MILAN (AP) — Italy ’s legally troubled tourism minister resigned on Wednesday in the fallout of Premier Giorgia Meloni’s failed referendum on judicial reforms.
The departure of Daniela Santanchè is a sign that Italy’s 3 1/2-year-old right-wing government has been weakened by Monday's ballot box defeat of a key measure.
Meloni had demanded Santanchè‘s resignation after two justice ministry officials stepped down in the wake of voters’ resounding rejection of judicial reforms in a vote that was widely seen as a de facto confidence test on Meloni's leadership. In a statement on Tuesday, Meloni said she hoped Santanchè would make a similar decision “in the same spirit of institutional sensitivity.”
Santanchè, who was seen as a key member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, has been politically damaged by multiple long-term trials and investigations, including alleged false accounting and alleged fraud. She has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Despite her legal woes, Santanchè survived a no-confidence motion in 2023 and had long enjoyed Meloni’s support.
Santanchè announced her resignation in a statement to Meloni, in which she said she would “obey” Meloni’s wishes and acknowledged an abrupt interaction on Tuesday following the prime minister's resignation demand. She said she did not want to be made “a scapegoat” for the referendum defeat, underlining that the measure passed in her northern region of Lombardy and district.
“I won’t hide from you a degree of bitterness over how my ministerial journey has ended, but in my life I am accustomed to paying my own debts — and often those of others,’’ Santanchè wrote.
The judicial reforms had been billed by Meloni’s coalition as a key step toward streamlining Italy’s judicial system, which has been criticized as being slow, bureaucratic and vulnerable to political influence.
But critics argued that the proposed measures risked concentrating too much power in the executive branch. Opposition parties, civil society groups and legal associations mounted a unified front, warning that the reform could undermine institutional checks and balances.
The referendum defeat after a campaign so closely tied to the prime minister's leadership has raised questions about the stability and cohesion of Meloni’s governing coalition.
FILE - Minister for tourism Daniela Santanche arrives at Quirinal presidential palace in Rome on Oct. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)
LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — Two teenage boys who used artificial intelligence to create fake nude photos of their classmates at a tony private school in Pennsylvania received probation Wednesday after dozens of victims described the images' traumatizing effect on them.
The boys were 14 at the time. They admitted this month that they made about 350 images, showing at least 59 girls under 18, along with other victims who so far have not been identified.
Authorities said the boys took images of the girls from school photos, yearbooks, Instagram, TikTok and FaceTime chats in 2023 and 2024, and morphed them with images of adults depicting nudity or sexual activity.
More than 100 students and parents from Lancaster Country Day School were in court to hear victims describe the shock of having to identify their own faces in pornographic photos to detectives. Juvenile proceedings in Pennsylvania are normally closed, but this was opened by the judge, providing an unusual opportunity for the community to be seen and heard.
They described the fallout — anxiety attacks, a loss of trust, problems focusing on schoolwork and a fear that the images may someday surface in unexpected ways.
“I will never understand why they did this,” one victim told Judge Leonard Brown, saying it “destroyed my innocence.”
One young woman told Brown “how excruciating it is to bring these feelings up again and again.” Another choked back tears as she excoriated one of the defendants for expressing “fake empathy” as they confided with him about their pain before it became known that he had been part of creating and disseminating the images. Still another said all of her friends transferred schools, and that she “needed trauma therapy to even walk around my neighborhood.”
The two young men stood stone-faced throughout, flanked by their lawyers and parents, as they were called pedophiles, “sick and twisted” and perverted.
They declined several opportunities to comment to the judge, who said he had not heard either boy take responsibility or apologize.
“This has been a regrettable, long, torturous process for everyone involved,” said Heidi Freese, defense attorney for one of the defendants. “There were very interesting, underlying legal issues surrounding the charges in this case and those will be decided on a different day in a different case.”
Brown ordered each to perform 60 hours of community service, have no contact with the victims and pay an unspecified amount of restitution. If they don’t have any additional legal problems, Brown said, the case can be expunged after two years.
As he imposed his sentence, Brown said that if they were adults, they probably would be headed for state prison. He said they should “take this opportunity to really examine” themselves.
The resolution of the Pennsylvania case comes days after three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk's xAI, claiming the company’s Grok tools morphed their real photos into explicitly sexual images. The high school students are seeking class-action status to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of people who were similarly victimized as minors.
The scandal in Pennsylvania in 2024 led to a student protest, the departure of school leaders and criminal charges against the two teenagers.
Nadeem Bezar, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents at least 10 of the victims, said Tuesday he expects to file a claim “against the school and anybody else we think has culpability in these deepfakes being created and disseminated.”
He said he has not yet seen the photos but expects the legal process to determine “exactly when and where and how the school knew, how the boys created these images, what platforms they used to create these images and how they were disseminated.”
As AI has become accessible and powerful, lawmakers across the country have passed laws aimed at barring deepfakes.
President Donald Trump signed the Take it Down Act last year, making it illegal to publish intimate images including deepfakes without consent, and requiring websites and social media sites to remove such material within 48 hours of being notified by a victim.
Associated Press writers Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, and Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.
Shown is the Lancaster County Courthouse in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
People enter the Lancaster County Courthouse in Lancaster, Pa., Wednesday, March 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
