28 Jun 2024

Indictment accuses former Uvalde schools police chief of delays while shooter was “hunting” children

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By JIM VERTUNO

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The police chief for schools in Uvalde, Texas, failed to identify an active shooting, did not follow his training and made critical decisions that slowed the law enforcement response to stop a killer who was “hunting” victims and ultimately killed 21 people at Robb Elementary, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.

Pete Arredondo was arrested and briefly booked into jail before he was released Thursday night on 10 state jail felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child in the May 24, 2022, attack that killed 19 children and two teachers in one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.

Former school officer Adrian Gonzales also was indicted on multiple similar charges, the Uvalde Leader-News and the San Antonio Express-News reported. The Uvalde newspaper reported that District Attorney Christina Mitchell confirmed the indictment.

Arredondo, who was the on-site commander during the attack, and Gonzales are the first officers to face criminal charges.

The indictment against Arredondo, who was the on-site commander at the shooting, accused the chief of delaying the police response despite hearing shots fired and being notified that injured children were in the classrooms and that a teacher had been shot. Arredondo called for a SWAT team, ordered the initial responding officers to evacuate the building instead of confronting the shooter, and attempted to negotiate with the 18-year-old gunman, the indictment said.

More than 370 federal, state and local officers converged on the scene, but they waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the shooter, even as the gunman could be heard firing an AR-15-style rifle. Terrified students inside the classroom called 911 as agonized parents begged officers — some of whom could hear shots being fired while they stood in a hallway — to go in. A tactical team of officers eventually went into the classroom and killed the shooter.

The indictment charges Arredondo with failing to protect survivors of the attack, including Khloie Torres, who called 911 and begged for help, telling a dispatcher, “Please hurry. There’s a lot of dead bodies. Some of my teachers are still alive but they’re shot.”

The state jail felony charges carry up to two years in jail if convicted.

Scathing state and federal investigative reports on the police response previously catalogued “cascading failures” in training, communication, leadership and technology problems that day.

Arredondo lost his job three months after the shooting. Several officers involved were eventually fired, and separate investigations by the Department of Justice and state lawmakers faulted law enforcement with botching their response to the massacre.

28 Jun 2024

Supreme Court makes it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, charge Trump faces

by | posted in: Politics | 0

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday made it harder to charge Capitol riot defendants with obstruction, a charge that also has been brought against former President Donald Trump.

The justices ruled 6-3 that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, enacted in 2002 in response to the financial scandal that brought down Enron Corp., must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. Only some of the people who violently attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fall into that category.

The decision could be used as fodder for claims by Trump and his Republican allies that the Justice Department has treated the Capitol riot defendants unfairly.

It’s unclear how the court’s decision will affect the case against Trump in Washington, although special counsel Jack Smith has said the charges faced by the former president would not be affected.

The high court returned the case of former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer to a lower court to determine if Fischer can be charged with obstruction. Fischer has been indicted for his role in disrupting Congress’ certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.

Fischer is among about 350 people who have been charged with obstruction. Some pleaded guilty to or were convicted of lesser charges.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the court’s opinion, joined by conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas, and by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Reading the obstruction statute broadly “would also criminalize a broad swath of prosaic conduct, exposing activists and lobbyists to decades in prison,” Roberts wrote.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett dissented, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.

Roughly 170 Capitol insurrection defendants have been convicted of obstructing or conspiring to obstruct the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress, including the leaders of two far-right extremist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. A number of defendants have had their sentencings delayed until after the justices rule on the matter.

Some rioters have even won early release from prison while the appeal was pending over concerns that they might end up serving longer than they should have if the Supreme Court ruled against the Justice Department. They include Kevin Seefried, a Delaware man who threatened a Black police officer with a pole attached to a Confederate battle flag as he stormed the Capitol. Seefried was sentenced last year to three years behind bars, but a judge recently ordered that he be released one year into his prison term while awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Most lower court judges who have weighed in have allowed the charge to stand. Among them, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, wrote that “statutes often reach beyond the principal evil that animated them.”

But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, another Trump appointee, dismissed the charge against Fischer and two other defendants, writing that prosecutors went too far. A divided panel of the federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the charge before the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case.

More than 1,400 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 1,000 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury or a judge after a trial.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which has handled Jan. 6 prosecutions, said no one who has been convicted of or charged with obstruction will be completely cleared because of the ruling. Every defendant also has other felony or misdemeanor charges, or both, prosecutors said.

For around 50 people who were convicted, obstruction was the only felony count, prosecutors said. Of those, roughly two dozen who still are serving their sentence are most likely to be affected by the ruling.

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28 Jun 2024

Minnesota United at Portland Timbers: Keys to the match, projected starting XI and a prediction

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Minnesota United at Portland Timbers

When: 9:30 p.m. CT Saturday
Where: Providence Park
Stream: Apple TV Season Pass
Radio: KSTP-AM 1500 ESPN
Weather: 77 degrees, mostly cloudy, 6 mph south wind
Betting line: Portland minus-120; draw plus-295; MNUFC plus-260

Form: MNUFC (8-6-5, 29 points) finds Portland (7-7-6, 27 points) on its heels in the Western Conference standings. That’s because, in part, the Loons have lost three straight matches and Portland has won two consecutive.

