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      Protests continue across US to voice anger over supreme court ruling

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      Protests continue across US to voice anger over supreme court ruling In New York, thousands gathered downtown to celebrate Pride and give voice to anger after decision that overturned abortion rightsProtests over a US supreme court decision that overturned abortion rights continued across the country this weekend. In New York, thousands marched to voice their anger at the ruling that came at the end of a dizzying week around not just reproductive rights but also gun carry laws and the US Capitol attack.US supreme court overturns abortion rights, upending Roe v WadeRead more“Not your uterus, not your choice,” many shouted as the demonstrations progressed in Washington DC., New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta and Austin.In Providence, Rhode Island, tempers flared so much that an off-duty police officer was accused of punching a woman at an abortion protest. Jennifer Rourke, a state senate candidate, told the Providence Journal she was punched in the face by Jeann Lugo, who had been running for the GOP nomination for a Rhode Island state senate seat but dropped out the race.Lugo said he was “not going to deny” the punching allegation but added that “everything happened very fast”. For the most part, protests across the US have been peaceful.In New York, they fell across Pride weekend honoring the achievements of the LGBTQ community, with thousands gathering downtown to simultaneously celebrate and give voice to anger. Marchers said in some cases they were both shell-shocked by the supreme court decision and happy to be celebrating, gender identities and sexual orientations that some like the court’s conservative justices might find contrary.“It’s a similar feeling to when Trump got elected,” said film editor Oriana Soddu. Soddu said she knew the stripping of nationwide abortion rights was coming after the 2 May leak of a draft ruling saying so, but “for it to actually happen is still a shock”.The anger, Soddu said, was toward the political system itself. “The Republicans clearly have a very strong agenda and we’ve let this happen,” she said. “My fear is they’re going to go after gay marriage” next.The crowds that gathered in New York’s Washington Square on Saturday were, for the most part, there to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the New York City Dyke March. Organizers billed the march as a “celebration of our beautiful and diverse dyke lives” that also doubled as a protest of discrimination, harassment, and violence against lesbians, but it also energized a pro-abortion rights demonstration.“It’s been different to realize that in the eyes of the constitution and the court you’re not really a person and you don’t have autonomy over yourself,” said longtime American activist and socialist organizer Leslie Cagan. “A lot of good things have come for virtually every community that has struggled for a modicum of rights, and now it’s all hanging by a thread.”“I hope that those people and those communities are beginning to get it that if we don’t work together and get beyond the rhetoric of solidarity in which everybody does their own thing, none of our people are going to win,” Cagan added. “We haven’t been collectively tuned in to how big and dangerous the power against us is.”Cindy Greenberg, also marching Saturday, said she thought those forces were really not committed to the notion of a democracy.“It feels like when Trump was elected,” Greenberg said. “This whole period of time has shown that they’re not. This week has been extraordinary – it shown us that they’re willing to sell all of us down the river.”Abortion banned in multiple US states just hours after Roe v Wade overturnedRead moreLisa Ann Markuson said she came with her typewriter to write poems for protesters gathered in the park in part because having a normal Pride party day felt strange. “It’s not, ‘Yay, we’re cool, we’re queer!’ It felt farcical to come out here and party like it’s 2008 because it isn’t. People want to set something on fire, but there’s also a sense of apathy and alienation.“America is supposed to be about freedom but [what] is this? Corporations have freedom and people are supposed to think they have freedom because they have a lot of consumer choices.”Mel Melendes said that being proud and protesting were one and the same. “I’m proud to be here because the louder we express ourselves the more you shine light on what’s wrong.” Added Elisa Buttafuoco: “If we weren’t fighting we wouldn’t be ourselves, we wouldn’t be the queer community. Queer rights is abortion rights is trans rights. It’s all interwoven.”Some on the march wondered if the protest would go the same way if the decision to lift abortion protections primarily affected the queer community.“As a minority community it feels like we’re protesting for everything,” said Afrah Boateng. “It feels like there is something to protest every year around Pride. Today it’s for straight families and straight women. But I guess Pride started as protest, so it’s built in.”According to a CBS poll published Sunday, most disapprove of overturning the nationwide abortion rights established by the landmark Roe v Wade case, including two-thirds of women. By more than a 20-point margin, Americans call it a step backward for the US.Younger people are especially likely to disapprove; most moderates disapprove along with nine in 10 liberals; two-thirds of Hispanic Americans disapprove, three-fourths of Black Americans and just over half of White Americans disapprove.The three-fourths of conservatives who do support the ruling said they felt hopeful and happy.TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsHealthNew YorknewsReuse this content More

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      New York has a chance to generate all its electricity from clean energy by 2030 | Ross Barkan

