Oh my goodness, here we go again! Local government, bowing to the big-money gun manufacturing lobby, is wasting time again recognizing the second amendment to the United States Constitution, when in reality, they are shirking their duty to abide by the Constitution and serve the people in a time of crisis.

Floyd County Commissioner Tim Kamer is the latest locally elected politician to act as a puppet on a string to gun corporation-induced hysteria. In the latest resolution handed to the commissioners, the gun lobby wants them to kneel before the thrown of corporate profits and squeal uncle, stating their inability to supersede existing laws and hierarchy. Meanwhile, there is a pandemic that continues to spiral out of control, an economic collapse that must be addressed, and protests in the streets with root causes aggravated by loose gun laws.

I am always puzzled how these futile, thinly veiled loyalty tests of the NRA are presented as support for the constitution. Question: On the first day of service for an elected official, what does every person have to do? Answer: They have to swear to uphold the Constitution. I would suggest that if they were in their job for a while, and suddenly realized that the Second Amendment is part of the Constitution and thought everyone else would be surprised of that fact as well, that maybe they should have read the Constitution before taking official actions.

Here is another surprise for some of those officials. Amendment X of the United States Constitution states that The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People. This means that you, our dear elected leaders, have a right and a duty to pass ordinances to protect us, We the People.

So here is my suggestion for the alternative, sane universe. One of our major crises at the moment is in policing. Police departments have been militarized to deal with a flood of cheap guns in North America promulgated and encouraged by big gun corporations. When police officers and those who interact with them are all fearing for their lives with each transaction, the outcome can be predicted. Part of the solution to police reform must include sensible gun control legislation. A Quinnipiac poll in May of this year shows that 61 percent of Americans support more restrictions on guns like assault weapon bans, closing gun show loopholes, red flag laws, and common sense laws that prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands. When asked only about background checks, 94 percent of the people support them. Thats We the People who support responsible action.

Consequently, I am dumbfounded that our local officials are being duped into tying their own hands.

Therefore We the People are forming our own group called 10A. We are going to write an ordinance that the commissioners can pass citing their support for a higher authority, the People of Floyd County, Indiana. In addition it will require them to read the United States Constitution in its entirety. They only have to get through the Bill of Rights to realize that they have a duty, that they swore to uphold on day one of their occupation of office, to serve the People above profits and their own political benefit.

Most sincerely,

Randall T. Randy Stumler, Floyds Knobs

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LETTER: Show loyalty to people, not NRA | Opinion - Evening News and Tribune

Hobble Creek Wranglers target love of firearms and Old West

PROVO, Utah (AP) Its a hot, summer afternoon, and a posse of cowboys and cowgirls with aliases such as Lonesome Hart, Tamarack, Anita Gunn and Colt Colton are gathering at the mouth of Hobble Creek Canyon in Springville. Dressed in Old West attire, with single-action six-shooters, rifles and shotguns in hand, theyve come to see who has the keenest eye and fastest trigger finger of the bunch on this side of the Wasatch.

No, this isnt a rerun of some old Western movie, this is a modern-day club shoot for the Hobble Creek Wranglers , Utah Countys only Cowboy Action Shooting Club.

Of all of the shooting sports Ive done, this is by far the most fun, said Springville resident Bob Marshall, who is the groups president.

Cowboy Action Shooting is a sport that incorporates firearms and costumes from the Old West (typically the period from 1860-1900) and aims to bring people together through a mutual love of firearms and preserving the history of the Old West. Cowboy Action Shooting is governed by the Single Action Shooting Society, or SASS, an international organization founded in 1987.

I think its the hardest shooting sport and the most fun because you dont just master one gun, you have to use four of them in every stage, explained Marshall. Its the best people that Ive ever shot around.

In Cowboy Action Shooting, each shooting sequence is called a scenario, where participants use two pistols, a rifle and a shotgun to hit a series of metal targets in a certain order as fast as possible.

The trick to doing this, at least for me, is counting, explained Michael Snelson, a Springville resident and also the secretary and treasurer of the group. Some people look at the shapes of the targets and they do it by shape, some people count by how many shots have to go on each target. One of the most used scenarios is called a Nevada sweep. There will be four targets set up, well start on target one, sweep the four targets, and then come back and sweep them again.

