Kan U Rede This?

White Republican legislators have introduced more than 400 voting-suppression laws since their failed Jan. 6 coup, ostensibly because they want to protect “the integrity [or sanctity — choose your poison] of elections.”

The Democratic Party’s response, as usual, has been cowardly, spineless and ineffective. (Hey: You’ve got a brand, guess you gotta stick with it.)

Now Republicans are introducing, and already have enacted, state laws to prohibit teaching U.S. history in public schools, if that history that might include — touch upon — mention — umm, how can I say this? Reality.

These Republican proposals amount to institutionalized child abuse. Not just: Let’s prohibit our children from thinking, but: Let’s prohibit our children from knowing.

Hey, it works in China and Russia, doesn’t it? For now?

As a veteran of nine years teaching in public high schools, I propose a law to protect the integrity (or sanctity) of our children. Here it is:

H.R. 28*: “No elected member of our state or national legislatures shall be permitted to introduce a law involving public education, if he or she represents a state whose schoolchildren perform below the national average, this average to be determined by the states’ school districts’ performance based on the following criteria.”

H.R. 28 would prohibit senators and congress(wo)men from introducing legislation on public education if they represent any of our 25 worst-performing states, ranked, in this order, from worst to mediocre: Nevada, New Mexico, Mississippi, Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Tennessee, California, Oregon, Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, Utah, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas and Hawaii.

Of these 25 worst-performing states, Republicans control both statehouses in 20 of them.

Admittedly, no grading system for the schools of a state or nation will be perfect. For example, West Virginia ranked third nationwide in high school graduation rate, Texas fifth, and Alabama 16th.

By comparison, the top-ranked state nationwide, Massachusetts, ranked 13th in high school graduation rate; third-ranked Vermont ranked 11th in high school graduation rate; and fifth-ranked Connecticut ranked 15th in high school graduation grade.

This surely indicates not that high schools in Texas, Alabama and West Virginia are better than those up north, but that their standards are lower.

State and federal lawmakers’ latest attacks on public education consist of White-hot blasts at so-called Critical Race Theory, which states nothing more than that racism against Black people and Native Americans was built into the history of our country, in virtually all institutions, public and private.

Any honest student of history will acknowledge this. 

Yet, so thin-skinned are our White people and their elected officials today that legislators in 26 states have introduced, and in many cases already passed, laws that would prohibit — with severe penalties — teaching this self-evident truth in public schools.

In which 26 states are Republican legislators directing these attacks? You can see them in this link. Turns out that 17 of the 26 states trying to limit classroom speech about U.S. history appear in the list of the Worst 25 States’ public-school systems.

This is Soviet-style governance, Chinese Communist Party governance: Don’t study history; obliterate it. Don’t try to learn from history; punish people for studying it. Do not encourage honest inquiry and education about important social problems: Prohibit it.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, voters, fellow countrymen, friends: Why should we let the worst among us dictate to the best? Why should we let mediocre people do it?

Republicans’ ginned-up attacks on the dispassionate study of history are nothing but raw racism in pursuit of campaign contributions from White folks.

Republicans have become clones of the Soviet enemy they once claimed to despise.

Among the many revolting things the Republican Party — now a cult — has done, corrupting public education may be the worst. But, hey: Look at all the other things they’re doing — while that’s still allowed.

“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye”. (Matthew 7:5)

---

(* I have named my proposed legislation H.R. 28 in memory of my favorite baseball player, Vada Pinson (1938-1995), who made an amazing, diving catch on a line drive to centerfield in 1961, in the only game I attended at Crosley Field. He batted .343 that year. Why he never made it into the Hall of Fame is beyond me. I have no theories about it.)

from Courthouse News

Climate Envoy Says US, China Must End World’s ‘Suicide Pact’

LONDON (AP) — U.S. climate envoy John Kerry called on China to join America in urgently cutting greenhouse gas emissions and described the international alliances that rebuilt Europe after World War II as a model for fighting against climate change.

Kerry challenged global leaders to accelerate the actions needed to curb rising temperatures and pull the world back from the edge of the abyss. “Allies, partners, competitors and even adversaries” must work together, he said during a speech at London’s Kew Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage site where scientists are working to protect plants from global warming.

