

Also on this date:

In 1895, the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, held the primary public screening of their movies in Paris.

In 1912, the San Francisco light rail began operating. Mayor James Rolph Jr. was on the wheel of the No. 1 streetcar as 50,000 spectators watched.

In 1945, Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 1972, Kim Il Sung, the prime minister of North Korea, was made president of the country with a brand new structure.

In 1973, the Endangered Species Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

In 1981, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the primary American “test-tube baby,” was born in Norfolk, Virginia.

In 1991, nine people died attempting to attend a charity basketball game on the City College of New York.

In 2014, the U.S. war in Afghanistan officially ended after 13 years with a quiet flag-lowering ceremony in Kabul that marked the transition of fighting from U.S.-led combat forces to the country's own security forces.

Today's birthdays:

• Actor Denzel Washington is 70.
• TV personality Gayle King is 70.
• Hockey Hall of Famer Ray Bourque is 64.
• Linux inventor Linus Torvalds is 55.
• Political commentator Ana Navarro is 53.
• TV host and comedian Seth Meyers is 51.
• Actor Joe Manganiello is 48.
• The musician John Legend is 46.
• Actor André Holland is 45.
• Actress Sienna Miller is 43.
• Actress Jessie Buckley is 35.

Celts

A substitute player from the Celtics' championship squad might be searching for a brand new team in the subsequent few days.

According to Keith Smith of SpotracCeltics forward Oshae Brissett declined his $2.5 million player option with Boston for the 2024–25 season, allowing him to develop into an unrestricted free agent this summer.

Even if the Celtics will challenge for the title again within the 2024-25 season, the 26-year-old Brissett could earn a more vital role on one other team that doesn't have as many All-Star talents.

The 6-foot-9 Brissett played in 55 regular-season games with the Celtics, averaging 3.7 points and a pair of.9 rebounds in 11.5 minutes per game. These were the fewest minutes Brissett played per game since his rookie season with the Raptors in 2019-20.

Brissett played limited games within the postseason but provided momentum within the Eastern Conference finals against the Pacers. With Boston's frontcourt limited by injuries to Kristaps Porzingis and Luke Kornet, Brissett got here off the bench in Game 2 against Indy and recorded three steals and three assists in 12 minutes.

While Brissett's ability to energise Boston's lineup can be lacking if he signs elsewhere, the Toronto native could land on a team where he could play 18-20 minutes an evening. Boston could also trade the few appearances Brissett gets to a younger player like Jordan Walsh.

Local news

Following a decline in enrollment, Emerson College announced in an email to college and staff on Tuesday that it would lay off staff and leave some vacancies unfilled in fiscal 12 months 2025, in accordance with .

The college attributes the decline in enrollment partially to “negative press and social media” following the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and subsequent arrests.

In the early hours of April 25, 118 student protesters were arrested by Boston police as officers raided the pro-Palestinian encampment on Boylston Place Alley, a public path resulting in the State Transportation Center.

President Jay Bernhardt wrote that he expects the enrollment decline to last just one 12 months, however the budget impact will last for several years.

“We attribute this decline to several factors, including a nationwide trend toward a shift away from smaller private institutions, a delay in application fees in response to the implementation of the new FAFSA program, student protests against our yield events and campus tours, and negative press coverage and social media exposure as a result of the demonstrations and arrests,” Bernhardt wrote in an email sent to the Times.

Michelle Gaseau, a spokeswoman for Emerson, declined to comment on the matter Wednesday morning, saying the message was internal.

Boston.com was unable to achieve Emerson Staff Union members in time for publication.

However, one faculty member said they were completely taken by surprise by the announcement.

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Illona Yosefov, an instructional technologist at the school and chief administrator of the unionYosefov can also be a member of the school and staff of Justice in Palestine.

“It feels like taking advantage of the situation to do what you want. It also feels like it's a way to silence dissent, to scare people into compliance,” Yosefov said. “I wonder if [Bernhardt is] I'm trying to send them all a message that they should behave in the fall, otherwise something will happen.”