Each scenario begins with a spotter hitting a timer, and as soon as the scenario begins, shooters pull out their first pistol from their holster and shoot five rounds into the targets, then they pull out their next pistol and shoot five more rounds. Upon shooting all the pistol rounds, the shooter then moves a few feet to the next selection of targets where a rifle is sitting on a table. The shooter fires on the targets until the rifle is empty, then heads to a central table where a shotgun is waiting. The shooter shoots two rounds, loads two more, and then time is called.

For a fast shooter, the whole sequence is usually completed in about a dozen seconds.

Its challenging; it is not easy to go out and do this, said Karen Doty, 79, a resident of Hemet, California, who stopped by the Hobble Creek Wranglers June shoot with her husband, Ron Doty, 82, while in the county visiting family and attending a baby blessing. The two are graduates of Brigham Young University, and go by the aliases Spokane and Colt Colton, respectively.

For Cowboy Action Shooting, its not only about shooting like a cowboy, but also dressing and playing the part, too.

In addition to only using guns designed before 1900, all members of the Single Action Shooting Society are required to make an effort to dress like a character from the Old West period. Their choice of who to role play is up to them. Along with the costumes, every shooter also has a unique alias.

For many, their alias says something about themselves, or their familys history. For others, its an homage to their favorite Old West gunslinger, or even just some silly wordplay or a name that simply sounded cool.

For Karen Spokane Doty, her alias pays tribute to her hometown of Spokane, Washington. I dress like an old schoolmarm from prior to 1900, said Karen with a smile, gesturing to her long, black dress, black vest with a long-sleeved white button-up underneath and a black, flat-brimmed hat atop her head all of which are made from heavy, durable materials.

You kind of come here in a make-believe state, and it kind of stays through the day while youre shooting, said president Bob Marshall, who goes by the alias Hobble Creek Marshal because of his last name, and the fact that he lives in the mouth of Hobble Creek Canyon.

Though the cowboy and cowgirl costumes are a bit of role playing, the camaraderie between shooters is quite real. Several shooters explained that its the people that keep them coming back the second Saturday of each month from March through November for the clubs shoots. Be it some good-natured horseplay or a rivalry, the people of Cowboy Action Shooting keep each shoot fresh and fun.

The second time I shot in the state championship shoot, I won it, said Marshall. The next year, there was a guy that was kind of my nemesis at the time. The day before the shoot I was having problems with my rifle, and he came over and said, Ive got this extra rifle and Id rather you shoot this because if I beat you I want it to be because I outshot you, not because you had problems with a rifle. I didnt shoot good anyway, but thats not the point, he said, with a laugh. Thats the kind of people the sports made up with.

Winter Range is the name of the Single Action Shooting Societys national championship, and End of Trail is the name of the groups international championship. Winners dont win any cash prizes, but receive cowboy gear along with trophy-like belt buckles, and of course, bragging rights. Utahs SASS state title is also an annual contest, which cycles to different shooting ranges in the state. According to Michael Snelsons last count, there are 16 clubs in Utah, all holding their club shoots on varying days of the month. If we wanted to, we could shoot every week, said Snelson.

Like any shooting sport, gun safety is as integral a part of Cowboy Action Shooting as any of its theatrics.

There are a lot of rules with Cowboy Action Shooting to make sure we stay safe and people dont get shot, said Snelson. There has hardly ever been anyone since the 1980s injured in Cowboy Action Shooting. Everybody understands the safety rules, and theyre watching out for infractions.

For example, guns point into earthen berms when loading and unloading, rifles and shotguns are carried uncocked, vertically with the barrel up, when on range, guns cannot be pointed any wider than 170 degrees from downrange, and only five rounds are loaded into six-shooting pistols so if the gun did fire accidentally, theres an empty chamber up first. Along with missing targets, safety infractions also add time to lower a shooters score. If the safety infraction is egregious enough like dropping a loaded gun the shooter is disqualified from the shoot for the day.

Ive been a shooting cowboy with this club for 14 years, and Ive traveled around to other places, but Ive never seen anybody hurt, Snelson said.

