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Excerpt from news.bloomberglaw.com
A Washington federal appeals court questioned the Justice Department’s claim that a five-year sentence for a Florida man who participated in the Capitol riot would be unchanged even if the lower court applied the wrong sentencing guideline.
The three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit considered arguments on Monday by Tristan Stevens that his convictions shouldn’t be classified as an “aggravated assault.” That classification triggered a longer prison sentence for assaulting an officer and other misconduct during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
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Excerpt from www.dailykos.com
In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 invasion of the Capitol, which has resulted in multiple convictions, and despite receiving increasing scrutiny by the press, you might be wondering what is happening with the recruiting efforts of White supremacist, neo-Nazi, and MAGA-supporting militia groups? Unfortunately, you need look no further than Facebook to see that these groups are boldly using the platform to recruit in plain sight.
According to WIRED magazine’s Tess Owen, “After lying low for several years … militia extremists have been quietly reorganizing, ramping up recruitment and rhetoric on Facebook—with apparently little concern that Meta will enforce its ban against them, according to new research by the Tech Transparency Project, shared exclusively with WIRED.”
In a WIRED piece titled “Extremist Militias Are Coordination in More Than 100 Facebook Groups” (https://www.wired.com/story/extremist-militias-are-coordinating-on-facebook/), Owen reported:
Individuals across the US with long-standing ties to militia groups are creating networks of Facebook pages, urging others to recruit ‘active patriots’ and attend meetups, and openly associating themselves with known militia-related sub-ideologies like that of the anti-government Three Percenter movement. They’re also advertising combat training and telling their followers to be ‘prepared’ for whatever lies ahead. These groups are trying to facilitate local organizing, state by state and county by county. Their goals are vague, but many of their posts convey a general sense of urgency about the need to prepare for ‘war’ or to ‘stand up’ against many supposed enemies, including drag queens, immigrants, pro-Palestine college students,
communists—and the US government.
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Excerpt from amp.cnn.com
The church’s governing body marked a new era of LGBTQ inclusion by voting to lift the bans on LGBTQ clergy and on pastors performing same-sex unions. They also removed the language that said homosexuality was “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
Many, including Woodworth, felt the changes were monumental.
“This change in our church law is so huge because it means that folks can choose to show up as who they really are and still choose to serve God,” she said.
Anjie Woodworth, who attended the meeting known as the “General Conference,” said she watched as, with each vote, many of her colleagues and friends dissolved into tears.
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Excerpt from www.kake.com
“Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancelation of classes and graduation – none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said. “Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law.”
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Excerpt from www.aljazeera.com
Cancellation of inaugural crewed space mission comes as Boeing is under fire over safety record at its aviation arm.
Boeing has called off the inaugural crewed flight CST-100 Starliner space capsule after engineers detected an issue with a rocket valve.
The decision to call off the launch on Monday came two hours before the scheduled liftoff and about an hour after two NASA astronauts had strapped into the spacecraft.
The postponement, blamed on a problem with a valve in the Atlas V rocket, was announced during a live NASA webcast.
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Excerpt from www.abc57.com
NORTH BRADDOCK, Pa. — An armed man gave no warning as he walked toward the front of Jesus’ Dwelling Place Church in Pennsylvania on Sunday, raised a gun toward the pastor’s face and pulled the trigger.
What happened next may have been divine intervention, Pastor Glenn Germany said.
“I’m thankful to God that I’m still here, because he definitely pulled the trigger,” Germany told CNN affiliate WTAE.
The gunman “attempted to shoot, but the firearm failed to discharge,” Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement.
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Excerpt from www.msn.com
Retail workers face increasing threats from shoplifters brandishing “knives and guns,” a top Home Depot executive told a congressional panel looking to pass legislation amid the scourge of organized retail theft.
Scott Glenn, head of loss prevention for the 2,000-store chain, joined industry leaders and law enforcement officials in pleading for help during a hearing held by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter terrorism, Law Enforcement and Intelligence in Washington, DC, Tuesday.
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Excerpt from abcnews.go.com
Overall, 51% of Americans say the government should try to force the app’s sale.
Young adults and frequent users push back against the federal government forcing a sale of TikTok or banning the social media app in the United States, but older adults, infrequent users and nonusers are on board, resulting in a tilt toward support for action, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.
Overall, 51% in this ABC News/Ipsos poll say the U.S. government should try to force a sale of the popular app; 46% say it should not. And 53% support a ban on TikTok if it’s not sold to a non-Chinese company, with 44% opposed.
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Excerpt from www.telesurenglish.net
On Sunday, Kenyan authorities said that nine more people lost their lives in the last 24 hours due to the devastating floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains, bringing the death toll to 228.
The Ministry of Interior and National Administration, however, said the tropical Cyclone Hidaya in the Indian Ocean has lost its strength following its landfall at Mafia Island in Tanzania on Saturday.
