CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’: A California judge said he will re-sentence the infamous Menendez brothers to 50 years to life, giving them a shot at parole and freedom from their original life sentence for murdering their parents. They would be immediately eligible for parole under the state’s youthful offender law because they were under age 26 at the time of the murders.

  Lyle Menendez 57, and brother Erik, 54 have spent more than 35 years in prison for the 1989 murders. The saga of the brothers was one of the biggest tabloid news stories of the past 50 years.

  Following the decision by Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic, the brothers spoke tearfully via computer, fully admitting and taking responsibility for slaughtering their parents with a shotgun. 

  “I have no excuse, no justification, for what I did,” Erik Menendez said. His brother Lyle told the court, “I take full responsibility for all my choices … the choice to point a gun at my mom and dad … the choice to reload … the choice to run and to hide and to do anything I could to get away.”

  The brothers always claimed they were victims of sexual abuse by their father, Jose Menendez. 

  The LA district attorney, who left office at the end of the year, had filed the motion to re-sentence the brothers.. His successor argued against it, claiming the brothers were unrepentant and still a danger to the community. Jesic said prosecutors filed to prove that.

ORANGE ALERT !: President Trump is having dinner tonight in Doha, Qatar, as he continues his charm tour of the Middle East. Eight years ago Trump described Qatar as “a funder of terrorism at a very high level,” but now they are proposing to give him a $400 million jet and everything’s fine. 

  Trump met in Saudi Arabia with the new president of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, who led the rebellion against the country’s former murdering dictator, Bashar al Assad. In a major shift of policy he had announced that the US would lift sanctions on the country. 

  It was a stunning turnaround for al-Shara, who once led a branch of Al Qaeda. 

FIGHT ON, HARVARD: The fight between Harvard and the Trump administration escalated yesterday with the administration terminating $450 million in federal funding and Harvard adding complaints to its defensive lawsuit.

  The administration claims it is fighting antisemitism at Harvard and other universities, but ignored Harvard’s efforts. 

BAD RAP: The former girlfriend of rap music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs testified in federal court that the marathon sex sessions Diddy referred to as “Freak Offs” became a humiliating job for her that could sometimes last days.

  Singer Cassie Ventura said Combs would pay men to have sex with her while he watched and that, “I was an object, being heavily objectified by men in that scenario.” The 38-year-old Ventura is now about eight months pregnant.

  Combs is accused of sex trafficking and racketeering. 

  The details are repulsive. Ventura said that when they were done with a hotel room it would be slathered with baby oil, sometimes blood, and urine. She said Combs liked to watch other men pee on her. There’s worse, but you get the idea.

  Ventura testified that Combs often beat her, resulting in busted lips, black eyes, and “bruises all over my body.” She said she had loved Combs at first and that, “He was just this exciting, entertaining, fun guy that also happened to have, you know, my career in his hands.”

ECON 101: After wild up and down swings following Donald Trump’s on-again off-again tariffs, the stock market is back above the line where it was before Trump’s first announcement. That doesn’t mean your 401-K is fully recovered from the tariff shock, but it should have bounced back some.

  In other good news,  the Consumer Price Index showed a slower pace of inflation in April than economists had predicted, despite the expected higher prices on imported goods. Inflation is at its lowest in four years.

  Egg prices are falling … 12.7 percent in the last month,

BET ON IT: The commissioner of Major League Baseball removed Pete Rose, the infamous “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and 15 other deceased players from the sport’s permanent ineligibility list. This clears the way for Rose, Jackson and others to be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

  Commissioner Rob Manfred said he lifted the ban on dead players because, “It is hard to conceive of a penalty that has more deterrent effect than one that lasts a lifetime with no reprieve.”

  Rose, the star for the Cincinnati Reds nicknamed “Charlie Hustle,” was banned from baseball for gambling on games. He claimed he never bet on his own team and appealed many times for reinstatement before he died last September at 83.

  “Shoeless Joe” was the most famous member of the 1919 Chicago White Sox who conspired to fix the World Series, resulting in the so-called “Black Sox” scandal, one of the most memorable in professional sports.

THE SPIN RACK: — Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that she helped an illegal immigrant in her courtroom evade ICE agents waiting outside to arrest him. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on his state’s hundreds of towns and cities to eradicate homeless encampments that on public sidewalks, bike paths, parklands, and other public properties.“There are no more excuses,” Newsom said. The state had an estimated 187,000 homeless last year. 

BELOW THE FOLD: A new book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios reports that at a 2024 fundraiser co-hosted by actor George Clooney, the President Joe Biden didn’t recognize Clooney, who he had known for years. The book reports a coverup of Biden’s mental decline. The authors write in an excerpt published in The New Yorker that the president appeared “severely diminished, as if he’d aged a decade since Clooney last saw him in December 2022.”

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