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    Stabbing of Palestinian American in Texas a hate crime, police say

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    The recent stabbing of a 23-year-old Palestinian American in Texas meets the standard for a hate crime, police announced on Wednesday.Bert James Baker, 36, was arrested on Sunday for allegedly attacking 23-year-old Zacharia Doar after Doar and friends were returning from a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday near the University of Texas at Austin.In a Wednesday update, the Austin police department said that the Sunday stabbing does “meet the definition of a hate crime”.Information on the case will be provided to the Travis county district attorney’s office, which will then make the final decision on whether to pursue hate crime charges against Baker, according to the police department’s statement posted to Facebook.In an earlier statement, Austin police said they believed the attack was “bias-motivated”.Baker is accused of stabbing Doar after the 23-year-old and his friends were driving back from a pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.According to an arrest affidavit detailing the incident obtained by the AP, Doar and three others were riding in a truck when Baker, who was on a bike, opened the doors of the vehicle and began yelling racial slurs at the group.The group then got out of the vehicle and approached Baker, who first punched Doar in the shoulder. After a scuffle, Baker stabbed Doar in the rib.Doar’s father, Nizar Doar, told NBC News that Baker had actually dragged Doar out of the truck and initially charged at Doar’s friend with a knife. Doar was stabbed when he attempted to intervene in the attack.In an earlier statement prior to Wednesday’s update, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) accused Baker of initially attempting to remove a flagpole with a keffiyeh scarf reading “Free Palestine” from the truck Doar was riding in.Doar was also one of four Muslim Americans in the car when Baker allegedly attacked.Doar was hospitalized after the attack with non-life threatening injuries. His father told NBC that Doar was stabbed three inches from his heart and sustained a broken rib from the attack.Baker was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and vehicle. He is being held in jail on $100,000 bail as of Thursday, AP reported.Richard Gentry, Baker’s attorney, was unavailable to provide comment to the Guardian.In a statement to the Guardian, Cair’s deputy executive director, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, called Sunday’s stabbing “the latest in a series of violent attacks on Muslim and Palestinian Americans” and praised the Austin police department for “recognizing the hateful motive for this stabbing”.“These attacks, the bigoted rhetoric that inspires them, and the Gaza genocide at the root of this violence, must end,” Mitchell said.The latest attack is the most recent example of violence facing Palestinians in the US since the 7 October attack in Israel by Hamas. Threats of violence against Muslim and Arab Americans have also surged in recent months.In November, three Palestinian college students were shot and injured in Vermont after they say a man specifically targeted them for being Palestinian. More

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      Senator Josh Hawley says Nashville shooting was an attack on Christians

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      A Democratic opponent of Josh Hawley labelled the Republican “a fraud and a coward” after the far-right Missouri senator demanded that the killing of three nine-year-old children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, be investigated as a federal hate crime.Less than two years ago, Hawley was the only US senator to vote against a bill to crack down on hate crimes against Asian Americans during the Covid pandemic.That bill, Hawley said, would “turn the federal government into the speech police [and] give government sweeping authority to decide what counts as offensive speech and then monitor it”.Federal and state authorities have said any motive in the Nashville attack has not yet been established.On Tuesday, Lucas Kunce, a Missouri Democrat running to oppose Hawley in 2024, said: “One out of 100 senators voted against the anti-hate crime bill in 2021. His name is Josh Hawley. He’s a fraud and a coward. Some days it’s more obvious than others.”Hawley addressed the Nashville attack in remarks on the Senate floor, in a Senate resolution and in a letter to the FBI director, Christopher Wray, and the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas.Condemning the “murderous rampage at a Christian school known as the Covenant School”, Hawley wrote: “It is commonplace to call such horror senseless violence. But properly speaking, that is false. Police report the attack here was targeted … against Christians.“… I urge you to immediately open an investigation into this shooting as a federal hate crime. The full resources of the federal government must be brought to bear … Hate that leads to violence must be condemned and hate crimes must be prosecuted.”At the White House, Joe Biden was asked about Hawley’s contention. The president said: “Well, I probably don’t [think so] then. No, I’m joking – I have no idea.”In the Senate, the US attorney general was asked by John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, if he would open a hate crimes investigation.Merrick Garland said: “As of now, motive hasn’t been identified. We are certainly working full time with [federal agencies and Nashville and Tennessee law enforcement] to determine what the motive is and of course motive is what determines whether it’s a hate crime or not.”In Tennessee, authorities continued to investigate. Police said the shooter, who was killed, wrote a “manifesto” and planned the attack extensively. The police chief, John Drake, told NBC that “resentment” over attending the school might have played a role in the shooting.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Monday, police said the 28-year-old shooter, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, was transgender.LGBTQ+ rights groups have expressed concern that Hale’s writings could be published, a step police have said they will not take while the investigation continues.Gun law reform group Gays Against Guns, formed after the Pulse nightclub massacre of 2016, condemned the Nashville shooting but also criticised Republican policies and laws.Gun violence and mass killings, the group said, “cannot be separated from the efforts of the cisgender white supremacist patriarchy to keep us divided along lines of race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual orientation”.“Until our society confronts these realities, rather than hide from or obscure them as ‘Don’t Say Gay’ and anti-‘Critical Race Theory’ laws proliferating across the nation … intend, we can, sadly, expect many more incidents like today.”The group also said that “expectations and demands can take their toll on members of our LGBTQ+ communities who, instead of receiving support and understanding from their families and communities, receive hatred, ridicule, denigration and persecution”. More

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      Joe Biden poised to sign anti-Asian American hate crimes bill