Flashback: The Loons scored two second-half goals to come back and beat Portland 2-1 in St. Paul on May 18. But the biggest takeaway was a first-half skirmish between Jonathan Rodriguez and some Loons. It prompted DJ Taylor to say the Timbers “like to fight and get dirty.”

Stat: MNUFC has managed 0.6 expected goals or less in four of the last six games. They have scored only one actual goal in those four, but they have scored three apiece in the other two. It’s been more famine than feast for the Loons attack recently.

Absences: Dayne St. Clair, Tani Oluwaseyi, Carlos Harvey and Alejandro Bran (international duties) are out. Teemu Pukki (knee), Hugo Bacharach (knee) and Hassani Dotson (red-card suspension) are also out. Michael Boxall (ankle) and Devin Padelford (concussion) is probable.

Projected XI: In a 5-2-3 formation, LW Caden Clark, CF Sang Bin Jeong, RW Bongi Hlongwane; CM Wil Trapp, CM Robin Lod; LWB Joseph Rosales, CB Micky Tapias, CB Michael Boxall, CB Devin Padelford, LWB DJ Taylor; GK Clint Irwin.

Quote: After his transfer to Partizan in Serbia this week, Kervin Arriaga bid farewell to MNUFC, saying he will be a Loon for the “rest of my life.”

“Minnesota has made me grow as a person and as a footballer, and in my heart there will always be room for each other and every one of the club’s employees and for each and every one of its fans,” he said per a Spanish translation. “Thank you very much for everything. You made me a better person and I will never forget that.”

Look-ahead: If Canada loses to Chile in Copa America on Saturday, St. Clair and Oluwaseyi would be out of the continental tournament and would be welcomed back to Minnesota with open arms. A win over Chile would mean two MNUFC starters will be away for at least the quarterfinals, which are July 4-6. Loons have two matches next week.

Scouting report: MNUFC must hold in check Timbers striker Rodriguez, who scored a goal against Minnesota in mid-May and has one apiece in the last two games. The former Liga MX star has eight total goals in his first MLS season.

Prediction: The Loons have won three straight against Portland, but are just too threadbare to make it four in a row. Portland wins 2-0.

28 Jun 2024

The Supreme Court weakens federal regulators, overturning decades-old Chevron decision

by | posted in: Adventure | 0

By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.

The court’s six conservative justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives. The liberal justices were in dissent.

Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in challenges that could be spawned by the high court’s ruling. The Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer had warned such a move would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.”

The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.

“Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

Roberts wrote that the decision does not call into question prior cases that relied on the Chevron decision.

But in dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the assurance rings hollow. “The majority is sanguine; I am not so much,” she wrote.

The court ruled in cases brought by Atlantic herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island who challenged a fee requirement. Lower courts used the Chevron decision to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for government-mandated observers who track their fish intake.

Conservative and business interests strongly backed the fishermen’s appeals, betting that a court that was remade during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency would strike another blow at the regulatory state.

The court’s conservative majority has previously reined in environmental regulations and stopped the Democratic Biden administration’s initiatives on COVID-19 vaccines and student loan forgiveness.

The justices hadn’t invoked Chevron since 2016, but lower courts had continued to do so.

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled 6-0, with three justices recused, that judges should play a limited, deferential role when evaluating the actions of agency experts in a case brought by environmental groups to challenge a Reagan administration effort to ease regulation of power plants and factories.

“Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1984, explaining why they should play a limited role.

But the current high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas all had questioned the Chevron decision.

They were in Friday’s majority, along with Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Kagan in dissent.

Opponents of the Chevron doctrine argue that judges apply it too often to rubber-stamp decisions made by government bureaucrats. Judges must exercise their own authority and judgment to say what the law is, they argued to the Supreme Court.

Defending the rulings that upheld the fees, President Joe Biden’s administration said that overturning the Chevron decision would produce a “convulsive shock” to the legal system.

Environmental, health advocacy groups, civil rights organizations, organized labor and Democrats on the national and state level had urged the court to leave the Chevron decision in place.

“The Supreme Court is pushing the nation into uncharted waters as it seizes it seizes power from our elected branches of government to advance its deregulatory agenda,” Sambhav Sankar, a lawyer with the environmental group Earthjustice, said after the ruling. “The conservative justices are aggressively reshaping the foundations of our government so that the President and Congress have less power to protect the public, and corporations have more power to challenge regulations in search of profits. This ruling threatens the legitimacy of hundreds of regulations that keep us safe, protect our homes and environment, and create a level playing field for businesses to compete on.” 

Gun, e-cigarette, farm, timber and home-building groups were among the business groups supporting the fishermen. Conservative interests that also intervened in recent high court cases limiting regulation of air and water pollution backed the fishermen as well.

The fisherman sued to contest the 2020 regulation that would have authorized a fee that could have topped $700 a day, though no one ever had to pay it.

In separate lawsuits in New Jersey and Rhode Island, the fishermen argued that Congress never gave federal regulators authority to require the fisherman to pay for monitors. They lost in the lower courts, which relied on the Chevron decision to sustain the regulation.

The justices heard two cases on the same issue because Jackson was recused from the New Jersey case. She took part in it at an earlier stage when she was an appeals court judge. The full court participated in the case from Rhode Island.

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This story has been corrected to show the spelling of the justice’s name is Ketanji, not Kentanji.

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