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      New York has a chance to generate all its electricity from clean energy by 2030Ross BarkanIf Democrats act, New Yorkers will begin to get the government they deserve. With climate cataclysms here, the political system can’t afford more delays It has been, for progressives in New York, a trying year.Major pieces of legislation that were supposed to reshape the state to safeguard the working class have stalled out. A bill to create a statewide single-payer healthcare system is no closer to passage than it was several years ago. A push to guarantee new protections for tenants as rents soar in New York City could not find the votes. And ambitious legislation to combat climate that did have the votes to go through the state legislature was halted by the speaker of the state assembly.Unlike in Washington, Democrats in New York have no one to blame but themselves. The party holds supermajorities in both chambers, the state senate and state assembly. Progressives have grown their clout in each. A handful of socialists occupy seats as well.The trouble is that institutional forces – those aligned with the real estate and fossil fuel industries in particular – have plenty of clout, too. The left is stronger, in numbers, than it’s ever been, but the state’s power brokers are centrists or those most hesitant to challenge entrenched power structures. This is true in other Democrat-run states too, but it’s been sobering in New York where progressives have nurtured such high hopes for change.The left, of course, has gotten much further in New York in the last few years than it had in the previous decades. In 2019, Democrats took control of the state senate and immediately passed a large number of bills that had been bottled up for years. Legislation to help tenants, reduce the use of cash bail, and protect voting rights and women’s health all easily passed the body and were signed into law. In 2020, the pandemic hit and ambitious legislating was put on hold. The 2021 session was more of the same.This year offered hope. The Build Public Renewables Act, or BPRA, would mandate that the state’s public power provider, the New York Power Authority (NYPA), generate all of its electricity from clean energy by 2030 and establish a process through which it can build and own renewables while closing down polluting infrastructure. The state itself could build out wind and solar energy. With its high bond rating, the NYPA could easily finance projects. Passage of the bill would have profound national implications. New York would be a leader in the fight against the climate crisis and inspire other states with Democratic governors to follow their lead. With Republicans poised to retake Congress, state-level action is crucial.Independent power producers, who fiercely oppose the BPRA, currently build out new power generation infrastructure beyond NYPA. Solar industry trade associations fought the bill bitterly. They have made inroads in the legislature.In turn, a strange thing happened: the BPRA amassed the votes to pass the state assembly – it had already passed the senate – but was never brought up for a vote before the end of the legislative session in early June. The speaker, Carl Heastie, claimed the votes were not there because, apparently, the more than 80 lawmakers who backed the bill did not inform him personally they would vote that way.Advocates and supporters, however, were certain they had the votes. At first glance, it would appear Heastie had a point, since it is theoretically true the speaker cannot know who will vote for what if he has not been told about the intentions of each lawmaker.But that’s not how lawmaking really works in Albany, the state capital. There are hundreds of bills and the speaker cannot personally hear from all legislators before one is put on the floor for a vote. Rather, most Democrats vote reflexively with the speaker unless the bill has an organized constituency in their districts that opposed it. There is no popular, grassroots outcry against the BPRA. Most New Yorkers don’t know what it is.Why did Heastie claim the votes were not there? Some moderate Democrats are wary of passing any far-reaching bills in an election year. Organized labor had opposed earlier versions of the bill, but the New York AFL-CIO had agreed to stay neutral this time. Governor Kathy Hochul may not support the BPRA either, but she would be hard-pressed to not sign the bill if it reached her desk, especially if New York’s large environmental movement and progressive infrastructure mobilized for it.The good news is that the legislation may not be dead for 2022. Though lawmakers depart Albany in June and typically don’t reconvene until the new year to pass bills, Heastie requested the chairs of the assembly’s committees on energy, corporations and environmental conservation convene a hearing on 28 July. A hearing may mean a special session – a chance to get the BPRA to Hochul’s desk before 2023.If the Democrats in Albany act as they should, New Yorkers will begin to get the government they deserve. With climate cataclysms here, the political system can’t afford any more delays.
      Ross Barkan is a journalist based in New York City. He is the author of Demolition Night, a novel, and The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York
      TopicsEnvironmentOpinionEnergyRenewable energyUS politicsNew YorkClimate crisiscommentReuse this content More

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      Chris Jacobs withdraws reelection bid amid GOP fire on his gun control stance

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      Chris Jacobs withdraws reelection bid amid GOP fire on his gun control stanceRepublican congressman said he would support measures limiting access to highly lethal firearms used in recent mass shootings A Republican New York congressman who recently voiced support of gun control legislation announced on Friday that he will no longer seek reelection after receiving backlash over his stance.Chris Jacobs’ support of such legislation – which came in the wake of deadly mass shootings at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store and Uvalde, Texas, elementary school – had prompted his conservative and GOP colleagues to withdraw their support.Jacobs, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in 2020 and recently introduced legislation to protect bankrupt gun owners’ rights, did not back any policy that would dramatically impact gun ownership. Rather, Jacobs expressed his favor for several measures that would limit access to the particularly lethal weaponry used in recent mass killings.Grim body count unlikely to be enough for Republicans to act on gun reformRead more“A ban on something like an AR-15, I would vote for,” Jacobs said on 27 May. “So I want to be clear, I would vote for it.”“Individuals cannot buy beer, they cannot get cigarettes [until] 21,” Jacobs said. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable that the age limit, at least for these highly lethal, high capacity semi automatic weapons, should be 21.”Jacobs said that he planned on introducing legislation that would limit access to body armor and would name the bill after Aaron Salter, a retired police officer who was killed in the mass shooting at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo on 14 May, reported Ashley Rowe, an anchor with 7 Eyewitness News. Salter worked as a security guard at the supermarket and opened fire on the shooter in an attempt to stop him, but the gunman was wearing body armor and killed 10.In explaining his support of such measures, Jacobs told the Buffalo News: “Being a father and having young children and visualizing what those parents are going through and, I guess, being able to feel it more personally certainly has had an impact as well.”Jacobs’ comments on gun legislation stood in stark contrast to his GOP counterparts, who have often blamed mass shootings on mental illness and suggested that school safety hinged on armed security. Some conservatives and Republicans effectively framed Jacobs as a traitor to his party due to his comments.“This is not the person we endorsed. We did not endorse this Chris Jacobs … he’s actually to the left of [US House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi on this,” said Gerard Kassar, New York’s Conservative party state chair, to the New York Post on Thursday.The Erie county, New York, Conservative chairman, Ralph Lorigo, described Jacobs’ position as “very disappointing” and said “we can’t support him in this district”, according to Rochesterfirst.com.“‘Republican @RepJacobs already caved to the gun-grabbers whose proposals won’t do a single thing to protect our families & children from criminals & murderers,” Donald Trump Jr said on Twitter. “He knows this but he can’t resist getting a few glowing headlines from the mainstream media.”Jacobs insisted he did not decide to withdraw from the race over backlash, saying: “I didn’t feel any heat on this issue. No one called me about the assault weapon ban.”“This is purely a personal contemplation, prayer, and talking to people, that I felt this was the right thing to do,” he said. “And the time was now to do it.”Jacobs’ announcement came one day after Joe Biden made an impassioned plea for an assault weapons ban and prohibition on high-capacity magazines.Reactions to the president’s speech largely followed party lines, with Democrats supporting his proposals and Republicans slamming them as unduly politicized.Movement on gun control legislation at the state and federal levels suggests the prospect of mixed results rather than unified policy. While Maine Republican senator Susan Collins recently said that a bipartisan group of senators made significant progress in negotiating gun law reforms, GOP opposition in the senate could easily stymie these efforts.States have taken different approaches in addressing gun violence. New York’s legislature on Thursday passed a set of bills that barred most civilians from purchasing body armor and upped the age requirement for buying a semiautomatic rifle to 21, the New York Times reported.In Texas, Republican governor Greg Abbott asked his lieutenant and a high-level state legislator “to each convene a special legislative committee”. Abbott insisted “we must reassess the twin issues of school safety and mass violence,” but Texas has historically eased firearms restrictions following mass shootings.TopicsUS gun controlNew YorkRepublicansUS politicsBuffalo shootingTexas school shootingReuse this content More

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      Democrats rush to push gun safety laws after mass shootings as Republicans stall

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      Democrats rush to push gun safety laws after mass shootings as Republicans stallNew York governor seeks to ban people under 21 from buying assault rifles, while California governor intends to sign restrictions, including the right to sue gun manufacturers With Republicans stonewalling for years on any significant federal gun safety legislation, some states are now rushing to take steps themselves following large-scale shootings in New York and Texas this month.Democrats in some blue states are making fresh efforts to reinvigorate proposals toward what gun control advocates call “evidence-based policy interventions”.In New Jersey, Democratic governor Phil Murphy singled out four Republican state lawmakers opposing gun safety and accused them of taking “blood money” while urging them to pass a stalled gun control package that included raising the age to 21 for purchases of long guns, such as assault rifles, and removing laws that shield gun makers from civil lawsuits.Among those Murphy named were state senators John DiMaio, co-sponsor of a bill that would eliminate the statutory prohibition against the possession of “hollow point” ammunition; and Ed Durr, sponsor of a bill to remove magazine capacity limits and repeal a “red flag” law prohibiting guns for people deemed to pose “a significant danger of bodily injury”.“In the face of children being slaughtered to the point where the reports indicate these beautiful children were unrecognizable, I say let these folks come out from behind their press releases and their tweets and cast votes before the residents of this great state,” Murphy said.In New York, where the gunman was charged with first degree murder in the deaths of 10 Black customers and employees of a supermarket in Buffalo two weeks ago, state Democratic governor Kathy Hochul said she would seek – at a “minimum” – to ban people under 21 from purchasing AR-15-style assault rifles.Military-style assault rifles were used in Buffalo and last week in the school shooting in Uvalde, south Texas, by 18-year-olds in both tragedies, Hochul pointed out.“That person’s not old enough to buy a legal drink. I don’t want 18-year-olds to have guns. At least not in the state of New York,” she said.Among the measures Hochul enacted by executive order after the Buffalo massacre was a unit within the state’s office of counterterrorism that would focus exclusively on the rise of domestic terrorism and extremism.As the law stands in New York, a person must be 21 or older to obtain a license to purchase a handgun but the state doesn’t require licenses for long guns, such as shotguns or rifles, and someone can own one at 16. Hochul hopes to get the law through this week.In California – which has experienced a string of mass shootings, including one at a church luncheon two weeks ago – Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has called for tougher gun controls to be fast-tracked through the legislature.“California will not stand by as kids across the country are gunned down,” Newsom said last week.“Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids in America. While the US Senate stands idly by and activist federal judges strike down commonsense gun laws across our nation, California will act with the urgency this crisis demands.”“The Second Amendment [to the US Constitution, on the right to bear arms] is not a suicide pact. We will not let one more day go by without taking action to save lives,” he added.An initial package of bills Newsom has committed to signing include restrictions on advertising of firearms to minors, curbs ghost guns, establish rights of action to limit spread of illegal assault weapons, and the right for governments and victims of gun violence to sue manufacturers and sellers of firearms.However, few Republican-controlled states have followed their lead. Conservative lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Michigan prevented efforts to introduce votes on gun safety legislation, while officials in Texas including the hard-right governor Greg Abbott, have blamed the school massacre there on a gunman with mental health problems, not the fact that he was legally able to buy semi-automatic rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition as soon as he turned 18 earlier this year.“Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period,” Abbott said a day after the Uvalde shooting.At the federal level, a group of bipartisan senators have said they would work through the weekend to reach agreement on steps to limit access to guns, although there are no big moves afoot to ban assault weapons, as Vice-President Kamala Harris called for anew on Saturday, or raise the eligibility age to 21.“It’s inconceivable to me that we have not passed significant federal legislation trying to address the tragedy of gun violence in this nation, especially because since Sandy Hook, we’ve seen even worse slaughter, in Las Vegas, in Orlando,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on ABC on Sunday.Pennsylvania Republican Senator Patrick Toomey said: “Times change. There’s a possibility that might work this time.”TopicsUS gun controlBuffalo shootingTexas school shootingUS politicsNew YorkTexasCalifornianewsReuse this content More

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      ‘You are a jackass’: video of Rudy Giuliani rant at Israel parade goes viral

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      ‘You are a jackass’: video of Rudy Giuliani rant at Israel parade goes viralFormer Trump lawyer hurls profanities at parade attender in New York City days after reportedly testifying with January 6 panel With a reporter’s cellphone recording him, Donald Trump’s sometime lawyer Rudy Giuliani hurled profanities at a pro-Israel parade attender in New York City and said, “You are probably as demented as Biden.”The video of the former New York mayor’s verbal clash had racked up more than 440,000 views on Monday morning, just two days after he reportedly met for hours with the US House committee investigating the deadly Capitol riots on 6 January 2021.Marching behind Mayor Adams is @RudyGiuliani who gets into a shouting match with a Democrat. “You are a jackass… You are a brainwashed asshole… you are probably as demented as Biden,” Giuliani told the guy Watch the video 👇 pic.twitter.com/qjlTzQSP8j— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) May 22, 2022
      Capitol attack panel to hold six public hearings as it aims to show how Trump broke lawRead moreGiuliani in Sunday’s footage was waving an Israeli flag – behind the current New York mayor, Eric Adams – when he walked over to barricades on his right and yelled, “You are jackass,” and, “you are a brainwashed asshole,” at one attender at least. Someone who shouted back at Giuliani identified as a Democrat, according to the person who recorded the clip, Jacob Kornbluh, a political reporter at Jewish news source the Forward.“You are probably as demented as Biden,” Giuliani said at one point in a reference to the man who defeated Trump in the 2020 presidential election.Giuliani also referred to his seven years as mayor of New York beginning in 1994, saying, “I reduced crime, you jackass!”Mark Meadows was warned of illegality of scheme to overturn 2020 electionRead moreThe exchange at the Jewish Community Relations Council’s Celebrate Israel Parade has drawn ridicule for Giuliani from some quarters as the committee investigating the Capitol attack prepares to stage a half-dozen public hearings in June which will seek to illustrate how Trump and some allies broke the law while trying to keep Trump as president despite his loss to Joe Biden in 2020.Giuliani has been accused of being at the forefront of a plot to have Trump’s vice-president at the time, Mike Pence, stop the certification of Biden’s win, with which Pence didn’t go along. He also allegedly coordinated an illegal attempt to have legislatures certify slates of pro-Trump electors in states that had actually been won by Biden.Both schemes were unlawful, the committee investigating the Capitol attack has said in court records.According to a draft schedule, the public hearings are set to occur over a 12-day period in June, with two being held in prime time.TopicsRudy GiulianiNew YorkUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden tells Buffalo shooting mourners: ‘Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail’ – as it happened

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      Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.
      What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.
      The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.
      I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…
      White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.We’re closing our live blog now, but it’s far from the end of our political coverage for the day. It’s primary day in several states, with prominent Republican Senate and governor candidates in Pennsylvania notably going head to head.Please watch for my colleague Lauren Gambino’s coverage later, including TV doctor Mehmet Oz’s bid to advance his chase for a Senate seat and North Carolina extremist Madison Cawthorn’s efforts to hold on to his in the House of Representatives.The day was otherwise dominated by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America. Here’s what else we followed:
      Buffalo mayor Byron Brown said he saw Biden’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.
      Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
      The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
      The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
      Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.