“The climate crisis is the test of our own times, and while it may be unfolding in slow motion, to some, this test is as acute and as existential as any previous one,” Kerry said. “Time is running out.”

Kerry described the next decade as decisive, saying countries around the world must speed up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they are to meet their commitment to limit temperature increases to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

While many countries have pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says emissions must be cut by at least 40% by the end of the decade to keep temperatures in check.

Organizers of the next United Nations climate summit are calling the November event in Glasgow, Scotland “the world’s last best chance to get runaway climate change under control.” The primary goal of the meeting, known as COP26, is for countries to set “ambitious” targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

To meet these targets, countries need to phase out the use of coal, reduce deforestation, accelerate the shift to electric vehicles and encourage investment in renewable energy, according to the conference organizers.

China, the United States and India are the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, meaning efforts to control climate change are likely to fail unless all three lead the way in slashing emissions.

Kerry referred to the often tense relationship between the U.S. and China but said the future depended on their cooperation. Both countries also need to raise their ambitions, he said.

“It is not a mystery that China and the U.S. have many differences. But on climate, cooperation is the only way to break free from the world’s current mutual suicide pact,” he said. “President Biden and President Xi have both stated unequivocally that each will cooperate on climate despite other consequential differences. America needs China to succeed in slashing emissions. China needs America to do the same.”

China’s output of climate-wrecking pollution surged in the last decade as its economy boomed, especially as it kept operating, building and financing new, dirty-burning coal-fired power plants.

The Rhodium Group analysis firm reported in May that China as of 2019 was pumping out more than 27% of all climate-damaging emissions globally. That’s more than the United States, which stood at 11%, and more than the rest of the developed world combined, Rhodium said.

The Trump administration and others in the United States pointed to China’s lead role in climate damage in justifying the rolling back of many emissions-cutting efforts in the U.S. China and other developing economies, meanwhile, say Western nations most responsible for the global-warming that occurred in the past are asking them to rein in their own development with little or no compensation.

Antony Froggatt, an energy policy consultant at the Chatham House think tank in London, applauded Kerry’s speech for highlighting the urgent need for action — for all.

“There is an acceptance from…one of the highest climate change officials in the world that climate change is here, it’s real, it’s having an impact, and its future impact will be equivalent to sort of a global war…and therefore we need to do things now,” Froggatt said. “That isn’t just America, that isn’t just the EU. It is India. It is China. It is these major emitters that actually need to take action on the real short term and demonstrate that they are changing emissions levels.”

____

By DANICA KIRKA Associated Press

Associated Press Writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed.

from Courthouse News

Crybaby, Crybaby!

When I was a kid, the worst thing the other kids could call you was a crybaby or a sore loser. Should that dread fate befall you, you’d wise up fast.

Here’s all it took: Stop crying.

Learn to say, “Good game,” after you lost.

Shake hands.

Why is it then, and how is it, that the world’s biggest crybaby and sore loser — a gelatinous lump no good at sports, afraid even to shake hands — has enthralled tens of millions of Americans, by demanding that they cry with him, over spilled, not-even real milk? 

Why is it, and how, that nearly one-half of the residents of The World’s Greatest Democracy have been reduced to a bunch of crybabies and sore losers? Above all, in the halls of Congress.

Were I a wiser man, I would explain it to you. But after pondering as long as I could stand, and coming up empty, I decided — what the hell, might as well do some research. (Which the immortal Dave Barry defined as “farting around on the internet.”) 

Here is what I found.

Simple math (according to my computer’s Calculator function) shows that 15 out of 50 states equals 30 percent of the states. (Do the math yourself, if your computer has a Calculator function.)

So, inquisitive soul that I am (still legal in most states other than Texas, unless prohibited, regulated or taxed), I asked my computer how many voters went for the Big Crybaby on Nov. 3, 2020, in the 15 states below the Mason-Dixon Line. 

Turned out that 41.5% of voters below the old Mason-Dixon Line had voted for the Crybaby — 30,805,056 of the Sore Loser’s 74,223,369 votes — 41.5% of his national tally.

Yet those 15 states of the Old South account for only 21% of our national population — 69,108,517 of 328.2 million.

In other words, support for the Big Crybaby was twice as fervent in the Old South as in the rest of the country.

Why is it that the Crybaby racked up so many votes in Dixie — the states that lost the Civil War? Could it be that the Crybaby’s “base” are sore losers, like him? And that the Republican Party’s war against voting is related, in some sorta way, to, umm … racism? Another Lost Cause, just like the first one, a war that was vile at its base?

Here’s how many votes the Big Crybaby garnered in states below the Mason-Dixon line on Nov. 3, 2020, and his percentage of the vote in each state:

Alabama – 1,441,170 – 62.2% •

Arkansas – 760,647 – 62.4% •

Florida – 5,668,731 – 51.2%

Georgia – 2,461,854 – 49.3% *

Kentucky – 1,326,646 – 62.1% •

Louisiana – 1,255,776 – 58.5%

Mississippi – 756,764 – 57.6%

Missouri – 1,718,736 – 56.8%

North Carolina – 2,758,773 – 50.1%

Oklahoma – 1,020,280 – 65.4% •

South Carolina – 1,385,103 – 55.1%

Tennessee – 1,852,475 – 60.7% •

Texas – 5,890,347 – 52.1%

West Virginia – 545,382 – 68.6% •

Virginia – 1,962,382 – 49% *

The bullets (•) indicate states where more than 3 in 5 voters went for the Crybaby. These are states where, were I a Democratic “strategist,” I would not spend a dime. Let ‘em get over it and grow up.

The two asterisks indicate the Dixie states where voters got over it and grew up.

These statistics indicate that if Democrats really want to fight — always a questionable proposition these days — they should concentrate their short-term spending (and that’s what our so-called democracy has come down to) in Florida, Virginia, Georgia and Texas. 

In the long term, South Carolina and Missouri may be susceptible to reason, though I wouldn’t bet on it.

To sum up, I would say that today’s Republican Party is the worst thing you could inflict on a child, if you want her to grow up healthy and happy — not a crybaby or a sore loser.

from Courthouse News

10th Circuit Overturns Tiger King’s Sentence

(CN) — The big cat will remain in the big house, the 10^th Circuit ruled on Wednesday, but the infamous “Tiger King’s” 22-year prison sentence has been remanded to the district court for a second calculation.

Joe Exotic aka Joseph Maldonado-Passage, 57, was convicted in 2019 in Oklahoma City federal court on two counts of murder-for-hire, eight counts of violating the Lacey Act for falsifying wildlife records and nine counts of violating the Endangered Species Act. Jurors concluded he tried to hire a hitman for $10,000 to kill rival tiger enthusiast Carole Baskin.

While Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Scott Palk considered each count of murder-for-hire as separate, the federal appeals court sided with Maldonado-Passage’s argument that the similar charges should be grouped together.

“Here, Baskin was neither murdered multiple times nor assaulted multiple times during attempted murders. Her harm was one sustained, ongoing harm. She learned that Maldonado-Passage intended to have her killed and lived with that fear,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Phillips, a Barack Obama appointee, in a 22-page opinion.

Under this new consideration, Maldonado-Passage faces a sentence of 20 to 22 years in prison, rather than the 22 to 27.5 range initially before the court.

Maldonado-Passage, also known as the Tiger King, Joe Exotic and Joe Gone Wild acclaimed fame after the 2020 Netflix docseries “Tiger King” dove into his enterprise, the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma.

Released in the early months of the pandemic, over 34 million unique viewers streamed the show in March 2020.

The show follows several of the eccentric personalities in the tiger enthusiast community and focuses on Exotic’s obsessive behavior towards rival Baskin after he entered into a $1 million settlement in a trademark case she filed against him.

Baskin has gotten the last laugh, as a federal judge has since awarded her control of Exotic’s former zoo property in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. U.S. District Judge Scott Palk ruled in June the 16.4-acre property was fraudulently transferred from Exotic to his mother to keep it away from Baskin.

Palk also oversaw Exotic’s criminal trial and is presiding over a $93 million lawsuit Exotic filed, representing himself, against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Interior and several of his perceived enemies. He claims he is the victim of a vast conspiracy to take his animals away from him.

In Wednesday’s order, the 10^th Circuit called the struggle between Baskin and Maldonado-Passage “a rivalry made in heaven.”

The appeals panel denied Maldonado-Passage’s request for a new trial after Baskins was allowed to attend the trial and then testify as a witness.

“In short, because Maldonado-Passage’s plan to have Baskin murdered was both the but-for and proximate cause of these emotional and pecuniary injuries, the district court acted within its discretion in allowing Baskin to stay in the courtroom as a crime victim under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act,” Phillips wrote.

In a letter entered into the docket in February, Maldonado-Passage asked the court to allow him to present his case pro se since he had little contact with his appeals attorney while in prison.

“During this entire year I have been kept separated from the rest of the population of the prison to avoid me talking to the press or telling my story to the truth as what really happened,” Maldonado-Passage wrote.

Maldonado-Passage also claimed the wildlife charges should have been severed from the murder-for-hire claims during his trial.

“The wildlife charges had nothing to do with the murder for hire charges other then for the government to parade half rotten heads of tigers around in front of the Jury for the 5 days prior to even addressing Murder for Hire,” Maldonado-Passage wrote.

The letter went unread by the court as he was represented by council and oral argument had already been submitted.

George W. Bush appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz and George H.W. Bush appointed Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Joseph Kelly Jr. rounded out the panel.

from Courthouse News

False Confession

Read the full opinion here.

from Courthouse News

Biden Puts Gun Violence in His Sights

WASHINGTON (CN) — President Joe Biden convened Monday with federal and local leaders to focus on a scourge that has killed tens of thousands of Americans in the last few years, unabated by the global pandemic.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, and we know some things will work, and one of these things that will work is stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violent crimes,” Biden said from the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Monday.

Flanked by the leaders of cities experience touched by the carnage — Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, Brooklyn Burrough President Eric Adams and Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose, California — the meeting comes as discourse over police funding continues to flare from coast to coast and the nation’s homicide rate ticked up 25% from 2019 to 2020.

That figure comes from findings by the FBI, which says the nation saw its highest single-year increase in homicides since tracking first started in 1960.

The causes for this are up for considerable debate. Academics like Aaron Chalfin and John MacDonald, assistant professor and professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, respectively, recently explored the paradoxical phenomena of gun violence for the Washington Post.

They surmised much like the White House did on Monday, that America has a “unique” problem where economic strife, social stressors and lack of access to public services tell only a sliver of the gun-violence story.

Last month, the Biden administration formally rolled out its strategy to combat gun violence and violent crimes throughout the U.S., proposing that $350 billion of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package passed earlier this year be directed toward state and local law enforcement.

The White House has asked states to spend some of those dollars on police-force replenishment, and specifically on resources that were depleted over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic. The administration outlined that this funding should be used to pay overtime to officers who are “directly focused on advancing community policing strategies,” and moreover in regions where gun violence associated with the pandemic has lurched upward.

That includes ramping up prosecution of gun traffickers, “rogue” arms dealers and training a sharper eye on how the federal government can root out gun-trafficking conduits operating in the shadows at a local level.

Nearly 20,000 people in the United States were killed by gunfire in 2020, according to a report from the nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun deaths including those by homicide, suicide, mass shootings and more.

As of Monday, barely six full months into this year, the archive reports the number of all gun violence deaths now exceeds 23,000. In terms of homicide, the archive counts about 11,000 American deaths while suicides by gun veer toward 13,000. More than 1,000 children, from infancy to age 17, have been killed by gun violence since Jan. 1.

Where lives have not been claimed but injury was sustained, more than 21,000 people have been harmed by a gun this year.

Whether it is analysis from academics or the FBI, unquestionably the pandemic prompted a spike in gun ownership. Notably, however, violent crime overall has not increased in the United States over the last two decades, according to the Pew Research Center.

Much of the administration’s earmarking of additional resources for state and local law enforcement is focused on regions hard hit by Covid-19, and that is because the funding is not new money added but from the same pandemic relief pool.

The Treasury Department is, however, expressly encouraged to give funding to “any community” that can use it to tamp down on gun violence, and with an amount “up to the level of revenue loss the jurisdiction experienced during the pandemic,” according to a White House fact sheet.

Cities in upstate New York, like Utica and Syracuse, as well as cities such as Washington, Philadelphia, Tucson, Albuquerque, Kansas City and Walla Walla in Washington state, were each singled out Monday by the White House for their spending of pandemic relief to wrangle gun violence.

In Syracuse, for example, the White House noted, Mayor Ben Walsh recently relaunched the city’s ShotSpotter technology, which aids police in tracking gunfire for $4 million.

While more cops on the beat is considered key to reducing violent crime under Biden’s strategy, much of the violence, the president contends, can also be eased by curbing the physical flow of guns streaming throughout the country.

To do this, the administration wants the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives to implement a zero-tolerance policy with illegal gun dealers, meaning any dealer who fails to run a background check on a would-be purchaser, for example, would see their license revoked.

Enforcing this and other measures under Biden’s directive — potentially— would be David Chipman.

Chipman was nominated by the president to serve as leader of the ATF months ago but currently is stuck in the middle of a languishing confirmation fight in Congress.

A 25-year veteran of the ATF who retired in 2012, Chipman started his career in Norfolk, Virginia, coming to the agency during turbulent times: He was only weeks on the job after the ATF’s deadly and chaotic raid on David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidian religious cult, unfolded near Waco, Texas.

Chipman also worked at the agency during both the Oklahoma City bombing and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Regardless, it has been his gun-control advocacy that has soured some right-wing pundits and far-right-leaning Republican lawmakers on his nomination.

Chipman presently works as a top policy adviser at Giffords Law Center, the gun-control organization stood up by former Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords, who was shot, along with several other people, during a constituent meeting in Tucson 10 years ago.

In Congress, the souring against Chipman has featured the promotion of easily debunked stories about his resume  and attempted character assassinations, including suggestions that Chipman is a “liar” or that he had  “a role” in the Waco event.

Members of the Republican Study Committee in May, chaired by Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, issued a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying Chipman was an “enemy of the Second Amendment” who would “use every tool at his disposal to attack American gun owners.”

Banks, like 167 other Republicans in the House of Representatives, is a regular recipient of political donations from the National Rifle Association. In 2020, the NRA donated $638,035 to Republicans in the House, Open Secrets reports. Alternatively, Democrats in 2020 received $13,687 from the NRA.

For the last six years, the directorship at the ATF has been technically vacant with acting directors filling in the role. Only two full-time directors have been confirmed by the Senate in the last 15 years.

Chipman’s opposition to ghost guns and assault rifles has won him much support from Democrats and during his confirmation hearing on June 7, as nominee was testifying, nine people were killed in a mass shooting at the Valley Transportation Authority light-rail yard in San Jose, California.

Stemming the flow of guns to those unfit to have them would become a priority, if nominated, he testified.

Beyond getting guns off the street, Biden also said during the meeting Thursday that his administration was committed to working with state and local law enforcement to fund mental health and substance abuse services. Funding is also flagged for job training and summer job training for teenagers.

“It will prevent crime and support young people to pick up a paycheck instead of a pistol,” Biden said.

And the administration plans on devoting resources to assisting the formerly incarcerated, essential to reducing greater crime and violence.

“Somebody gets out of jail right now, they get a bus ticket and $25. They end up under the same bridge they left,” he remarked.

According to the White House, services for housing, medical and mental health care, trauma care and food assistance are integral ways municipalities will need to spend the leftover relief funding. The Department of Labor this June awarded the Department of Labor $85.5 million to help the formerly incarcerated.

---

Follow Brandi Buchman on Twitter

from Courthouse News

US Hosts High-Level Saudi Visit After Khashoggi Killing

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wears a face mask to help curb the spread of the coronavirus as he attends the Saudi Cup award ceremony during the final race of the $20 million, the Saudi Cup, at King Abdul Aziz race track in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Biden administration officials on Tuesday hosted a brother to Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, in the highest-level such visit known since the U.S. made public intelligence findings linking the crown prince to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The Biden administration did not publicly disclose the visit by Prince Khalid bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s deputy defense minister, in advance. President Joe Biden had pledged to make a “pariah” of the kingdom’s crown prince during his presidential campaign over Khashoggi’s killing and other abuses, but his administration has instead emphasized U.S. strategic interests with Saudi Arabia.

