Luigi Mangione scored a major legal victory on Tuesday with a judge dismissing the two top state charges against him: first-degree murder and second-degree murder, both of which prosecutors had argued were terrorism crimes.

Mangione still faces an additional second-degree murder charge, as well as a federal murder charge, in the killing of United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson last December.

The judge overseeing Mangione’s state criminal case, Gregory Carro, said “the evidence put forth was legally insufficient” for the two terrorism-related charges, in a written decision that was posted during a 15-minute proceeding in Manhattan court on Tuesday.

“Counts 1 and 2, charging defendant with Murder in the First Degree (in furtherance of an act of terrorism) and Murder in the Second Degree as a Crime of Terrorism, are dismissed as legally insufficient,” Carro wrote. “The People presented legally sufficient evidence of all other counts, including Murder in the Second Degree (intentional).”

Mangione also faces federal charges for allegedly gunning down Thompson outside a hotel, and weapons possession counts.

Mangione’s defense had also argued his case should be dismissed for double jeopardy – being prosecuted twice for the same crime – because he was charged with murder in both state and federal court, but the judge rejected that. He pointed to a supreme court decision stipulating that state and federal government are “two sovereigns”, and “where there are two sovereigns, there are two laws, and two offenses”. “Thus, there is no double jeopardy violation,” he wrote.

Carro also rejected the defense’s bid to put Mangione’s state case on hold so that he could face his federal trial first. Mangione’s team has contended that testifying in the state case could harm his defense in the federal death penalty trial, and claimed the timing could violate his right against self-incrimination.

Mangione entered the Manhattan courtroom just before 9.30am, wearing khaki jail scrubs, with handcuffed wrists and shackled ankles. His appearance came six days after the rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk was shot dead during an event at Utah Valley University. The shootings of Thompson and Kirk have prompted highly politicized rhetoric.

Although a motive in Kirk’s shooting remains unknown, conservatives have used the incident to call for the investigation of progressive political groups. Donald Trump has demanded the death penalty against the suspected Kirk shooter, Tyler Robinson, and his justice department is seeking the death penalty for Mangione.

The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, called Thompson’s killing “a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America”. Bondi said her decision was in step with “Trump’s agenda to stop violent crime and make America safe again”.

The killing sparked a contentious public debate about US healthcare that crossed the political aisle, with some praising Mangione and denouncing healthcare companies and many others outraged that a murder would be used to air political grievances.

On Tuesday outside the 100 Centre Street courtroom, as with his prior court appearances, Mangione supporters gathered for a glimpse of him, lining up for courtroom seats and fanning themselves with yellow index cards that guaranteed entry. One woman wore a black T-shirt emblazoned with “FREE LUIGI” and another a white one reading “LUIGI’S PIZZA”.

Last month brought our first look at Android 16 QPR2, with Google delivering its first beta just hours after the Pixel 10 launch event. Alongside other changes, the company is tweaking its monochrome icon settings first launched with Android 12, renaming the setting and finally auto-tinting icons that don’t follow Google’s Material You (and now, Material 3 Expressive) design recommendations. Nearly a month after this setting first changed, developers are getting some insight into the company’s plans for themed icons.

On the current Android 16 QPR2 Beta 1 build, you’ll find three settings available for icon customization: Default, Minimal, and Create. The latter currently doesn’t work; its icon seems to suggest some kind of AI-powered icon creation tool, but selecting it currently delivers an “app not installed” warning. Default is, well, what it says on the tin — the icon as created by the app’s developer, without any customization. Minimal, however, is effectively two things. For apps that properly support Material You, your icons will match the colors you’ve selected in Google’s customization tools. For those that don’t support Material You, however, icons will now auto-tint based on the rest of your color packs.

As spotted by Android Authority, Google is finally addressing those changes to developers after nearly a month’s worth of silence. Beginning on October 15th for existing developers, revisions to Google Play’s Developer Distribution Agreement (or DDA) section 5.3 will specifically force developers to “grant to users permission to modify colors or adjust themes of apps.” For new developer accounts, those changes went into effect immediately on September 15th.

Effectively, this circumvents any potential problems arising from modifying a brand’s icon, which often violates the guidelines laid out for utilizing company logos and other imagery (as an example, here’s Google’s Brand Resource Center, which tells you what you can and can’t do with the Google logo). With Android 16 QPR2 set to ship in the next couple months, presumably with forced theming in tow, this was a necessary step on Google’s part to ensure it didn’t receive takedown notices from various app developers, especially from large companies like Amazon. These legal warnings almost certainly wouldn’t have been sent to users, both because of the scale of such an operation and because there’d be no way of knowing who themed what icon.

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Forced themes have been a long time coming. Google has spent the Material You era heavily suggesting developers follow Android design guidelines, and while plenty of app developers have relented, a large percentage of applications have not. While I don’t think the current tinted icons look great per se, it’s taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, which immediately forced themed icons with iOS 18 last year. While it’s doubtful that every app developer will finally follow Google’s lead here, hopefully, those tinted icons will spur certain brands to finally build custom icon support into Android for good.