      02:19Donald Trump has received a savage Twitter smackdown from George Conway, a constant bête noire of the former president as co-founder of the Lincoln Project, and husband to his former adviser Kellyanne Conway.The Tuesday afternoon insult likening Trump to a caged monkey throwing feces came as part of a chain that began with news the 6 January committee was not expecting to call him as a witness in public hearings this spring.Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson says its “not our expectation” to call Donald Trump as a witness. He said it’s not clear Trump would enhance investigators’ understanding of the evidence they’ve already unearthed.— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 17, 2022
      Lawyer Elizabeth de la Vega decided it was not something she wanted to see:Smart. Calling Trump as a witness in the June hearings would be a terrible move. https://t.co/FxCobKVb32— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) May 17, 2022
      And Conway followed up with this:Yes. Displaying a monkey in a cage throwing its feces around would provide equal enlightenment, even if the monkey were sworn. https://t.co/6oHg2oWapd— George Conway🇺🇦 (@gtconway3d) May 17, 2022
      Thousands of ballots from several counties in today’s Pennsylvania primary election might not be able to be read “for several days”, the Associated Press reports, because of a printing error.Officials in Lancaster county, the state’s sixth most populous, said the problem involved at least 21,000 mailed ballots, only a third of which were scanning properly. The glitch will force election workers to redo ballots that can’t be read by the machine, a laborious process expected to take several days, the AP says. Officials in the Republican-controlled county pledged that all the ballots will be counted eventually.“Citizens deserve to have accurate results from elections and they deserve to have them on election night, not days later,” Josh Parsons, Republican vice chair of the county board of commissioners said at a news conference. “But because of this, we’re not going to have final election results from these mail ballots for probably several days”. pic.twitter.com/YacDxjCitN— Commissioner Ray D’Agostino (@CommissionerRD) May 17, 2022
      John Fetterman, frontrunner in today’s Democratic senate primary in Pennsylvania, is undergoing what campaign staff say is “a standard procedure” to install a heart pacemaker.The state’s lieutenant governor announced on Sunday he had suffered a minor stroke two days previously, but said he was recovering and his campaign “isn’t slowing down one bit”.“John Fetterman is about to undergo a standard procedure to implant a pacemaker with a defibrillator. It should be a short procedure that will help protect his heart and address the underlying cause of his stroke, atrial fibrillation (A-fib), by regulating his heart rate and rhythm,” the statement from his campaign said.Fetterman tweeted that he used “an emergency absentee ballot” to cast his vote today (presumably for himself) from his bed in Penn Medicine Lancaster general hospital.Just cast my Primary Election Vote from Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital using an emergency absentee ballot. ✅ pic.twitter.com/HftIKtZG2V— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) May 17, 2022
      Buffalo’s mayor Byron Brown has just been talking about Joe Biden’s visit to his city today, and what he sees as the president’s “sense of resolve” to get something done about gun reforms following the grocery store massacre.Brown told reporters that the president and first lady Jill Biden spent considerable private time with the families of the 10 killed by an alleged white supremacist, which he said he thought strengthened Biden’s “commitment to try to bring change”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As it relates to gun control in this country change has been very elusive. There are those in Washington who have put the needs and the desires of the gun manufacturers ahead of the lives of Americans. That has to stop.
      The president talked about gun control. He talked about his concern for the families here. There was talk about what could be done to end these mass shootings.
      The president seemed very moved by what he saw here in this community. And I really felt a strong sense of resolve and commitment in the president to try to bring change as it relates to these kinds of situations.
      I saw him steel himself during this visit to get something done. I felt it, I think it’s powerful, and I think it’s real.Brown also paid tribute to police officers and fire fighters who responded to Saturday’s shooting, and credited Aaron Salter, the former police officer and Tops market security guard who lost his life in a firefight with the killer, for saving lives:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If not for the heroic actions of… Aaron Salter engaging the shooter and exchanging gunfire with the shooter that ultimately took his life, more people would probably have gotten killed inside the store.The US Congress held its first open briefing on UFOs in more than 50 years on Tuesday, but those seeking explanations for the numerous military sightings of unexplained objects were left disappointed, as defense officials appeared to hold their juiciest information for closed door hearings.During a 90-minute briefing in Washington a highlight was the release of two new videos showing unidentified aerial phenomena, although one of them was immediately debunked by Scott Bray, the deputy director of navy intelligence.The hearing, the first of its nature since 1966, came after a bumper year for UFO enthusiasts. In 2021, US intelligence released a landmark report which found 144 reports of unidentified aerial phenomenon, only one of which could be explained.The report followed US navy pilots publicly discussing their encounters with UAPs, with one retired lieutenant claiming he saw objects in the sky above the east coast “every day for at least a couple years”.On Tuesday Bray sought to defend the government’s investigation of UAPs – following accusations that the Pentagon is not taking the issue seriously enough – but also showed members of an intelligence subcommittee videos of airborne objects.One video, filmed during daylight, showed an object appearing to whiz past a military jet. The fleeting appearance of the object – it appeared on screen for less than a second – showed the difficulty in gathering data on some UAPs, Bray said.Another clip, recorded at night from a military plane at some time in 2019, showed triangle shapes appearing to hover in the sky. Bray then played another video that captured the same phenomena, but followed it up with a mundane explanation: the objects were drones, rendered triangular in shape and other-worldly in motion because of a quirk in the way video was captured through night-vision equipment.The debunking did little to counter accusations – including one leveled by Andre Carson, the committee chair – that the Pentagon has little interest in investigating the inexplicable. Read more:Out-of-this-world revelations in short supply at US Congress briefing on UFOs Read moreThe US has taken control of Afghanistan’s embassy in Washington DC, and consulates in New York and Beverly Hills, California, the state department has said.It moved to secure the properties Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, after determining Afghanistan “formally ceased conducting diplomatic and consular activities in the United States” at noon yesterday.In reality, there have been no formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Kabul since the Taliban assumed power after the chaotic US withdrawal last summer. The US does not recognize the Taliban as a legitime government.An official notice will be published in the federal register on Wednesday stating that the department had assumed responsibility for “protection and preservation” of the properties the AP said.Nobody will be allowed to enter the buildings without state department official, it said.The day has been dominated so far by Joe Biden’s visit to grieve with the families of victims and survivors of the weekend’s massacre of 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo.The president and first lady Jill Biden met with the families, then he delivered a powerful address in which he called out the racial hatred behind the killings, and urged Americans to unite in the fight against “hateful and perverse ideology”.“Evil will not win. Hate will not prevail,” Biden said, calling white supremacy “a poison” that had no place in America.Elsewhere:
      Republicans in Wisconsin who submitted to Congress false ballots stating Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state are facing a $2.4m lawsuit.
      The food and drug administration approved a Covid-19 booster shot for children aged five to 11.
      The FBI opened a federal hate crime investigation into a shooting at an Asian-American owned hair salon in Dallas that wounded three women.