The high-level sessions with Prince Khalid, a younger brother and confidant to Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, renewed complaints that the administration was giving the Saudis a pass in the Khashoggi killing, given that nation’s strategic importance as a Middle East power and a top oil producer.

“US still has their back, no matter how awfully they terrorize their citizens,” Sarah Leah Whitson, who leads the Arab rights group Democracy for the Arab World, tweeted Tuesday in a criticism of Biden administration policy.

Biden has pledged a foreign policy that follows human rights and American values. But after the February release of the U.S. findings on Mohammed bin Salman’s role in Khashoggi’s death, Biden told ABC News there was no precedent for the U.S. punishing a top official of a country with which it has a partnership.

Khalid bin Salman met briefly at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting that was not yet made public. The Saudi prince had longer talks at the Pentagon with Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, the official said.

Khalid bin Salman also was talking with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and, on Wednesday, would meet with State Department Undersecretary Victoria Nuland and counselor Derek Chollet, other U.S. officials said. Those officials also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give details about the visit.

At a briefing with reporters Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that meetings were underway and indicated that officials may raise the killing. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the U.S. officials and Saudi prince were “discussing important issues to the bilateral relationship.”

Those subjects were expected to include the war in Yemen, military contracts and Saudi concerns over U.S. efforts to return to a nuclear agreement with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s rival.

The prince’s official travel to Washington comes as the kingdom’s rulers still keep numerous members of the royal family and peaceful advocates for more rights in detention or, allegedly, under travel bans that often apply to their relatives as well.

“Prince KBS can travel although he is working for the Crown Prince, directly involved in the murder” of Khashoggi, tweeted Lina al Hathloul. She is the sister of Loujain al Hathloul, whom Mohammed bin Salman imprisoned for more than two years following her high-profile campaign for the kingdom to allow women to drive.

State Department spokespeople did not respond to a question Tuesday about why they had not announced the Saudi official’s visit in advance.

They also did not answer whether the Biden administration had concluded Khalid bin Salman played no role in the Saudi organization behind Khashoggi’s killing, or had decided that U.S. interests required Biden officials to meet with senior Saudi royals despite the administration’s public condemnation of the killing.

A State Department spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the administration has made clear that it found Khashoggi’s killing unacceptable. The spokesperson said the U.S. would continue raising human rights concerns at the highest level.

The Saudi government had no immediate public comment on Tuesday’s visit.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who had written critically of Mohammed bin Salman, was killed by Saudi officials in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi, who was based in the Washington, D.C. area, had gone to the consulate to get documentation for his upcoming wedding.

The Washington Post reported that Khalid bin Salman had told Khashoggi to go to the consulate to pick up his wedding papers and said it would be safe to do so.

The Biden administration in February released a declassified intelligence report concluding that Mohammed bin Salman, son of the aging King Salman, had authorized the team of Saudi security and intelligence officials that killed Khashoggi.

Khashoggi’s remains have never been found. Turkish intelligence reports say the Saudis immediately carved up the corpse. The Saudi team sent to the consulate included a top-ranking forensics expert known for his rapid dissection of bodies in the field.

As the crown prince’s younger brother, Prince Khalid was the kingdom’s ambassador in Washington at the time of Khashoggi’s killing, but he was recalled soon after amid bipartisan U.S. outrage over the death of the widely known journalist. When Khashoggi vanished after going to the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Khalid bin Salman insisted for days that accusations of official Saudi involvement in his disappearance were groundless.

___

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, MATTHEW LEE and LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press

AP reporters Aya Batrawy in Dubai and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report. Knickmeyer reported from Oklahoma City.

from Courthouse News

Medicaid Expansion Takes Effect in Deep-Red Oklahoma

A voter-approved expansion of Medicaid took effect Thursday in Oklahoma after a decade of GOP resistance in a state that has become emblematic of the political struggle to extend the federal health insurance program in conservative strongholds.

from Courthouse News