Though Snelson admitted that many of the clubs shooters are older men primarily because of the high cost of buying four firearms, ammo and an outfit to be a regular with the club Cowboy Action Shooting values diversity in its shooters and their skills.

The beauty of this game is that theres something for everyone, said Kirk Ekins, who goes by the alias Rusty Razor, due to his aversion to shaving his long, thick beard. Ekins, and his wife, Lisa, are both Utah state champs in Cowboy Action Shooting. Im pretty competitive and I do fairly well, he said. Theres one shooter where hell shoot a stage in 80 seconds and Ill shoot it in 20 seconds, and he tells me he had four times more fun. Its whatever you want to be. There are people who just love the costumes. Weve got wives that show up for banquet that never shoot a gun, but they love to dress up in Victorian gowns, and then theres the collector that likes his old Colts and original guns. You can be competitive, you can just cheer for the crowd, whatever; theres something for everyone in this game.

However, one common thread among shooters is an appreciation for the Second Amendment. We love our country, and this is one thing that we do to show that support, Snelson said.

We really wish that people who would like to see the Second Amendment not be what it is today, we would like to get them out to the range and let them try this so they can get a feel for it, explained Snelson. For people that havent done it or dont like the Second Amendment, wed like to have them shoot with us and see what its all about. Weve had people come up who think they were afraid of guns because of what theyve seen, and we actually get a gun in their hand and they shoot, and they have a great time doing it.

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Hobble Creek Wranglers target love of firearms and Old West - Midland Daily News

The FPC argues that courts should treat the Second Amendment with the same respect as other fundamental rights. IMG iStock-93456039

U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF) announced the filing of an important amicus brief in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals case,Drummond v. Township of Robinson. The brief, joined by the Madison Society Foundation, is available online atFPCLegal.org.

The Greater Pittsburgh Gun Club (GPGC) started offering firearms sales and training on rural land outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over 50 years ago. For many of those decades, Robinson Township has resolved to shut the club down. In the 1990s, Robinson Township brought a nuisance action against GPGC, but the court determined that GPGC was not a nuisance. Then, Robinson Township brought a licensing action against GPGC but failed in court again. Now, Robinson Township has enacted an ordinance forbidding GPGC from operating for-profit, or from allowing center-fire rifle shooting on the propertybut only if it is operating as a gun club. The clubs owner, William Drummond, brought this action, alleging that the new ordinance violates the Second Amendment.

Too often people are bullied for engaging in constitutionally protected activity, so we filed this brief to explain why the court should step in and protect the exercise of Second Amendment rights, said FPC Director of Research and brief author, Joseph Greenlee. We are happy to help Mr. Drummond defend his rights and the rights of his clients against Robinson Townships relentless efforts to forcibly close his gun club.

Were hopeful that GPGC can soon get back to providing the public with goods and training protected by the Constitution, as it has for several decades, Greenlee concluded.

Background

Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPCs mission is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially the fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, advance individual liberty, and restore freedom. Gun owners and Second Amendment supporters can join the FPC Grassroots Army at JoinFPC.org.

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FPC: Courts Must Treat 2A as Real Right, Not Second-Class - AmmoLand Shooting Sports News

Former Democractic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will make a virtual appearance at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor this month as one of the guest speakers at the schools annual Champlain Institute.

Clinton is expected to address the online gathering live at 5 p.m. Monday, July 27. She is one of 19 speakers, some of whom will appear together, scheduled to address the Institute, which is being held entirely online this year from July 27-31 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The focus of this years institute will be on the upcoming national elections on Nov. 3, including a focus on U.S. diplomacy, climate change, income inequality, national security, the Second Amendment and the Supreme Court.

Clinton served as First Lady when her husband, President Bill Clinton, served in the White House from 1993 through 2001, before serving as a U.S. senator from New York and as Secretary of State in President Barack Obamas administration.

Other speakers include former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, federal appeals Judge Douglas Ginsburg, native Somali journalist (and now Mainer) Abdi Nor Iftin, New York Times Assistant Managing Editor Sam Sifton, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frances FitzGerald and writer Roxana Robinson, among others.

The talks are free and accessible to the public, but advance registration is required and can be done online. More information about the 2020 institute is available on COAs website.

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Hillary Clinton to give online talk as part of Bar Harbor college's summer institute - Bangor Daily News

Much has been said of late about protests, as they have sprung up all over the country. Perhaps the most disturbing of all the commentary has been the idea that protest is somehow unpatriotic or illegal. This could not be further from the truth. The people who hold in such high regard the Second Amendment right to bear arms, totally overlook the First Amendment Freedom of Assembly and Petition. The founding fathers felt that it was so important they stated that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This amendment means that people have a right to gather in the public square and complain about the government. Somehow the president has persisted in labeling all protest he doesnt like as leftist riots by unpatriotic looters and thugs. This is not only unfair, it misses the point entirely. Marching, waving flags or signs, and making speeches have been widely accepted as constitutional First Amendment rights, even though we may not like or agree with the messages. This administration allows all manner of behaviors by people who agree with his right white American agenda but considers even the most passive protest by people of color dangerous.

There is a difference between exercising the freedom to protest and civil or criminal acts of vandalism. One does not equal the other. In any large gathering, there may be people who act out following their own agenda, maybe even using the protest to cover their own criminal actions. Often, they want to discredit the legitimate message of the protesters and may have been sent by opposing groups for that purpose. People protesting the ongoing and systematic racism and brutality by the police are angry, and it is a righteous anger born of centuries of mistreatment and abuse. Why are angry, gun-toting white people seen as patriots exercising their free speech, while unarmed shouting black people are seen as violent? Perhaps it says more about our guilt for centuries of treating them like livestock or imbeciles in order to protect our fragile sense of superiority.

We tried to enslave the native people and failing that, we tried to destroy them with disease and wars. We pushed them onto reservations, took their children away to whiten them, and dismantled their culture. We brought Chinese people to America to build the railroads and when we were done with them threw them out or killed them. We tore apart Black families for our own purposes and kept them in chains so they could neither fight nor flee. When the slaves were finally freed we still kept them in their place with Jim Crow laws and segregation, out of fear, because we knew in our hearts none of it was justifiable. After the nearly century and a half that black men have had the right to vote, we are still actively trying to keep them away from the polls in numerous states. It is a curious thing that the same people who cheered when Iraqis turned out in such large numbers to vote for their new democracy, dont want whole segments of American citizens to vote at all.

For 400 years white people have seen Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and anyone different as not American, regardless of their citizenship. But they are citizens, and they have as much right to speak, assemble, vote, be angry, and even carry weapons, as any other law-abiding citizen. Yet somehow they have not been treated equally under the law. Its well past the time we came to terms with our bigoted racist past and accepted that.

Susan Chichetto lives in Bath.

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Guest column: It's time to come to terms with our racist past - Press Herald

Protesters march to the monument to Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va. Protesters gathered in Richmond over the Fourth of July weekend, including white nationalists and Black armed groups. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Protesters march to the monument to Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va. Protesters gathered in Richmond over the Fourth of July weekend, including white nationalists and Black armed groups.

Robert E. Lee's days are numbered.

A landmark statue of the Confederate general installed 130 years ago in Richmond, Va., is at the center of a campaign to remove monuments that glorify the losing side of the Civil War. There's a legal battle over whether to remove the Lee statue, but few here expect his monument to survive the re-energized anti-racism movement sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

So, until the day a crane shows up to haul off the general, Black protesters and their supporters are camped out at the site, which has become a place of pilgrimage. Over the Fourth of July weekend, there were songs and speeches and families coming to take photos. Their backdrop was a Confederate hero whose legacy is challenged in graffiti on the pedestal that holds him up.

A man holds a child at the monument of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va. There's a legal battle over removing the Lee statue, but few here expect it to survive the re-energized anti-racism movement sparked by the killing of George Floyd. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

A man holds a child at the monument of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va. There's a legal battle over removing the Lee statue, but few here expect it to survive the re-energized anti-racism movement sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

Near the top, someone had scrawled, "Proverbs 29:16." The biblical verse reads: "When the wicked thrive, so does sin, but the righteous will see their downfall."

