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National

Don’t be so sure that Republicans will win the Senate 

Expectations that Republicans will win control of the U.S. Senate in November, like the apocryphal reports of Mark Twain’s death, may have been greatly exaggerated.  

(AP Photo/Joe Maiorana)

High court expands state power over tribes

Limiting a watershed ruling on tribal authority, the Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated a state court conviction related to the abuse of a child who is part Cherokee by her stepfather who has no Native American heritage. 

(Library of Congress via Courthouse News)

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to retire Thursday

Justice Stephen Breyer sent a letter to the White House on Wednesday announcing his retirement from the Supreme Court will be effective Thursday at noon. 

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Giuliani crony Lev Parnas sentenced to nearly 2 years in prison

Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani while the latter was the personal attorney for then-President Donald Trump, was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Wednesday.

(AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

Regional

New York wields new nuisance law against manufacturers of ghost guns

The New York attorney general and New York City doubled down Wednesday on the quest to outlaw “ghost guns,” bringing municipal and federal litigation against gun manufacturers and distributors that sell weapons by the part.

(AP Photo/Haven Daley)

Gun-wielding Senate hopeful accuses Missouri congresswoman of inciting threats  

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the Missouri couple who parlayed their armed resistance to a group of Black Lives Matter protesters into a U.S. Senate run, have sued Congresswoman Cori Bush and state Representative Rasheen Aldridge for their roles in the 2020 protest.

(Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)

Clinics urge Ohio Supreme Court to block six-week abortion ban

Ohio abortion providers fighting to block enforcement of legislation passed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade sued the Republican attorney general in the state’s high court, claiming the law “has now decimated abortion access” in the Buckeye State.

(Gabriel Tynes/Courthouse News)

International

NATO invites Sweden and Finland to join alliance

NATO will start its process of incorporating Sweden and Finland into the military alliance after it officially invited both countries to join, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference in Madrid on Wednesday.

(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

from Courthouse News

High court expands state power over tribes

WASHINGTON (CN) — Limiting a watershed ruling on tribal authority, the Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated a state court conviction related to the abuse of a child who is part Cherokee by her stepfather who has no Native American heritage. 

The 5-4 ruling allows the federal government and states have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country.

Balking at that outcome in a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch writes that the court “wilts” where it once stood firm. 

“Where our predecessors refused to participate in one State’s unlawful power grab at the expense of the Cherokee, today’s Court accedes to another’s,” said Gorsuch, who rose to the Supreme Court from the 10th Circuit, which covers Oklahoma and five other states in the Southwest.

The Trump appointee notably wrote the majority opinion two years ago in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which held that a large swath of land once part of the Creek Nation could be considered Indian country for the purpose of the Major Crimes Act and that Oklahoma could not prosecute Indians or non-Indians for crimes committed there. 

Just as the court was taking up McGirt, Victor Manuel Castro-Huerta was appealing his conviction by an Oklahoma jury for child neglect after his 5-year-old stepdaughter was rushed to an emergency room in 2015 dehydrated, emaciated and covered in lice. The child — who is legally blind and has cerebral palsy — was only given around 12 bottles of milk per month instead of the recommended five per day. Weighing just 19 lbs., she spent her days confined to crib infested with bedbugs and cockroaches. 

Castro-Huerta called it unfair to prosecute him in state court for something that happened in Indian country, but the state seized on Castro-Huerta’s non-Native heritage, saying it had concurrent jurisdiction with the federal government over crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country. Ultimately the Oklahoma Court of Appeals vacated Castro-Huerta’s conviction, saying states do not have concurrent criminal jurisdiction with the federal government. 

While the justices declined to reconsider their ruling in McGirt when they took up Castro-Huerta’s case in January, the precedent was still a focal point of oral arguments in April. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the only member of the court who did not participate in the McGirt ruling. While Oklahoma’s arguments in April appeared unlikely to sway Gorsuch and the fellow justices in the McGirt majority — Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan — the justices in the minority in McGirt — Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh — leaned into them. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority Tuesday that federal law may preempt state jurisdiction in Indian country under high court precedent, but the still Constitution allows the state to exercise jurisdiction. 

“In accord with that overarching jurisdictional principle dating back to the 1800s, States have jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed in Indian country unless preempted,” Kavanaugh wrote, joined by Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Barrett. 

Kavanaugh wrote that state jurisdiction can be preempted by federal law under ordinary principles of federal preemption or when the state jurisdiction would unlawfully infringe on tribal self-government. 

“No federal law preempts the State’s exercise of jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians against Indians in Indian country,” Kavanaugh wrote. “And principles of tribal self-government likewise do not preempt state jurisdiction here.” 

Responding to the dissent, Kavanaugh notes Gorsuch’s focus on the mistreatment of Indians but said that history does not solve the legal questions presented in the case. 

Gorsuch’s extensive history of tribal sovereignty culminates with a conclusion that the case is less about Castro-Huerta and more about Oklahoma’s effort to acquire legal authority for jurisdiction over crimes on tribal lands. To do this, Gorsuch wrote, the state must not only disavow court rulings, but also its own previous recognition of its lack of authority to bring such a case. Gorsuch said Oklahoma’s argument is so novel that not a single state has successfully attempted anything similar in over 200 years. 

“The real party in interest here isn’t Mr. Castro-Huerta but the Cherokee, a Tribe of 400,000 members with its own government,” Gorsuch wrote. “Yet the Cherokee have no voice as parties in these proceedings; they and other Tribes are relegated to the filing of amicus briefs.” 

Claiming the majority’s declaration of state jurisdiction comes by “oracle,” Gorsuch said the court’s ruling is based on a foundational error. 

“Truly, a more ahistorical and mistaken statement of Indian law would be hard to fathom,” Gorsuch wrote. 

Gorsuch said the lower court rulings in the case protected the Cherokee’s sovereignty but the high court now turns that on its head. 

“Now, at the bidding of Oklahoma’s executive branch, this Court unravels those lower-court decisions, defies Congress’s statutes requiring tribal consent, offers its own consent in place of the Tribe’s, and allows Oklahoma to intrude on a feature of tribal sovereignty recognized since the founding,” Gorsuch wrote. “One can only hope the political branches and future courts will do their duty to honor this Nation’s promises even as we have failed today to do our own.” 

Zachary Schauf, an attorney with Jenner & Block representing Castro-Huerta, found a silver lining to the ruling.  

“Today’s decision — though devastating for our clients whom the state of Oklahoma prosecuted without jurisdiction — is narrow in scope,” Schauf said in a statement. “We are gratified that the Court agreed with us in rejecting Oklahoma’s extraordinary request to overrule McGirt v. Oklahoma and denied dozens of petitions raising that issue. We look forward to continuing the fight for tribal sovereignty, in Oklahoma and nationwide.”

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said the ruling was a win for millions of Oklahomans and the rule of law. 

“This is a pivotal moment,” Stitt said in a statement. “For two years, as a fourth generation Oklahoman, member of the Cherokees, and Governor of the state of Oklahoma, I have been fighting for equal protection under the law for all citizens. Today our efforts proved worthwhile and the Court upheld that Indian country is part of a State, not separate from it. I look forward to working with leaders across the state to join our efforts in combatting the criminal-justice crisis in Oklahoma following McGirt.”

from Courthouse News

Texas Supreme Court upholds ban on making smokable hemp products

AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — Texas’ ban on manufacturing smokable hemp products is in accord with its long history of regulating cannabis, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday, so there is no vested right to this business endeavor under the Texas Constitution.

The history of hemp in America goes back to the Founding Fathers. George Washington grew large crops of it at his farms in Mount Vernon, Virginia, and used its fibers to repair his fishing nets.

Colonists made rope, clothing, ship sails and numerous other goods from it.

But in the 20th century, the federal government and U.S. states, cracking down on the growing popularity of ingesting marijuana – the flowers of hemp plants that contain the intoxicating compound THC – passed statutes barring use of marijuana.

Both marijuana and hemp derive from the cannabis plant. The 20th century laws differentiated the two, defining hemp as the plant’s mature stalks and exempting it from prohibition.

But President Richard Nixon’s signing of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 effectively banned hemp production because it prohibited substances containing any THC, whether considered marijuana or hemp.

Hemp came full circle in 2018 with Congress’ passage of the Agricultural Improvement Act, also called the Farm Bill.

The Farm Bill distinguishes marijuana from hemp by the latter’s low amount of THC and allows farmers to grow hemp.

It also authorized transport of hemp-based products across states lines for commercial purposes, and sale and possession of them with no restrictions. But it also give states leeway to devise their own hemp-regulation schemes.

Taking the feds’ lead, the Texas Legislature passed HB 1325 in 2019, authorizing the licensed cultivation of hemp and barring local governments from regulating the industry.

The Farm Bill opened the floodgates for entrepreneurs’ production of goods containing CBD, a chemical derivative of the cannabis plant that does not produce the intoxicating effects of marijuana.

CBD is said to have many health benefits, providing relief for seizures, pain, anxiety, depression and insomnia. U.S. companies now incorporate CBD in a wide range of products—tinctures, lotions, chocolate bars, gummies, chap sticks, bath bombs and oils for dogs, cats and people.

Some of the most popular forms of consuming CBD-containing hemp is via smoking cigarette-like tubes and vape cartridges.

But Texas’ bill directed the state’s health and human services commissioner to adopt a rule effective August 2020 stating, “The manufacture, processing, distribution, or retail sale of consumable hemp products for smoking is prohibited.”

Four companies quickly sued, led by Dallas-based affiliates Crown Distributing LLC and America Juice Co., makers of Hempettes, which are sold under their Wild Hemp brand in packaging identical to cigarette packs and are marketed as “the first cigarette-styled CBD pre-roll in the world.”

After blocking the law with an injunction, a state district judge in Austin issued a final judgment last November declaring it unconstitutional and blocking enforcement of the rule barring production and sales of smokable hemp products.

Texas appealed to the state Supreme Court, which heard arguments in March.

The state’s attorney argued the ban is justified due to Texas’ interest in preventing residents suffering health complications from smoke inhalation.

Crown Distributing and America Juice Co.’s counsel, Constance Pfeiffer of the Houston firm Yetter Coleman, countered the ban on in-state production of smokable hemp products makes no sense because the Dallas-based plaintiffs merely had to move some of their operations to Oklahoma “where they can lawfully manufacture and process hemp and ship it right back into Texas.”

In a unanimous decision, the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court sided with the state Friday.

Justice Jeff Boyd rejected the hemp companies’ argument that the Texas Constitution’s due-course clause protects their right to produce smokable hemp wares as a common and lawful occupation.

Boyd noted the companies had argued that because laws passed by the federal government and Texas in the 20th century barring marijuana possession excluded the “non-psychoactive portions of the cannabis plant,” namely its mature stalks, that manufacture and sale of hemp products has always been legal in the U.S. – so Texas was prohibiting them from engaging in a business that has never been outlawed.

But Boyd found the focus must be on the flower of the plant, not the stalks, because that is what the hemp companies use to make their pre-rolls.

“Any product made from other parts of the plant—the flowers, buds, or leaves, for example—was considered to be marihuana and was completely illegal under prior law. The record in this case establishes that the cannabis flower is the key and essential ingredient in the smokable products the Hemp Companies desire to process and manufacture,” he wrote in a 31-page order.

Though Texas now allows the manufacture of products made from hemp, this does not transform Crown Distributing’s and America Juice Co.’s desire to produce hemp cigarettes into a constitutionally protected interest, Boyd determined.

“Considering the long history of the state’s extensive efforts to prohibit and regulate the production, possession, and use of the Cannabis sativa L. plant, we conclude that the manufacture and processing of smokable hemp products is neither a liberty interest nor a vested property interest the due-course clause protects,” Boyd concluded.

The high court reversed the trial court’s determination the ban is unconstitutional and rendered judgment for Texas.

In a concurring opinion joined by three of his colleagues, Justice Evan Young said the court needs to resolve whether the due-course clause included in the Texas Constitution, adopted in 1876, is of the same scope or a broader one than the federal due-process clause in the 14th Amendment.

“The very fact that the lower court used the Texas due-course clause to invalidate the statute here illustrates why we should soon expect cases that require more from us,” he wrote in a 34-page opinion.

Another attorney for the hemp companies, Chelsie Spencer with Ritter Spencer in Addison, Texas, said they are very disappointed with the court’s ruling. She said it will force them to close their smokable hemp division in Dallas and move all such operations to their facility in Oklahoma.

“The state unfortunately kicked them out today. Because of this decision, the companies must move manufacturing operations out of state,” she said in an email.

Spencer underscored that in refuting the companies’ claims production of hemp cigarettes is a common and lawful occupation, Boyd wrote the state constitution’s due-course clause “has never been interpreted to protect a right to work in fields our society has long deemed ‘inherently vicious and harmful.’”

Spencer said, “It is telling when the Court insinuates that cannabis is ‘inherently vicious and harmful.’ The stigma against a plant with verified efficacious medical usage continues in Texas.”

The loss to Texas coffers’ will be substantial, she added.

She said an economic expert retained for the case testified at trial that with the ban reinstated, Texas will lose over $1 million dollars in tax revenue through 2025 from the Wild Hemp companies alone.

from Courthouse News

Costa Rica chaos a warning that ransomware threat remains

WASHINGTON (AP) — Teachers unable to get paychecks. Tax and customs systems paralyzed. Health officials unable to access medical records or track the spread of COVID-19. A country’s president declaring war against foreign hackers saying they want to overthrow the government.

For two months now, Costa Rica has been reeling from unprecedented ransomware attacks disrupting everyday life in the Central American nation. It’s a situation raising questions about the United States’ role in protecting friendly nations from cyberattacks when Russian-based criminal gangs are targeting less developed countries in ways that could have major global repercussions.

“Today it’s Costa Rica. Tomorrow it could be the Panama Canal,” said Belisario Contreras, former manager of the cybersecurity program at the Organization of American States, referring to a major Central American shipping lane that carries a large amount of U.S. import and export traffic.

Last year, cybercriminals launched ransomware attacks in the U.S. that forced the shutdown of an oil pipeline that supplies the East Coast, halted production of the world’s largest meat-processing company and compromised a major software company that has thousands of customers around the world.

The Biden administration responded with a whole of government action that included included diplomatic, law enforcement and intelligence efforts designed to put pressure on ransomware operators.

Since then, ransomware gangs have shied away from “big-game” targets in the U.S. in pursuit of victims unlikely to provoke a strong response by the U.S.

“They’re still prolific, they’re making enormous amounts of money, but they’re just not in the news everyday,” Eleanor Fairford, a deputy director at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, said at a recent U.S. conference on ransomware.

Tracking trends of ransomware attacks, in which criminals encrypt victims’ data and demand payment to return them to normal, is difficult. NCC Group, a UK cybersecurity firm that tracks ransomware attacks, said the number of ransomware incidents per month so far this year has been higher than it was in 2021. The company noted that the ransomware group CL0P, which has aggressively targeted schools and health care organizations, returned to work after effectively shutting down for several months.

But Rob Joyce, the director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, has said publicly that there’s been a decrease in the number of ransomware attacks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine thanks to increased heightened concerns of cyberattacks and new sanctions that make it harder for Russian-based criminals to move money.

The ransomware gang known as Conti launched the first attack against the Costa Rican government in April and has demanded a $20 million payout, prompting the newly installed President Chaves Robles to declare a state of emergency as the tax and customs offices, utilities and other services were taken offline. “We’re at war and this is not an exaggeration,” he said.

Later, a second attack, attributed to a group known as Hive knocked out the public health service and other systems. Information about individual prescriptions are offline and some workers have gone weeks without their paycheck. It’s caused significant hardship for people like 33-year-old teacher Alvaro Fallas.

“I live with my parents and brother and they are depending on me,” he said.

In Peru, Conti has also attacked the country’s intelligence agency. The gang’s darkweb extortion site posts purportedly stolen documents with the agency’s information, like one document market “secret” that details coca-eradication efforts.

Experts believe developing countries like Costa Rica and Peru will remain particularly ripe targets. These countries have invested in digitizing their economy and systems but don’t have as sophisticated defenses as wealthier nations .

Costa Rica has been a longtime stable force in a region often known for upheaval. It has a long established democratic tradition and well-run government services.

Paul Rosenzweig, a former top DHS official and cyber consultant who is now a legal resident of Costa Rica, said the country presents a test case for what exactly the U.S. government owes its friendly and allied governments who fall victim to disruptive ransomware attacks. While an attack on a foreign country may not have any direct impact on U.S. interests, the federal government still has a strong interest in limiting the ways in which ransomware criminals can disrupt the global digital economy, he said.

“Costa Rica is a perfectly good example because it’s the first,” Rosenzweig said. “Nobody has seen a government under assault before.”

So far, the Biden administration has said little publicly about the situation in Costa Rica. The U.S. has provided some technical assistance through its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, via an information-sharing program with nations around the world. And the State Department has offered a reward for the arrest of members of Conti.

Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, said Costa Rica has a computer emergency response team that had an established relationship with counterparts in the U.S. before the incidents. But his agency is expanding its international presence by establishing its first overseas attache position in the U.K. It plans others in as-yet unspecified locations.

“If we think about our role, CISA and the US government, it is intrinsically of course to protect American organizations. But we know intuitively that the same threat actors are using the same vulnerabilities to target victims around the world,” he said.

Conti is one of the more prolific ransomware gangs currently operation and has hit over 1,000 targets and received more than $150 million in payouts in the last two years, per FBI estimates.

At the start of invasion of Ukraine, some of Conti’s members pledged on the group’s dark web site to “use all our possible resources to strike back at the critical infrastructures of an enemy” if Russia was attacked. Shortly afterward, sensitive chat logs that appear to belong to the gang were leaked online, some of which appeared to show ties between the gang and the Russian government.

Some cyber threat researchers say Conti may be in the middle of a rebranding, and its attack on Costa Rica may be a publicity stunt to provide a plausible story for the group’s demise. Ransomware groups that receive lots of media attention often disappear, only for its members to pop back up later operating under a new name.

On its darkweb site, Conti has denied that’s the case and continues to post victims’ files. The gang’s most recent targets include a city parks department in Illinois, a manufacturing company in Oklahoma and food distributor in Chile.

___

By ALAN SUDERMAN and BEN FOX Associated Press
AP writer Javier Córdoba contributed from San Jose, Costa Rica.

from Courthouse News

Simone Biles, other women seek $1B-plus from FBI over Nassar

DETROIT (AP) — Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles and dozens of other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar are seeking more than $1 billion from the FBI for failing to stop the sports doctor when the agency first received allegations against him, lawyers said Wednesday.

There’s no dispute that FBI agents in 2015 knew that Nassar was accused of assaulting gymnasts, but they failed to act, leaving him free to continue to target young women and girls for more than a year. He pleaded guilty in 2017 and is serving decades in prison.

“It is time for the FBI to be held accountable,” said Maggie Nichols, a national champion gymnast at Oklahoma in 2017-19.

Join our hosts as they take you in and out of courtrooms in the U.S. and beyond.

Under federal law, a government agency has six months to respond to the tort claims filed Wednesday. Lawsuits could follow, depending on the FBI’s response.

White noted the 2018 massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The FBI received a tip about five weeks before 17 people were killed at the school, but the tip was never forwarded to the FBI’s South Florida office. The government agreed to pay $127.5 million to families of those killed or injured.

The approximately 90 claimants include Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney, all Olympic gold medalists, according to Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, a California law firm. Separately, 13 claims were filed by others in April.

“If the FBI had simply done its job, Nassar would have been stopped before he ever had the chance to abuse hundreds of girls, including me,” said former University of Michigan gymnast Samantha Roy.

An email seeking comment was sent to the FBI.

Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics told local agents in 2015 that three gymnasts said they were assaulted by Nassar, a team doctor. But the FBI did not open a formal investigation or inform federal or state authorities in Michigan, according to the Justice Department’s inspector general, an internal watchdog.

Los Angeles agents in 2016 began a sexual tourism investigation against Nassar and interviewed several victims but also didn’t alert Michigan authorities, the inspector general said.

Nassar wasn’t arrested until fall 2016 during an investigation by Michigan State University police. He was a doctor at Michigan State.

The Michigan attorney general’s office ultimately handled the assault charges against Nassar, while federal prosecutors in Grand Rapids, Michigan, filed a child pornography case.

In remarks to Congress last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged major mistakes.

“I’m especially sorry that there were people at the FBI who had their own chance to stop this monster back in 2015 and failed. And that’s inexcusable,” Wray told victims at a Senate hearing.

At that same hearing, Biles, widely considered to be the greatest gymnast of all time, said an “entire system” enabled the abuse. Maroney recalled “dead silence” when she talked to FBI agents about Nassar.

The Justice Department in May said that it would not pursue criminal charges against former agents who were accused of giving inaccurate or incomplete responses during the inspector general’s investigation.

Failures by federal law enforcers have led to major settlements, including $127.5 million for families of those killed or injured in 2018 at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The FBI received a tip about five weeks before 17 people were killed, but the tip was never forwarded to the South Florida office.

Michigan State University, which was also accused of missing chances over many years to stop Nassar, agreed to pay $500 million to more than 300 women and girls who were assaulted by him. USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee made a $380 million settlement.

___

By ED WHITE Associated Press

from Courthouse News Service

House lawmakers debate gun control bill as mass shootings rage on

(CN) — Hours after yet another mass shooting, members of the House Judiciary Committee returned to Washington, D.C., for an emergency hearing on gun control legislation, voting to advance a package of reforms aimed at curtailing gun violence as the nation remains rattled from a recent series of high-profile mass shootings.

The Protecting Our Kids Act would raise the legal age for purchasing some semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21 years old, ban certain high-capacity gun magazines and create a new federal offense for gun trafficking and straw purchases, in which a middleman is paid to buy a gun on behalf of another.

Additional proposals would codify into federal law existing regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives that ban bump stocks and require ghost guns — DIY weapons kits — to meet the same background check and serial number requirements as other guns on the market.

Provisions of the package also aim to target the safe storage of firearms, requiring the attorney general to develop best practices guidelines for gun storage and making it a finable offense to store a gun with knowledge a minor is likely to access it.

The package does not include a ban on assault weapons.

The marathon hearing on the legislation came less than 24 hours after a gunman carrying a rifle and handgun shot and killed four people Wednesday inside a medical building on a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma and just nine days after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

During the attack in Uvalde, an 18-year-old armed with a semi-automatic rifle killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, the deadliest in a recent slew of mass shootings that has emboldened demands for Congress to take action on gun safety.

Just days before that attack, an 18-year-old espousing white supremacist views targeted a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, killing 10 people and injuring three others.

“In the days since the shooting at Tops Friendly Markets store in Buffalo, New York; and in the long, sad nights since the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas; and in just the last few hours, as we learned about more deadly gun violence in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office building, I have turned to a particular teaching in the Talmud: ‘Whoever kills one life kills the world entire, and whoever saves one life saves the world entire,’” said Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said at the beginning of Thursday’s hearing.

Acknowledging that not all gun violence can be prevented, Nadler urged the committee to vote in favor of the legislation and respond to growing calls for congressional action.

“The American people are begging for us to address this crisis,” Nadler said.

In the wake of the shootings, Republicans have largely called for mental health resources and more safety precautions at schools, while Democrats are pushing for Congress to pass gun control legislation for the first time in more than a decade.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, said that the House will vote on the package of gun control reforms next week and will soon hold a hearing on an assault weapons ban, though such comprehensive gun control legislation is unlikely to garner support in the 50-50 Senate where legislation requires 60 votes to overcome the filibuster.

Senators are currently working on their own bipartisan gun control proposals, including “red flag laws” that would authorize courts to temporarily order the seizure of firearms from people determined to be a threat to themselves or others.

Partisan wrangling dominated Thursday’s hourslong hearing as lawmakers’ tense rhetoric and repeated finger-pointing underscored the difficulty of getting gun control legislation through a deeply divided Congress.

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the committee, accused Democrats of rushing to achieve a political win and curtail Second Amendment rights, a criticism that’s been popular among Republicans rebuffing calls for gun control.

“What we’re doing here is just designed to appeal to Democratic primary voters. The bill won’t make your school safer. It will hamper the rights of law abiding citizens and it will do nothing to stop mass shootings. We need to get serious about understanding why this keeps happening,” Jordan said.

Nadler preemptively rejected Jordan’s criticisms in his opening statement, noting that conversations about gun control legislation have been decades in the making.

“You say it’s too soon to take action, that we are politicizing these tragedies to enact new policies. It has been 23 years since Columbine, 15 years since Virginia Tech, 10 years since Sandy Hook, seven years since Charleston, four years since Parkland, Santa Fe and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. It has been three years since El Paso,” Nadler said. “It has been a week since we learned again that gun violence can reach any of our children and grandchildren at any time, and that no number of armed guards can guarantee their safety. It has not even been 24 hours since the last mass shooting and who knows how long until the next one. Too soon, my friends? What the hell are you waiting for?”

Referencing the hours it took to identify the children killed in the Uvalde massacre, Nadler emphasized that regular mass shootings are a uniquely American problem.

“Only in the United States [do] we ask the parents of elementary school children to stand in line so we can match their DNA to the remains of their children, because only the United States is awash with 400 million guns,” Nadler said.

Republican Representative Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin accused Democrats of wanting to “repeal the Second Amendment,” arguing that instead of addressing guns, lawmakers need to “address the family unit, society.”

“The knee-jerk reaction is to always punish law-abiding citizens for the sins of the few. The answer is always to play for more restrictions on the masses instead of holding the individual accountable,” Tiffany said.

Representative Ken Buck of Colorado defended the need for semi-automatic rifles, referencing the ways the high-capacity firearms can be used as hunting weapons.

“In rural Colorado, an AR-15 is a gun of choice for killing raccoons before they get to our chickens. It’s a gun of choice for killing a fox,” Buck said.

In 2020, guns became the leading cause of death among children and teens, according to research by the New England Journal of Medicine analyzing decades of CDC data.

Speaking in front of a poster board collaged with pictures of the children killed in Uvalde, Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas asserted that the lack of congressional action on gun control is a stain bringing shame on the legislature’s reputation.

“This is the question of whether or not we as Americans are blind,” Lee said. “And I’m calling on all of you to have a sense of humanity, courage, decency. God knows we need action.”

Representative Lucy McBath, a Democrat from Georgia whose 17-year-old son Jordan Davis was murdered in 2012 for playing loud music in his parked car, pleaded for Congress to act on gun control.

“Do we have the courage right here in this body to imagine the phone call parents across Uvalde received last week? A phone call that confirms our fear, our singular fear that ‘My child is dead, that I was unable to protect them.’ Because I know that phone call. Parents across the country know that phone call,” McBath said.

McBath, who became a fierce advocate for gun control in the wake of her son’s killing, said Congress’ inability to act on gun control is taking a toll on young people.

“An entire generation of children are learning that the adults they look up to cannot or will not protect them,” McBath said. 

Republican Representative Greg Steube from Florida, who attended the hearing remotely, argued that part of the legislative proposal banning high-capacity magazines would effectively ban his guns, which cannot use smaller capacity magazines.

Steube made his point by displaying three handguns for the cameras.

As lawmakers inquired about Steube’s location and whether the guns were loaded, he noted “I’m at my house. I can do whatever I want with my guns.”

Partisan tensions mounted during the hearing and Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, grew irritated with Republicans’ critiques of the legislation.

“Are you here for our kids? Or are you here for the killers? Because if you were here for the kids, you would do all you could to As the next school shooting that’s going to happen in America,” Swalwell said.

As lawmakers’ debate over the legislation passed the eight-hour mark, multiple people were shot during a funeral in Racine, Wisconsin.

“As we sit here, and as we fiddle, Rome burns. As our house burns downs, while Rome burns, I for one will not accept it,” Lee said, informing the committee of the Racine shooting, the details of which were unknown at the time of the hearing.

The lengthy congressional hearing wrapped up just as President Joe Biden began his prime-time address in which the president pushed for Congress to pass gun control legislation.

from Courthouse News

Oklahoma trucker charged with making bomb threats to five LA schools

LOS ANGELES (CN) — An Oklahoma truck driver was charged with threatening to bomb five Los Angeles schools, including two elementary schools, and threatening to shoot students when they were to come outside.

Marcus James Buchanan, 44, of Blackwell, Oklahoma, was arrested on Wednesday, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office in LA. He faces up to 10 years in prison for threatening to blow up buildings.

Buchanan grew up in LA and allegedly made at least some of the threats because he thought the schools had rejected him. On one call to an elementary school, he told a school employee, “That is what you get for not accepting me in ’86.” When the employee asked who he was, Buchanan allegedly responded, “if you try to find out, I will shoot you.”

Buchanan had started making threatening calls to one of the schools as early as 2020, and some of the employees knew his voice, according to an FBI affidavit filed in court. On Feb. 28 of this year, he called two elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school in a 2-hour period with bomb threats, prompting the schools to lock down and the police to search for explosives.

On April 27 and 28, Buchanan called in additional bomb threats to some of the schools. The FBI tracked the phone number from which the threats were made to Buchanan’s girlfriend in Oklahoma.

She told the agents that she had heard Buchanan, who is a long-haul truck driver, make threats to schools, hospitals and police department while he was on the road and they were on the phone together for hours, with him using a separate phone to make the threats. According to his girlfriend, Buchanan made most of the threats while on the road and he doesn’t understand that what he did was wrong.

When FBI agents confronted Buchanan last month at his home, he refused to speak with them, according to the affidavit.

Buchanan was expected to make his initial court appearance today in federal court in Wichita. Contact information for a lawyer representing him wasn’t immediately available.

The allegations against Buchanan come a week after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old high school dropout murdered 19 children and two adults.

from Courthouse News