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      Joe Biden is poised to sign legislation aimed at curtailing a striking rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, after Congress approved the bill in a bipartisan denunciation of brutal attacks that have proliferated during the pandemic.The bill, which the House passed on Tuesday in a 364-62 vote, will expedite the review of hate crimes at the justice department and make grants available to help local law enforcement agencies improve their investigation, identification and reporting of incidents driven by bias, which often go underreported. It previously passed the Senate, and Biden has said he will give it his signature..“Asian Americans have been screaming out for help, and the House and Senate and President Biden have clearly heard our pleas,” said Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman who helped lead efforts to pass the bill in the House.To many Asian Americans, the pandemic has invigorated deep-seated biases. Donald Trump repeatedly referred to the virus, which emerged in Wuhan, China, as the “China virus” or the “Kung flu.” And as cases of the illness began to rise in the US, so too did the attacks, with thousands of violent incidents reported in the past year.Representative Judy Chu, a Democrat of California, said it’s painful for many to “open up the newspaper every day and see that yet another Asian American has been assaulted, attacked and even killed”.In February, an 84-year-old man died after he was pushed to the ground near his home in San Francisco. A young family was injured in a Texas grocery store attack last year. And in Georgia, six Asian women were killed in March during a series of shootings targeting workers at massage parlors. Prosecutors are seeking hate crimes charges. The women who were killed are mentioned in the text of the bill.“You start to think, ‘Well, will I be next?”’ Chu said.Yet to some activists, including organizations representing gay and transgender Asian Americans, the legislation is misguided. More than 100 groups have signed on to a statement opposing the bill for relying too heavily on law enforcement while providing too little funding to address the underlying issues driving a rise in hate crimes.“We have had hate crimes laws since 1968, it’s been expanded over and over again, and this new legislation is more of the same,” said Jason Wu, who is co-chair of GAPIMNY-Empowering Queer & Trans Asian Pacific Islanders. “These issues are about bias, but also rooted in inequality, and lack of investment and resources for our communities. Not a shortage of police and jails.”The group Stop AAPI Hate said the bill was step but lamented that it centers a law enforcement approach over community-led reform.“Because the act centers criminal law enforcement agencies in its solutions, it will not address the overwhelming majority of incidents reported to our site which are not hate crimes, but serious hate incidents,” the group said in a statement.The bill also represented a rare moment of bipartisanship in a Congress that has struggled to overcome partisan gridlock, while underscoring an evolution in Republican thought on hate crimes legislation. Many conservatives have historically dismissed hate crimes laws, arguing they create special protected classes so that victims of similar crimes are treated differently.“I’m glad Congress is coming together in a bipartisan way,” said congresswoman Young Kim, a California Republican who is Korean American. “Let’s also recognize that we cannot legislate hate out of our people’s hearts and minds.” More

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      Anti-Asian hate crimes bill passes Senate with bipartisan support

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      The US Senate has overwhelmingly passed a bill that would help combat the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, marking a bipartisan denunciation of the violence that has come into sharp focus during the coronavirus pandemic.The Senate passed the anti-Asian hate crimes bill on Thursday in a vote of 94 to 1, after the Democrat Mazie Hirono worked with some of her Republican colleagues to ensure bipartisan support for the legislation.Josh Hawley, a Republican of Missouri, was the only senator to vote against the bill.The bill now heads to the Democratic-controlled House, where it is expected to pass. Joe Biden has signaled he will sign the bill once it reaches his desk.The legislation would create a new justice department position to more quickly review hate crime reports linked to the coronavirus pandemic and provide support to state and local officials responding to hate crimes.The Senate passage of the bill comes amid an alarming increase in reports of hate crimes among Asian Americans. The shooting at three spas in Atlanta last month killed eight people, including six Asian women, intensifying calls to address the problem.A major survey by Stop AAPI Hate released in March found that Asian Americans had reported nearly 3,800 hate-related incidents during the pandemic, a number that is believed to be only a fraction of the true total.“This long-overdue bill sends two messages. To our Asian American friends, we will not tolerate bigotry against you,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said. “And to those perpetrating anti-Asian bigotry, we will pursue you to the fullest extent of the law.”Hirono, of Hawaii, the legislation’s lead sponsor, said the measure was incredibly important to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “who have often felt very invisible in our country, always seen as foreign, always seen as the other”. She said the message of the legislation was as important as its content and substance.Hirono, the first Asian American woman in the Senate, said the attacks were “a predictable and foreseeable consequence” of racist and inflammatory language that has been used against Asians during the pandemic, including slurs used by Donald Trump.Republicans said last week that they agreed with the premise of the legislation and signaled they were willing to back it with minor changes. Hirono worked closely with Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, to incorporate some additional Republican and bipartisan provisions, including better reporting of hate crimes nationally and grant money for states to set up hate crime hotlines.The revised bill would also replace language in the original legislation that called for “guidance describing best practices to mitigate racially discriminatory language in describing the Covid-19 pandemic”. The legislation would require the government to issue guidance aimed at “raising awareness of hate crimes during the pandemic” to address some GOP concerns about policing speech.Republicans agreed to back the bill after the Senate also voted on and rejected a series of GOP amendments, including efforts to prevent discrimination against Asian Americans in college admissions and to require reporting about restrictions on religious exercise during the pandemic.Representative Grace Meng, a Democrat of New York, introduced a similar bill in the House, which she says is expected to be considered in May.“For more than a year, Asian Americans all across our nation have been screaming out for help,” Meng said, and the Senate showed that “they heard our pleas”. More