      Black students in Georgia who say they were blocked from protesting a rule that allowed Confederate flags on clothing but not Black Lives Matter materials are suing their school district.
      Republicans in Wisconsin who attempted to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state, by submitting false electoral ballots to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner, are facing a lawsuit.The legal action in Dane county circuit court says the decision by a Republican slate of electors to send the ballots saying Trump had won was “as legally baseless as it was repugnant to democracy”, the Associated Press says. Biden won the state, and its 10 electoral college votes, by almost 21,000 votes. The lawsuit, filed by three Democratic voters, names 10 Republicans and two attorneys it says were responsible and seeks up to $2.4m in damages, as well as disqualifying the Republicans from serving as electors in the future.“It’s essential to have accountability and to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Jeffrey Mandell, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the AP.“We have heard in the more than a year since the fraudulent electors met the excuse that what they did was not wrong, it was totally fine. We want a court to make clear that is not true”.Republican electors who have spoken publicly have argued they weren’t trying to change the Wisconsin result but attempting to “preserve legal options” if a court ruled in favor of Trump.Wisconsin was among a number of heavily contested swing states that Biden won to deny Trump a second term in office. The twice-impeached Trump has since expounded the big lie that the election was fraudulent and victory was stolen from him, and incited the 6 January Capitol riot by his supporters to try to cling on to power.Numerous conservative groups pushing the big lie are facing legal actions is several states, the Guardian reported last week.Read more:Groups perpetuating Trump’s 2020 election lie face scrutiny and lawsuitsRead moreA tweet from the president in Buffalo urges the nation “to find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life”.Jill and I are in Buffalo to stand with the community and to grieve with the families. As a nation, we must find purpose to live a life worthy of those we lost. We must resolve that from tragedy will come hope and light and life. pic.twitter.com/Om8sTigHXl— President Biden (@POTUS) May 17, 2022
      An emotional Joe Biden, who received several bursts of applause during his Buffalo address, closed with a powerful call for Americans to come together to defeat what he said was a “hateful minority”:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’re the most multiracial, most dynamic nation in the history of the world. Now’s the time for the people of all races, from every background, to speak up as a majority in America and reject white supremacy.
      These actions we’ve seen in these hate filled attacks represent the views of a hateful minority. We can’t allow them to distort America. We can’t allow them to destroy the soul of the nation.And he widened his comments to include the divisiveness of the current political climate:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I travel the world all the time. Heads of state in other countries ask me, ‘What’s going on? What in God’s name happened on January 6th? What happened in Buffalo?’
      We have to refuse to live in a country where black people going about weekly grocery shopping can be gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.
      We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit.
      You must all enlist in this great cause of America. This is work that requires all of us, presidents and politicians, commentators, citizens, none of us can stay on the sidelines.
      We have to resolve that here in Buffalo, that from this tragedy, will come hope, in light, in life. It has to. And not on our watch… the sacred cause of America will never bow, never break, never bend. The America we love will endure.
      May the souls of the fallen rest in peace and rise in glory.The president said Americans had a duty to call out the hatred and racial bigotry behind the massacre in Buffalo, and countless other mass shootings. Then he turned to gun laws, and a call for Congress to pick up the baton:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The venom of the haters and their weapons of war… the violence in the words and deeds that stalk our streets, our stores, our schools. This venom, this violence, cannot be the story of our time. We cannot allow that to happen.
      Look, I’m not naive. I know tragedy will come again. It cannot be forever overcome. It cannot be fully understood either.
      But there are certain things we can do. We can keep assault weapons off our streets. We’ve done it before. We passed pass the crime bill last time and violence went down. Shootings went down.
      You can’t prevent people from being radicalized to violence but we can address the relentless exploitation of the internet to recruit and mobilize terrorism. We just need to have the courage to do that, to stand up. Biden went on the address the peril he said the US is in, if urgent action is not taken:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The American experiment and democracy is in a danger like it hasn’t been in my lifetime. It’s in a danger this hour.
      Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those who pretend to love America but who don’t understand America.
      To confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people, not making distinctions.Joe Biden attacked the “hateful and perverse ideology” behind the Buffalo massacre as he and first lady Jill Biden visited the city and paid tribute to the victims.In an emotional but powerful address to mourners, officials and first responders, the president called on Americans to “enlist” in the fight against racial hatred:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In America, evil will not win. I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word.
      What happened here is simple and straightforward terrorism, domestic terrorism, violence inflicted in the service of hate, and a vicious thirst for power.
      The media, and politics, the internet, have radicalized angry and lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced. That’s the word. Replaced by other people who don’t look like them.
      I call on all Americans to reject the lie, and those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.Biden condemned years of racially-based attacks across the country..css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}We’ve seen the mass shootings in Charleston, South Carolina; El Paso, Texas and Pittsburgh. Last year in Atlanta, this week in Dallas, Texas. Now in Buffalo… Buffalo, New York…
      White supremacy is a poison. It’s a poison running through our body politic that’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes. No more. No more. We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can, that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America.Joe Biden has just begun his remarks at the scene of the mass shooting in Buffalo that claimed 10 lives on Saturday.“We’ve come to grieve with you,” the president said, after being introduced by first lady Jill Biden.“The feeling like there’s a black hole in your chest, you’re suffocating, you’re unable to breath. The anger, and the pain, the depth of a loss that’s so profound”.Biden is naming the victims one by one, and telling his audience a little about them.He is expected to move on shortly to a call for Congress to tighten gun laws. More

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      What is ‘great replacement’ theory and how did its racist lies spread in the US?