The ministry said a ban on beach activities including fishing, swimming and non-essential transport within the country’s territorial waters remains in force until midnight on May 6 due to Cyclone Hidaya.
“The Tropical Cyclone Hidaya storm is over and forecasted to have weakened; however, heavy rainfall is still expected offshore along the coast region with strong winds and large waves already experienced in Kwale County,” the ministry said.
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Excerpt from www.theblaze.com
A Rhode Island court ordered the release of an illegal alien who was charged with child molestation and domestic assault, ignoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detainer request, according to a recent press release by Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston Field Office.
A 22-year-old Guatemalan was apprehended by Border Patrol in November 2018 after he attempted to illegally enter the country in Nogales, Arizona. The unnamed man was served with a notice to appear and released into the interior of the country.
Providence Police Department issued an arrest warrant for the individual on November 21, 2022, on child molestation and sexual assault charges, the ICE’s ERO Boston Field Office reported. He was later apprehended on February 28, 2024, for the outstanding warrant as well as domestic assault charges.
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Excerpt from www.cbsnews.com
As much as this trial is about salacious headlines and tabloid drama, it’s also about accounting.
McConney explained how Cohen’s $130,000 wire to Daniels’ attorney in October 2016 led to a series of 12 monthly payments to Cohen of $35,000, for a total of $420,000.
McConney recounted a conversation with former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg in January 2017, around the time that Trump assumed the presidency.
McConney said Weisselberg walked in with a notepad and said he needed to discuss payments to be made to Cohen.
“He kind of threw the pad at me and said, ‘Take this down,'” McConney said, adding that he was also given a copy of a Cohen bank statement showing his $130,000 wire to Daniels’ lawyer. Jurors were shown McConney’s notes from that day, which appeared beneath “Trump” letterhead.
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Excerpt from www.whio.com
A 10-month-old girl who police say was abducted at a Clovis, New Mexico, park Friday, has been found alive, according to KOAT-TV.
Police say Eleia Maria Torres was abducted Friday at the park where her mother, Samantha Cisneros, and another woman, Taryn Allen, were found shot to death near a minivan. Eleia’s 5-year-old sister was seriously wounded but is recovering, police said.
Police discovered the infant was missing after responding to a call shortly before 4:30 p.m. Friday about two women found dead at the park near Clovis, a city in eastern New Mexico that is about 100 miles southwest of Amarillo, Texas, according to ABC News.
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Excerpt from www.louderwithcrowder.com
Pro-Hamas protests are still ongoing and some students are learning that “standing up for something you believe in” has a cost, as their entitled reality is crumbling around them. Today’s show breaks it down.
While some colleges are allowing brats to continue blocking Jewish students from class, and have even canceled graduation ceremonies because administrators are that pathetic, other university officials are holding these students accountable.
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Excerpt from www.latimes.com
Polls suggest the Middle East is not top on the minds of a large number of young Americans.
The Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School, which has been surveying young voters for more than two decades, found in a poll this year that among 16 topics of importance to voters under 30, the Israel-Gaza war was in next-to-last place…
Israeli governments over the years have invested much effort in what they call their hasbara, or global PR — pushing the Israeli narrative worldwide.
And it was largely successful. This may be the first episode in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict where the Palestinian cause has driven U.S. discourse.
There are many reasons. The sheer scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza, with massive destruction that wiped out entire families, went beyond previous Israeli offensives and quickly overshadowed the Oct. 7 attacks. It is difficult to put positive spin on tens of thousands of dead.
The evolution of social media into an omnipresent visual force has shown the suffering of Gazans to the world relentlessly.
A new generation of Palestinian activists appears far better organized than their predecessors. The Palestinian PR machine was relatively ineffective in the past.
Today Palestinian activists operate busy WhatsApp chats and can flood the zone on par with Israeli hasbara.
“Social media allows people to see lots and lots of material that affirms what they believe,” Porter said. “The accumulative effect is powerful over time.”
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Excerpt from medyanews.net
It is frighteningly clear – and not only with respect to Palestine – that liberal democracies have failed to produce governments that represent either the views or the interests of the general population. They give control to people who are generally from a small elite, and who – even if this was not their initial impulse – are driven by a lust for power. It is over 100 years since Mark Twain wrote “We have the best government that money can buy”, but it is still true that those with money have a grossly disproportionate influence on who gets elected and on what they focus on afterwards. This is especially true in America, where presidential candidates can spend over $100 million on their campaign, but it also applies in other liberal democracies. Meanwhile, most people are persuaded that their democratic role is limited to ticking a box every four or five years in order to put into power what is often seen as the least bad option.
As has been repeatedly demonstrated, significant reforms have only happened when elected politicians have come under major pressure from below. The anti-war movement that we have seen growing on American campuses could prove to be the beginning of such pressure, in a repeat of the movement that helped end the war in Vietnam. That historical precedent is no doubt in the minds of both the government and the protestors.