16 Jun 2025

Protester shot and killed at ‘No Kings’ rally in Utah, police say

by | posted in: All news | 0

By JESSE BEDAYN

A man who was believed to be part of a peacekeeping team for the “No Kings” protest in Salt Lake City shot at a person who was brandishing a rifle at demonstrators, striking both the rifleman and a bystander who later died at the hospital, authorities said Sunday.

Police took the alleged rifleman, Arturo Gamboa, 24, into custody Saturday evening on a murder charge, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd said at a Sunday news conference. The bystander was Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, a fashion designer from Samoa.

Detectives don’t yet know why Gamboa pulled out a rifle or ran from the peacekeepers, but they accused him of creating the dangerous situation that led to Ah Loo’s death. The Associated Press did not immediately find an attorney listed for Gamboa or contact information for his family in public records.

Redd said the man believed to be part of the peacekeeping team, dressed in a neon green vest, fired three shots from a handgun at Gamboa, inflicting a relatively minor injury but fatally shooting Ah Loo. Redd did not share the man’s name.

Volunteer peacekeeping teams are common for protests, said Sarah Parker, a national coordinator for 50501 Movement, which was a partner in the “No Kings” protest. But the organizers ask attendees, including the peacekeepers, not to bring weapons, she said. Still, Parker said they stopped what could’ve been a larger mass casualty event.

“Our safety team did as best as they could in a situation that is extremely sad and extremely scary,” said Parker.

Ah Loo, known as Afa, was a husband and father to two children and a fashion designer who leaned into his Samoan heritage, according to a GoFundMe page organized to support his family. Ah Loo founded Creative Pacific, an event celebrating the diversity of the Pacific Islands, with workshops, artists and a fashion runway. He was on Season 17 of the fashion design reality TV show “Project Runway.”

The gunshots sent hundreds of protesters running, some hiding behind barriers and fleeing into parking garages and nearby businesses, police said in a statement. “That’s a gun. Come on, come on, get out,” someone can be heard saying in a video posted to social media that appears to show the events.

“No Kings” protests swept across the country on Saturday, and organizers said millions rallied against what they described as President Donald Trump’s authoritarian tendencies.

Confrontations were largely isolated. In Riverside, California, authorities said a driver of an SUV struck a woman who was participating in a demonstration and sped away. The woman had “significant injuries” but was stable, police said, adding that they were still searching for the driver.

Outside the Arizona statehouse, a social media video showed protesters Saturday jeering at and then skirmishing with a masked man, who eventually pulled out a handgun, causing the crowd to scatter. Another video showed Arizona Department of Public Safety officers taking the man into custody.

The shooter and another person in a neon vest allegedly saw Gamboa separate from the crowd of marchers in downtown Salt Lake City, move behind a wall and withdraw a rifle around 8 p.m., Redd said.

Related Articles


Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal from New Jersey faith-based pregnancy center


Wall Street is recovering from Friday’s shock with US stocks up and oil prices down


The Trump family’s next venture, a mobile phone company


Wisconsin dairy farmer sues Trump administration claiming discrimination against white farmers


Credit scores decline for millions as US student loan collections restart

When the two men in vests confronted Gamboa with their handguns drawn, witnesses said Gamboa raised his rifle into a firing position and ran toward the crowd, said Redd.

That’s when one of the men dressed in the vests shot three rounds, hitting Gamboa and Ah Loo, said Redd. Gamboa, who police said didn’t have a criminal history, was wounded and treated before being booked into jail.

Redd said that the peacekeepers’ actions are also part of the investigation.

Police said they recovered an AR-15 style rifle, a gas mask and a backpack at the scene.

16 Jun 2025

Suspect in Twin Cities legislator shootings to appear in federal court

by | posted in: All news | 0

The man suspected in the political assassination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman is due to appear in federal court Monday afternoon, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced they’ll seek first-degree murder charges against him.

Jail booking photo of Vance Luther Boelter. (Courtesy of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office)

Vance L. Boelter, who was captured Sunday night after a two-day manhunt, is charged in Hennepin County District court with murder in the shootings of Hortman and her husband at their Brooklyn Park home and attempted murder in the shootings of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife in their Champlin home.

Officials from the U.S. Attorney’s Office are expected to make statements later Monday morning about federal charges against Boelter.

This is developing story and will be updated.

Related Articles


Sen. Nicole Mitchell’s burglary trial postponed following assassination, attempted assassination of fellow lawmakers


Charges: Man who shot MN legislators announced himself as officer


Sen. John Hoffman and wife recovering from multiple gunshot wounds


Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith contemplates increased security after shooting of Democratic lawmakers


Suspect in shootings of Twin Cities legislators in custody after intense manhunt

16 Jun 2025

How Trump Is Changing Higher Education: The View from UT-San Antonio

by | posted in: All news | 0

Editor’s Note: This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Growing up in San Antonio, Reina Saldivar had always loved science—all she wanted to watch on TV was “Animal Planet.” Yet until she applied on a whim to a program for aspiring researchers after her first year at the University of Texas at San Antonio, she assumed she would spend her life as a lab technician, running cultures. 

The program, Maximizing Access to Research Careers, or MARC, was started by the National Institutes of Health decades ago at colleges around the country to prepare students, especially those from historically underrepresented backgrounds, for livelihoods in the biomedical sciences. 

Saldivar got in. And through the program, she spent much of her time on campus in a university lab, helping develop a carrier molecule for a new Lyme disease vaccine. Now Saldivar, who graduated this spring, plans to eventually return to academia for a doctorate.  

“What MARC taught me was that my dreams aren’t out of reach,” she said.

Saldivar is among hundreds who’ve participated in the MARC program since its 1980 founding at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She may also be among the last. In April, the university’s MARC program director, Edwin Barea-Rodriguez, opened his email inbox to find a form letter terminating the initiative and advising against recruiting more cohorts. 

The letter cited “changes in NIH/HHS [Health and Human Services] priorities.” In recent months, the Trump administration has canceled at least half a dozen programs meant to train scholars and diversify the sciences as part of an effort to root out what the president labels illegal DEI. 

In a statement to The Hechinger Report, NIH said that it “is committed to restoring the agency to its tradition of upholding gold-standard, evidence-based science” and is reviewing grants to make sure the agency is “addressing the United States chronic disease epidemic.” 

With MARC ending, Barea-Rodriguez is searching for a way to continue supporting current participants until they graduate next academic year. Without access to federal money, however, the young scientists are anxious about their futures — and that of public health in general. 

“It took years to be where we are now,” said Barea-Rodriguez, who said he was not speaking on behalf of his university, “and in a hundred days everything was destroyed.” 

UTSA’s sprawling campus sits on the northwest edge of San Antonio, far from tourist sites like the Alamo and the River Walk. Forty-four percent of the nearly 31,000 undergraduate students are the first in their families to attend college; more than 61 percent identify as Hispanic or Latino. The university was one of the first nationwide to earn Department of Education recognition as a Hispanic-serving institution, a designation for colleges where at least a quarter of full-time undergraduates are Hispanic.

When Barea-Rodriguez arrived to teach at the school in 1995, many locals considered it a glorified community college, he said. But in the three decades since, the investments NIH made through MARC and other federal programs have helped it become a top-tier research university. That provided students like Saldivar with access to world-class opportunities close to home and fostered talent that propelled the economy in San Antonio and beyond. 

The Trump administration has quickly upended much of that infrastructure, not only by terminating career pipeline programs for scholars, but also by pulling more than $8.2 million in National Science Foundation money from UTSA. 

One of those canceled grants paid for student researchers and the development of new technologies to improve equity in math education and better serve elementary school kids from underrepresented backgrounds in a city that is about 64 percent Hispanic. Another aimed to provide science, technology, engineering and math programming to bilingual and low-income communities. 

UTSA administrators did not respond to requests for comment about how federal funding freezes and cuts are affecting the university. Nationwide, more than 1,600 NSF grants have been axed since January.

In San Antonio, undergraduates said MARC and other now-dead programs helped prepare them for academic and professional careers that might have otherwise been elusive. Speaking in a lab remodeled and furnished with NIH money, where leftover notes and diagrams on glass erase boards showed the research questions students had been noodling, they described how the programs taught them about drafting an abstract, honing public speaking and writing skills, networking, putting together a résumé and applying for summer research positions, travel scholarships and graduate opportunities. 

“All of the achievements that I’ve collected have pretty much been, like, a direct result of the program,” said Seth Fremin, a senior biochemistry major who transferred to UTSA from community college and has co-authored five articles in major journals, with more in the pipeline. After graduation, he will start a fully funded doctoral program at the University of Pittsburgh to continue his research on better understanding chemical reactions. 

Similarly, Elizabeth Negron, a rising senior, is spending this summer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researching skin microbiomes to see if certain bacteria predispose some people to cancers. 

“It’s weird when you meet students who didn’t get into these programs,” Negron said, referring to MARC. “They haven’t gone to conferences. They haven’t done research. They haven’t been able to mentor students. … It’s very strange to acknowledge what life would have been without it. I don’t know if I could say I’d be as successful as I am now.” 

With money for MARC erased, Negron said she will probably need a job once she returns to campus in the fall so she can afford day-to-day expenses. Before, research was her job. 

“Without MARC,” she said, “it becomes a question of can I at least cover my tuition and my very basic needs.” 

The post How Trump Is Changing Higher Education: The View from UT-San Antonio appeared first on The Texas Observer.

16 Jun 2025

Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal from New Jersey faith-based pregnancy center

by | posted in: All news | 0

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear from a faith-based pregnancy center in New Jersey challenging a state investigation alleging it misled people into thinking its services included referrals for abortion.

The justices agreed to consider an appeal from First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, which wants to block a 2023 subpoena from New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seeking information about donors, advertisements and medical personnel. It has not yet been served.

Related Articles


Wall Street is recovering from Friday’s shock with US stocks up and oil prices down


The Trump family’s next venture, a mobile phone company


Wisconsin dairy farmer sues Trump administration claiming discrimination against white farmers


Credit scores decline for millions as US student loan collections restart


ICE is using no-bid contracts, boosting big firms, to get more detention beds

Attorneys for First Choice Women’s Resource Centers describe the organization as a “faith-based, pro-life pregnancy center.” The organization generally seek to women facing an unwanted pregnancy away from choosing an abortion.

The group challenged the subpoena in federal court, but a judge found that the case wasn’t yet far enough along to weigh in. An appeals court agreed.

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the push for donor information had chilled its First Amendment rights.

“State attorneys general on both sides of the political aisle have been accused of misusing this authority to issue demands against their ideological and political opponents,” its lawyers wrote. “Even if these accusations turn out to be false, it is important that a federal forum exists for suits challenging those investigative demands.”.

Meanwhile, Platkin, a Democrat, has sought to enforce the subpoena in state court, but the judge there has so far refused the state’s push to require the group to turn over documents and told the two sides to negotiate instead.

The state asked the justices to pass on the case, saying the it doesn’t present the kind of significant lower-court controversy that requires the justices to step in.

“The decision below is correct and does not have the impacts petitioner alleges,” state attorneys wrote.