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      What is ‘great replacement’ theory and how did its racist lies spread in the US?Buffalo gunman is suspected of posting a 180-page racist diatribe in which he repeatedly referenced the extremist conspiracy theory Why are we talking about the ‘great replacement’ theory?On Saturday, a white man armed with an AR-15-style rifle entered a supermarket in Buffalo in New York state and killed 10 people, almost all of whom were African American. The gunman is suspected of having posted a 180-page racist diatribe in which he repeatedly referenced the extremist conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement”.The Buffalo shooter drew heavily on the white supremacist rantings of the gunman in the 2019 massacre at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which 51 people were killed. His similarly hate-filled statement was titled “The Great Replacement”.At its heart, the theory claims falsely that white people are being stripped of their power through the demographic rise of communities of color, driven by immigration. The lie has been integral to many of the most horrifying recent acts of white supremacist violence in the US.Far-right protesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which led to the killing of a woman, chanted “You will not replace us”. Replacement theory featured in the rants of mass shooters at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 in which 11 people were murdered; a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in which 23 were killed in 2019; and a synagogue in Poway, California, the same year in which one person died.What is the theory and how did it emerge?Replacement theory is a set of racist and antisemitic paranoid lies and delusions that has cropped up around the world in the past decade. In the US it is expressed as the false idea that an elite cabal of Jews and Democrats is “replacing” white Americans with Black, Hispanic and other people of color by encouraging immigration and interracial marriage – with the end goal being the eventual extinction of the white race.The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) traces replacement theory back to early 20th century French nationalism. It began to receive popular attention in 2011 with the writings of the French critic Renaud Camus.In the US, the racist ideas were initially adopted by fringe websites including the chat boards 4chan and the technically now defunct 8chan.How has it spread through US society?More recently, the idea has been enthusiastically embraced by rightwing news outlets that have injected these hate-infused falsehoods into the mainstream of American public life.In particular attention is now falling on Tucker Carlson, the most avidly watched host on Fox News. A recent deep exploration by the New York Times found that his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, had on occasion drawn inspiration from white supremacist sites such as the neo-Nazi Stormfront.The newspaper found that in more than 400 episodes Carlson took up the idea that immigration was being exploited by elites to change the demographics of the US. Last year the ADL called for the TV host to be fired after he accused the Democrats on-air of “trying to replace the current electorate … with more obedient voters from the third world”.What has the theory done to American political debate?Having metastasized from fringe websites to Fox News, the idea of the imperiled white voter has spread its tentacles through the nation. An opinion poll last week by the Associated Press and the NORC center for public affairs research found that one in three US adults now subscribe to the false idea that a plot is under way to replace US-born Americans with immigrants, and that those US-born citizens are losing influence and power as a result.The notion has been taken up by Republican politicians at the highest levels. In the wake of the Buffalo shooting Liz Cheney, the Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, accused the leadership of her own party in the House of enabling “white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism”.Cheney did not mention by name Elise Stefanik, who took over the number three role in the Republican House leadership from her after Cheney was ousted for having criticized former president Donald Trump. Stefanik has promoted a politicised version of replacement theory, claiming that Democrats are attempting a “permanent election insurrection” by seeking citizenship for undocumented immigrants in order to “overthrow our current electorate”.Other prominent Republicans who have amplified the lie include Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House, and far-right members of Congress, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar.Is pressure mounting for something to be done about this?Cheney has called for Republican leaders to “renounce and reject” white supremacy. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of Congress from Illinois, has gone further, calling for several top Republicans themselves to be replaced.“The replacement theory they are pushing/tolerating is getting people killed,” he said.Charlie Sykes, a moderate conservative commentator who edits The Bulwark, wrote that responsibility for the Buffalo murders “lies with the murderer himself … But as conservatives once understood, ideas also have consequences; and poisonous demagoguery can have deadly results”.Such comments reflect a growing unease about the accommodation with replacement theory within rightwing politics and media. So far though the criticism is coming from individuals who have been pushed into the margins of the conservative movement, with no sign of change coming from the top.TopicsBuffalo shootingRepublicansRaceNew YorkUS politicsThe far rightexplainersReuse this content More

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      Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murder | Jason Stanley

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      Buffalo shooting: how white replacement theory keeps inspiring mass murderJason StanleyThis once fringe ideology, which was at the heart of Nazism, has gained mainstream traction thanks in part to the likes of Tucker Carlson on Fox News On Saturday, 18-year-old Payton Gendron parked his car in front of the entrance to a Tops Supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Exiting the car wearing metal armor and holding an assault rifle, he shot and killed a female employee in front of the store, and a man packing groceries into the trunk of his car. After entering the store, he murdered the store’s guard, and by the end of his killing spree, he had shot 13 people, killing 10 of them.Eleven of the people he shot were Black, and two were white. As the manifesto he left behind makes clear, this was fully intentional. The first listed goal in his manifesto was to “kill as many blacks as possible”.Gendron was a meticulous planner. He live-streamed his massacre, and the video begins with him following to the letter the beginning of the plan he lays out in the manifesto.. But the manifesto – which is meant to inspire and instruct subsequent attacks – also outlines the ideology that inspired the murders. Gendron was motivated by a classic version of White Replacement Theory, the view that a cabal of global elites is trying to destroy white nations, via the systematic replacement of white populations. According to White Replacement Theory, the strategies employed by these “global elites” include the mass immigration of supposedly “high fertility” non-whites, and encouraging intermingling between members of non-white races and whites. Gendron was deeply influenced by a series of recent mass killers who were animated by white replacement theoryincluding Brenton Tarrant, whom Gendron openly acknowledges as his model. In Christchurch, New Zealand, Tarrant massacred 51 people at a Mosque in the name of White Replacement Theory, also live-streaming his actions.Gendron’s manifesto begins in a similar fashion to Tarrant’s, by decrying the “white genocide” that will result from the supposedly low fertility rates of white populations and the high fertility rates of non-white immigrants brought in to “replace” them. It is more openly anti-Black than Tarrant’s manifesto – it is a deeply American version, with roots in Jim Crow and lynching. It is also vastly more explicitly antisemitic. Ten pages of Gendron’s manifesto are devoted to arguing for a genetic basis for the racial IQ gap, as well as (ironically) a genetic basis for higher rates of violent crime. It’s clear that Gendron closely follows various academic debates about race, IQ, and crime. According to the ideology guiding Gendron, Black people are not intelligent enough to engineer the replacement of whites, and the destruction of their civilization. The real actors behind White Replacement, according to Gendron, are the Jews, a topic which occupies the subsequent 29 pages of his manifesto.Gendron’s lengthy section on Jews purports to document Jewish hatred of non-Jews. It includes a section of Talmud quotes supporting Gendron’s thesis that Jews hate Christians, and a section documenting supposed control of academia, media, and industry (focusing on the pharmaceutical industry). Gendron ties Jews to child abuse and pedophilia. The section mocks a supposed Jewish fixation on environmental causes of Black crime. Gendron argues that Jews are behind Black social and political movements and organizations, including the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.Gendron also argues that Jews are behind the movement for transgender inclusivity, supposedly sponsoring transgender summer camps for “Scandinavian style whites”.The section ends by blaming Jews for creating “infighting” between people and races. The example Gendron’s manifesto provides is that “Jews are spreading ideas such as Critical Race Theory and white shame/guilt to brainwash Whites into hating themselves and their people”.The ideology that motivated Gendron’s mass murder in Buffalo, White Replacement Theory, has a lengthy and blood-soaked 20th century history. Since 2011, it has been the explicit motivation for over 160 murders, including Norway’s Anders Breivik’s slaughter of 77 people, mostly immigrants, in 2011, Dylann Roof’s mass murder of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the Tree of Life Synagogue killings in 2018, and the murder of 23 people, mostly immigrants, in El Paso, Texas, in 2019.Mass atrocities do not occur in a vacuum. They are enabled by a present normalization of a lengthy previous history, a process that the philosopher of mass killing Lynne Tirrell labels the social embeddedness condition. White Replacement Theory was the dominant structuring narrative of Nazi ideology. Adolf Hitler also announced his genocidal intent in a lengthy manifesto about the supposed Jewish threat to white civilization, entitled Mein Kampf, which was published in 1924. Hitler also was obsessed by mass immigration, and the threat it posed to “white civilization.”Currently, White Replacement Theory has been mass popularized and normalized, perhaps chiefly by the American political commentator Tucker Carlson. It is rapidly moving to the center of the mainstream narrative of America’s Republican party. In this form, it appears stripped of its explicit connection to antisemitism. You will not find Tucker Carlson asserting that the Jews are behind the mass replacement of American whites that he bemoans regularly in what is regularly the most watched cable news show in the United States among adults 25-54.But what Carlson has been doing is spending an entire year repeating a conspiracy by Christopher Rufo that says that American education has been infected by a pro-Black ideology (CRT) that was created by German Jewish Marxist intellectuals (the Frankfurt School). And that while the CRT version of this conspiracy theory is new, it is a direct descendent of the “cultural marxism” conspiracy theory, which was a primary topic of Breivik’s manifesto.The fact that Carlson does not mention American Jews as a target by name should be cold comfort to American Jews. Every single right wing anti-Semite in America who watches Tucker Carlson’s show hears him as denouncing Jews when he regularly platforms the 20th century’s worst anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.Some American Jews hope that by identifying as white, and lending their support to racist narratives about IQ and crime, they can diminish rightwing American antisemitism. This is a terrible error. American Ku Klux Klan ideology in the 1920s strongly overlapped with Nazi ideology, placing Jews at the center of a conspiracy fomenting a supposed race war to overthrow white civilization. American Jews who support Tucker Carlson and his ilk, that is, others who repeat the White Replacement narrative, are supporters both of anti-Black racism, and antisemitism in its most violent form.It is in the tracts of the 20th century’s most explicit antisemites that we find the development of White Replacement Theory, who used it to justify the mass killing of Jews. Gendron’s manifesto reveals yet again the unbreakable historical link between anti-Black racism and antisemitism. Any supporter of White Replacement Theory is a clear enemy of the Jewish People.America has many mass shootings. But this mass killing of Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket must serve as a wake-up call to our country. White Replacement Theory is deeply ingrained in the worst aspects of American and European history. With its attacks on “Critical Race Theory”, this is a fact that the American political right is deliberately and knowingly trying to erase from our collective consciousness, so they can appeal to it again as a political weapon against liberal democracy.As Gendron’s manifesto makes clear, White Replacement Theory is not just an attack on minorities. It is a weapon directed by fascists at American democracy itself.TopicsUS newsOpinionBuffalo shootingNew YorkAntisemitismRaceUS politicsThe far rightcommentReuse this content More