National News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday the House will seek judicial enforcement of Attorney General Merrick Garland's subpoena to review the audio interview of President Joe Biden's special counsel, just hours after the Justice Department declined to prosecute Republicans on contempt of Congress charges.

“It is unfortunately predictable that the Biden administration's Department of Justice will not prosecute Garland for contempt of congressional subpoenas, even though the department has aggressively prosecuted Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for the same matter,” Johnson said in a press release to The Associated Press. “This is another example of the two-tiered justice system that the Biden administration has given us.”

In a letter to Johnson earlier Friday, a Justice Department official cited the agency's “longstanding position and consistent practice” of not prosecuting officials who fail to comply with subpoenas since the president invokes executive privilege.

The Democratic President last month asserted executive privilege to forestall the discharge of the audio recording, which Republicans say the White House wants just for political reasons. Republicans pushed ahead with the contempt effort anyway, voting Wednesday to punish Garland for his refusal to release the recording.

Deputy Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte noted that under presidents of each political parties, the Justice Department has refused to initiate prosecutions in similar cases when there was a claim for executive privilege.

Accordingly, the department “will not bring the charge of contempt of Congress before a grand jury or take any other steps to prosecute the Attorney General,” Uriarte said within the letter to Johnson. The letter didn’t specify who on the Justice Department made the choice.

Republicans were outraged when special counsel Robert Hur declined to prosecute Biden for his handling of classified information and immediately launched an investigation.

Republican lawmakers, led by Representatives Jim Jordan and James Comer, sent a subpoena for audio files of Hur's interviews with Biden, however the Justice Department turned over only a portion of the documents and omitted the audio file of the interview with the president.

Republicans accuse the White House of keeping the tape under wraps because they consider the president is afraid voters might hear it in an election 12 months.

A Jordanian spokesman criticized the Justice Ministry's move on Friday, saying: “The rule of law applies to you, but not to me.”

A transcript of the Hur interview shows that Biden had difficulty remembering some dates and infrequently confused some details – something he has been doing for years each in private and non-private, based on longtime aides – but otherwise showed good recall in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions on his age. At 81, he’s the oldest president ever and is looking for one other four-year term.

The attorney general said the Justice Department made extraordinary efforts to tell lawmakers about Hur's investigation. But Garland said releasing the audio recordings could jeopardize future sensitive investigations because witnesses could be less willing to cooperate in the event that they knew their interviews could grow to be public.

In a letter last month detailing Biden's decision to invoke executive privilege, White House counsel Ed Siskel accused Republicans of looking for the records so that they could “dismember” and deform them to attack the president. Executive privilege gives presidents the fitting to maintain information secret from the courts, Congress and the general public to guard the confidentiality of selections, although it might probably be challenged in court.

The Justice Department noted that it also shunned prosecuting Attorney General Bill Barr, who was charged with contempt of court in 2019. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to question Barr after he refused to release documents related to an investigation into former President Donald Trump.

Similarly, the Justice Department declined to prosecute former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after he was charged with contempt of Congress for ceasing to cooperate with the committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Years earlier, then-Attorney General Eric Holder was charged with contempt of court in reference to the arms smuggling operation generally known as Operation Fast and Furious. The Justice Department also took no motion against Holder.

Two former Trump White House aides, Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon, were charged with contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas issued by the committee on January 6. They were each found guilty at trial and sentenced to 4 months in prison. Navarro has been behind bars since March and Bannon was ordered to report back to prison by July 1.

The special counsel within the Biden case, Hur, spent a 12 months investigating the president's improper retention of classified documents from his time as a senator and vp. Hur said he didn’t find enough evidence to successfully take the case to trial.

Hur pointed to Biden's limited memory and the president's cooperation with investigators, which “could convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake.” Hur's report also described the president as “someone the jury will want to find reasonable doubt about.”

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Associated Press reporter Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed.