Texas gunman in Walmart shooting gets 90 consecutive life sentences but may still face death penalty

EL PASO, Texas — A white gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack on Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in a Texas border city was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences but could still face more punishment, including the death penalty.

Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty earlier this year to nearly 50 federal hate crime charges in the 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, making it one of the U.S. government’s largest hate crime cases.

Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, did not speak during the hearing and showed no reaction as the verdict was read. The judge recommended that Crusius serve his sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado.

Police say Crusius drove more than 700 miles from his home near Dallas to target Hispanics with an AK-style rifle inside and outside the store. Moments before the attack began, Crusius posted a racist screed online that warned of a Hispanic “invasion” of Texas.

In the years since the shooting, Republicans have described migrants crossing the southern U.S. border as an “invasion,” waving off critics who say the rhetoric fuels anti-immigrant views and violence.

Crusius pleaded guilty in February after federal prosecutors took the death penalty off the table. But Texas prosecutors have said they will try to put Crusius on death row when he stands trial in state court. That trial date has not yet been set.

As he was led from the courtroom, a family member of one of the victims shouted at Crusius from the gallery.

“We’ll be seeing you again, coward. No apologies, no nothing.”

Joe Spencer, Crusius’ attorney, told the judge before the sentencing that his client had a “broken brain.”

“Patrick’s thinking is at odds with reality … resulting in delusional thinking,” Spencer told the court.

Crusius became alarmed by his own violent thoughts, including once leaving a job at a movie theater because of those thoughts, Spencer said. He said Crusius once searched online to look for ways to address his mental health and dropped out of a community college near Dallas because of his struggles.

Spencer said that Crusius had arrived in El Paso without a specific target in mind before winding up at the Walmart.

“Patrick acted with his broken brain cemented in delusions,” Spencer said.

The sentencing by U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama in El Paso followed two days of impact statements from relatives of the victims, including citizens of Mexico. In addition to the dead, more than two dozen people were injured and numerous others were severely traumatized as they hid or fled.

One by one, family members used their first opportunity since the shooting to directly address Crusius, describing how their lives have been upended by grief and pain. Some forgave Crusius. One man displayed photographs of his slain father, insisting that the gunman look at them.

Bertha Benavides’ husband of 34 years, Arturo, was among those killed.

“You left children without their parents, you left spouses without their spouses, and we still need them,” she told Crusius.

During the initial statements from victims, Crusius occasionally swiveled in his seat or bobbed his head with little sign of emotion. On Thursday, his eyes appeared to well up as victims condemned the brutality of the shootings and demanded Crusius respond and account for his actions. At one point, Crusius consulted with a defense attorney at his side and gestured that he would not answer.

Crusius’ family did not appear in the courtroom during the sentencing phase.

The attack was the deadliest of a dozen mass shootings in the U.S. linked to hate crimes since 2006, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

Before the shooting, Crusius had appeared consumed by the nation’s immigration debate, tweeting #BuildtheWall and posts that praised then-President Donald Trump’s hardline border policies. He went further in his rant posted before the attack, sounding warnings that Hispanics were going to take over the government and economy.

As the sentencing phase got underway, some advocates for immigrant rights made new appeals for politicians to soften their rhetoric on immigration. Republicans, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have pushed for more aggressive actions to harden the southern U.S. border.

Amaris Vega’s aunt was killed in the attack and her mother narrowly survived a softball-sized wound to the chest. In court, Vega railed at Crusius’ “pathetic, sorry manifesto” that promised to rid Texas of Hispanics.

“But guess what? You didn’t. You failed,” she told him. “We are still here and we are not going anywhere. And for four years you have been stuck in a city full of Hispanics. ... So let that sink in.”

Margaret Juarez, whose 90-year-old father was slain in the attack and whose mother was wounded but survived, said she found it ironic that Crusius was set to spend his life in prison among inmates from racial and ethnic minorities. Other relatives and survivors in the courtroom applauded as she celebrated their liberty.

“Swim in the waters of prison,” she told Crusius. “Now we’re going to enjoy the sunshine. … We still have our freedom, in our country.”

The people who were killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to several elderly grandparents. They included immigrants, a retired city bus driver, teachers, tradesmen including a former iron worker, and several Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips.

Two teenage girls recounted their narrow escape from Crusius’ rampage as they participated in a fundraiser for their youth soccer team outside the store. Parents were wounded and the soccer coach, Guillermo Garcia, died months later from injuries in the attack.

Both youths said they still are haunted by their fear of another shooting when they are in public venues.

“He was shot at close range by a coward and there was his innocent blood, everywhere,” said Kathleen Johnson, whose husband David was among the victims. “I don’t know when I’ll be the same. … The pain you have caused is indescribable.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/Za74qdf
via IFTTT

Read More

DeSantis campaign raised $20 million in first six weeks of campaign

The DeSantis campaign announced on Thursday that it had raised $20 million since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially entered the Republican presidential primary six weeks ago, a show of fundraising prowess as DeSantis tries to position himself as the main GOP rival to former President Donald Trump.

The fundraising figures, reported earlier by Fox News, were celebrated by DeSantis campaign officials as the “largest first-quarter filing from any non-incumbent Republican candidate in more than a decade.”

DeSantis campaign officials celebrated the fundraising figures on Thursday, framing them as a sign of momentum for his candidacy.

“We are grateful for the investment so many Americans have made to get this country back on track,” campaign manager Generra Peck said in a news release. “The fight to save it will be long and challenging, but we have built an operation to share the governor’s message and mobilize the millions of people who support it. We are ready to win.”

Never Back Down, a super PAC affiliated with DeSantis, also announced on Thursday that it had raised $130 million since launching in early March, adding to the resources behind DeSantis’ candidacy.

The announcements follow reports on Wednesday from the Trump campaign and his leadership political action committee, Save America, that they together raised $35 million during the second quarter of 2023, despite state and federal indictments of the former president. The second-quarter figures were more than double what the Trump campaign and Save America raised in the first quarter of 2023.

DeSantis, who is currently in second place in national polls of GOP voters, has lagged in recent weeks amid concerns about his public demeanor and hiccups with local groups in key primary states. DeSantis allies and officials, however, have voiced confidence that the campaign is trending in the right direction ahead of primary debates and early contests and remains the clearest alternative in the GOP field to the former president.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/QIep5yB
via IFTTT

Read More

Literally off the charts: Canadas fire season sets records and is far from over

OTTAWA, Ont. — Canada’s 2023 wildfire season is unprecedented by many measures — but this is just the start.

“It's no understatement to say that the 2023 fire season is — and will continue to be — record-breaking,” Michael Norton, director of the Northern Forestry Centre with the Canadian Forest Service at NRCan, said Thursday during a technical briefing on the unfolding crisis.

There are 639 active fires across Canada, 351 of which are out of control, Norton said. “The total area burned now exceeds any year on record.”

An unparalleled number of people have also been displaced, with Indigenous communities particularly hit, in a national crisis that has spurred major international outreach and concern, in part due to smoke wafting across borders and the Atlantic.

Natural Resources Canada said it expects drought and above-normal temperatures to contribute to higher-than-normal fire activity through the summer. El Niño may exacerbate conditions, especially in northern Canada, Norton added.

Asked if wildfire smoke will continue to trigger air quality warnings in the U.S. and beyond, meteorologist Armel Castellan told reporters that modeling is tricky in a chaotic environment.

“The smoke goes both in the lower part of the atmosphere and higher up into the highway of the atmosphere where it can transport across oceans and right all the way down to, of course, the eastern seaboard, New England, parts of the United States,” he said. “We saw our same smoke make its way to England, Portugal, Spain.”

By many measures, it’s a record-setting year.

The most fires

There have been 3,412 so far in 2023, significantly above the 10-year average of 2,751.

“The occurrence of fire from coast to coast is unprecedented,” Norton said. “The actively burning part of the country is [typically] either eastern or western, not usually both. This year we see large problematic fires burning in both eastern, central and western Canada at the same time.”

The biggest burn

To date this season, 8.8 million hectares have burned. NRCan data pegged the 10-year average at 805,196 hectares. “This number is literally off the charts,” Norton said, “with at least three more months left in the active wildfire season.”

The previous record was set in 1989, when 7.6 million hectares burned.

Unprecedented displacement

More than 150,000 Canadians have been forced to leave their homes so far this fire season, “the highest number of evacuees from wildfire that we've ever seen over the past four decades,” Norton said.

He said Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by wildfire evacuations. “Sixty percent of First Nations reserves lie within or intersecting the wildland urban interface, areas where built infrastructure meets the forest.”

The largest international response

Norton called the response a “truly global effort,” listing Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the U.S., Costa Rica and Portugal among the countries that have contributed forces. Spain, Chile, Mexico and France have also sent firefighters.

Canada is codifying firefighting cooperation agreements with many of the same countries.

Élise Racicot, Canada's ambassador to Portugal, most recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Tiago Oliveira, chair of the board for Portugal's Agency for Integrated Rural Fire Management.

The most expensive

Norton said that while it’s too early to estimate, he expects the direct cost of suppression will set a new record. “The total cost of wildfires to the economy and society is a much bigger question,” he added.

Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told reporters Thursday afternoon that his government would eventually offer financial support to cover the damages. "As we tally up the bill, … the federal government will be there to support provinces and territories and Canadians right across the country who've been impacted by the fires."

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/NpW7XAw
via IFTTT

Read More

Biden to crack down on junk health insurance

The Biden administration on Friday is expected to propose a new regulation cracking down on short-term health insurance plans, five Democrats with knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss the specifics of White House plans, told POLITICO.

The long-awaited rule will curtail a Trump-era expansion of the skimpy health coverage, which Democrats and patient advocacy groups have criticized for undermining Obamacare and its broad protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.

The move comes as the White House tries to focus the nation’s attention on the administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices for seniors, crack down on so-called junk fees, fight inflation and improve the overall economy.

President Joe Biden is also slated to give a speech Friday touting his health care agenda, during which a White House official said he plans to “announce major actions to lower health care costs and crack down on junk fees.”

The White House declined to comment, and the Democrats with knowledge of the matter cautioned that the timing of the rollout could still change.

But the White House’s budget office signed off on the proposed rule last week, according to a regulatory review notice posted to its website, a signal that the regulations had cleared the final internal hurdles. The new short-term health plan policy is designed to “ensure this type of coverage does not undermine the Affordable Care Act” and other health insurance markets, according to the rule's description.

The Obama administration in 2016 limited short-term plans to three months in an effort to get more people on year-round plans sold on the new federal and state-based exchanges created by Obamacare.

The Trump administration adopted regulations in 2018 that let people stay on short-term insurance plans for 12 months and renew those plans for three years. Critics at the time derided short-term plans as “junk” that would not protect people with pre-existing conditions.

Insurers must also post a warning alongside short-term plans alerting consumers that they don’t have robust coverage.

Unlike plans sold on Obamacare’s insurance exchange, a short-term plan doesn’t cover essential health benefits. For example, some plans limit doctor visits, others don’t cover prescription drugs.

CMS leaders in the Trump administration said the plans were meant to give consumers an alternative to higher-priced Obamacare plans.

Democrats and consumer advocacy groups counter that the short-term expansion was meant to sabotage Obamacare, which Trump unsuccessfully tried to repeal in 2017.

States can decide to prohibit short-term plans or limit their duration, and there are 12 states that do not offer short-term plans as of March 2023, according to data from healthinsurance.org.

Shortly after Biden took office, he signed an executive order directing agencies to reexamine any policies that “undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” in a move seen as setting the stage for a major rollback of short-term health plans.

But the process has dragged on for more than two years, frustrating advocates and Democratic lawmakers who on multiple occasions publicly urged the health department to move faster.

“HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra should do everything he can to limit sale of such plans,” according to a February 2022 letter from 38 Senate Democrats and two independents. The letter called for immediately restoring the three-month duration cap and ban sales of such plans on all Obamacare insurance exchanges.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/YZDv7UK
via IFTTT

Read More

Marjorie Taylor Greene booted out of Freedom Caucus member says

Andy Harris called the vote — the first time HFC has formally booted a member — an “appropriate action.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/pC9jW03
via IFTTT

Read More

Abortion rights likely headed for showdown in Ohio this fall

Ohio is poised to become the latest battleground over abortion after advocates Wednesday submitted more than enough signatures to get an abortion rights initiative on the ballot this fall.

A coalition of abortion-rights groups has submitted more than 700,000 signatures for a ballot initiative that would codify the right to an abortion in the state constitution. The submission sets up a crucial test of the potency of abortion as a political issue ahead of 2024, with vulnerable Democrats in the House and Senate attempting to cling to their seats in an increasingly red state.

It also resembles a show of force from the left in a state that voted twice for former President Donald Trump, and where the state legislature has chipped away at abortion rights since the fall of Roe v. Wade. The state currently has a 22-week abortion ban on the books.

The number of signatures submitted far surpassed the approximately 400,000 required for an initiative to make the ballot. County boards have until July 20 to vet the signatures for the secretary of state, who then has until July 25 to make the final call on the initiative’s qualification for the November vote.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, a nonpartisan coalition of abortion-rights groups, submitted the ballot language earlier this year, kicking off a four-month dash to collect signatures and campaign across the state. Proponents, including state Democrats, ACLU of Ohio and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, anticipate spending upward of $35 million on the effort heading into November.

Opponents have pushed against the measure by arguing that it would allow for gender-affirming care without parental consent, even though such a provision is not in the initiative’s language.

“The ACLU’s attempts to hijack Ohio’s constitution to further its own radical agenda would be pathetic if it wasn’t so dangerous,” Amy Natoce, spokesperson for Protect Women Ohio, a coalition of anti-abortion rights groups against the measure, said in a statement.

Conservatives have reason to be concerned. Almost one year ago, ruby red Kansas became the first state in the nation to put the question of abortion rights directly to voters after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Voters overwhelmingly rejected that ballot measure, which would have removed protections for abortion rights from the Kansas Constitution and given the Legislature the right to further restrict or ban abortion.

Kansas was a warning sign for anti-abortion rights supporters — one that some anti-abortion advocates waved off as a fluke. But that assertion was proved wrong after pro-abortion rights causes prevailed in states across the country in last year’s midterms and earlier this year in Wisconsin, leading to an ideological flip on the state Supreme Court. Nationally, supporters of abortion rights remain more motivated by the issue than opponents, according to recent Gallup polling.

For Democrats, the prospect of an off-year, abortion-focused campaign could hardly come at a better time. Ohio will be home to a high-stakes Senate battle in 2024, with Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown up for reelection. GOP challengers for that seat include state Sen. Matt Dolan and businessperson Bernie Moreno. Secretary of State Frank LaRose — who has been in the spotlight as his office handles ballot measures — is teasing a run as well. Over in the House, Republicans have their sights set on flipping the seats held by Democratic Reps. Greg Landsman, Marcy Kaptur and Emilia Sykes.

“Ohio is ground zero for the fight for abortion rights in this country, and nowhere is that more clear than the race for U.S. Senate,” said Democratic state House Minority Leader Allison Russo. “Next year, we have to reject whatever out-of-touch candidates make it through this messy Republican primary.”

But abortion messaging hasn’t always been front and center for Ohio Democrats. Former Rep. Tim Ryan, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate last year, mostly emphasized the economy, jobs and crime.

Irene Lin, a Democratic strategist based in Ohio who helped collect signatures for the abortion-rights campaign, said she thought that stories like that of a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who traveled to Indiana to obtain an abortion would have moved the needle for Democrats like Nan Whaley, who ran for governor last year and made abortion one of her top issues. But it didn’t. Whaley lost by 25 points.

“There is this perception that abortion helped us during the midterms, and I agree it did in certain states,” Lin said. “If you’re in a state where there’s a lot of college-educated, a lot of suburban women, yes, it can help you. If you aren't one of those states, … we cannot as Democrats count on it being as helpful as we would like it to be.”

Republicans are already moving to handicap the abortion measure’s chances of succeeding, putting a proposal known as Issue 1 on an August special election ballot to make it more difficult to pass constitutional amendments. If approved, the threshold for passage would be raised from a simple majority to 60 percent.

If this 60 percent threshold was in place in other states last year, the series of abortion-rights ballot measure wins wouldn’t have necessarily succeeded. Ohio’s effort is most similar to Michigan, which passed a ballot initiative in November to proactively codify abortion rights in the constitution there. That measure received around 57 percent of the vote.

And that was in Michigan, a swing state. The political environment in Republican-leaning Ohio is more favorable for conservatives.

“Ohio has trended enough Republican in the last decade,” said Doug Preisse, a veteran Republican strategist in the state, that abortion is “less hurtful to Republicans.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/MzIDCy4
via IFTTT

Read More

It pays to be censured: Schiff scores record haul after GOP rebuke

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the target of conservative scorn and House Republican censure as he campaigns for the U.S. Senate, raised over $8.1 million in the year’s second quarter, a major haul that’s likely to put more distance between his rivals.

The record-breaking quarter places the Democratic congressman in his party’s upper echelon of 2024 fundraisers and brings to $29.5 million his cash on hand for the Senate race. Prior to Schiff, Sen. Raphael Warnock, at the time an incumbent Democrat from Georgia, raised $7.2 million in the second quarter of the off-cycle in 2021.

Schiff had more than 144,000 unique donors over the quarter who made more than 233,000 donations from 50 states and all of California’s 58 counties, according to contribution figures shared first with POLITICO.

The numbers are all the more startling considering California is a deep blue state and the race to succeed retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein will almost certainly have no bearing on which party holds control of the Senate in 2024. But they demonstrate the power of using Republicans and specifically former President Donald Trump and his acolytes as central foils in the fierce competition for online dollars from national Democrats. During the spring stretch before and after his House censure, Schiff was a constant presence on cable TV and other programs, and his email appeals became ubiquitous.

All but 2 percent of his contributions came from grassroots supporters giving $200 or less, the campaign said. The average contribution was $34. Schiff is not accepting corporate PAC money.

Public and private polls show a close race for the Senate in California. But in a memo from Schiff’s campaign that’s being sent to key supporters, aides emphasized his financial advantage and pointed to his list of endorsers — from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and more than half of California’s Democratic congressional delegation to the backing of four statewide labor unions. None of the others have gotten one yet.

“It’s still very early, and while the polls will shift, Adam continues to lead in every metric that is critical to running an effective campaign,” Schiff’s campaign manager Brad Elkins wrote in the memo, which also previewed an August barnstorming of the state across 20 cities, including San Diego, Bakersfield, Riverside, Santa Cruz and Nevada City. “Our campaign continues to build up significant advantages that will propel Adam forward,” Elkins added.

The push for early money has been an intense topic in the Senate campaign, with Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and her advisers consistently pointing to a raft of polls from over the spring that show a tight race with Schiff to make the case that it’s still a wide open contest despite her cash gap.

Both Democrats are nationally recognized figures with large followings, and under the state’s top-two primary system both could advance to a rematch in the November 2024 runoff if no single Republican can consolidate the vote on the right. Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee trails them in polls and has fallen further behind in fundraising.

Schiff in recent years has burnished his national profile as a chief antagonist of Trump and his allies, having served as an impeachment manager and unofficial face of the Democratic resistance to MAGA. He launched his campaign as such, centering Trump and framing the larger debate as a fight to preserve democracy.

Trump’s continued dominance among Republicans, along with his mounting legal troubles, have kept him front of mind with voters and helped to ensure that the threats Schiff has been warning about have remained relevant in the Senate campaign.

House Republicans late last month moved ahead with their censure of Schiff, a largely symbolic action over his role in investigating Trump. That came after GOP leaders removed language to level a multimillion-dollar fine against Schiff over constitutional concerns. Still, they accused him of abusing his office during the Trump probe, an accusation Schiff said smacked of “petty political payback” as he promised not to yield.

The renewed Republicans' attacks on Schiff have generated a seemingly endless stream of online fundraising appeals from his campaign, to the point that even Democrats aligned with his rivals conceded that all the attention on him as a Trump foe would only help bolster his financial lead over the others.

Last quarter, Schiff raised $6.5 million — more than his opponents combined. Porter, who took in $4.5 million and had $9.4 million on hand, has yet to release her second quarter haul. Lee has raised just over $1 million in each of the first two quarters of 2023.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/cYFGdPm
via IFTTT

Read More