Black protesters said taking down statues is symbolic; the bigger fight against institutionalized white supremacy is longer, open-ended.

The lingering opposition to that cause also was on display this weekend, outside the Virginia State Capitol at a gathering of heavily armed white men some prepping for a second Civil War, some calling for a white ethnostate. Their speeches were essentially the overtly racist version of President Trump's divisive lament at Mount Rushmore National Memorial Friday about lost heritage and fallen statues. One white nationalist screamed at the crowd to rise up in retaliation: "Removing monuments says, 'I conquered this land!' "

One holiday, two visions of the future for Richmond, and for America. Extremism analysts warn that polarization is reaching dangerous levels. Fringe ideas are creeping into the mainstream, rhetoric is hardening and low-level clashes are occurring at demonstrations across the country. In Richmond, protesters said, statue removal is a crucial battle, but not the war.

Aurora Higgs, an LGBTQ activist and Black trans woman, speaks during a demonstration at the Lee monument. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Aurora Higgs, an LGBTQ activist and Black trans woman, speaks during a demonstration at the Lee monument.

"Previous Fourths of July, we've celebrated all the great things about the U.S., but we haven't acknowledged some of our horrible histories, and once we do acknowledge those, we can start healing," said Aurora Higgs, a Black trans woman who was at the Lee statue for a march with other LGBTQ activists.

As Higgs spoke, a DJ played an upbeat song by the artist Lizzo. Protesters bumped elbows in pandemic-era greeting. Underneath a scorching sun, artists and students lounged on the cool stone of the pedestal. The mood was festive, the mission serious. Higgs gestured to the statue of Lee on his horse and said, "This is the one we're waiting to see come down."

"It's not necessarily the statue. It's everything it symbolizes, the outdated thinking that violates and dehumanizes people," she said. "This is the last frontier and, as far as I'm concerned, it's a war we're going to win."

Armed Black protesters

Armed protester and poet who goes by the pen name Ray Rosetta attends a demonstration at the Lee monument. Rosetta has teamed up with other local Black gun owners, many of whom are also now doing stints to safeguard the protest site at the Lee statue. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Armed protester and poet who goes by the pen name Ray Rosetta attends a demonstration at the Lee monument. Rosetta has teamed up with other local Black gun owners, many of whom are also now doing stints to safeguard the protest site at the Lee statue.

Trump and right-wing commentators frequently depict Black Lives Matter protesters as armed and dangerous. Some armed leftists and Black gun groups have patrolled protest sites, but they're a tiny fraction of the largely unarmed movement.

In recent days, however, Black gun owners have become more assertive at demonstrations across the country. Scenes of dozens of rifle-carrying, Black protesters marching in formation in Georgia went viral over the weekend; the evocation of the Black Panther Party was unmistakable.

In Richmond, too, Black gun clubs have come together to safeguard the protest site. They call themselves a deterrent a defensive, not offensive, presence. Still, they're not universally welcomed, though many in the anti-gun camp have grudgingly come to accept them after reports of attacks on protest camps by far-right extremists.

Among the small armed contingent at the Lee statue was a poet who goes by the pen name Ray Rosetta. He says he grew up in New Jersey and never considered gun ownership until moving to Richmond. Six years ago, he said, he bought his first gun and joined the NRA. Rosetta recalled his membership card arriving with "a cool gun bag" and some literature with language that made him rethink joining. He let his NRA membership lapse.

Ray Rosetta is a reluctant gunman for the movement. He said he still believes the pen is mightier; he'd rather be writing his poems. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Ray Rosetta is a reluctant gunman for the movement. He said he still believes the pen is mightier; he'd rather be writing his poems.

"One and done," he said with a laugh.

Instead, Rosetta teamed up with other local Black gun owners, many of whom are also now doing stints at the Lee statue site. He said he's thinking about starting a chapter of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club a national movement named after a co-founder of the Black Panthers. Rosetta sat under the shade of a tent at the Lee statue site, his semiautomatic rifle at his feet. "That's my baby," he said.

But Rosetta is a reluctant gunman for the movement. He said he still believes the pen is mightier; he'd rather be writing his poems, meditations on life and the women he calls his muses. He's also been moved by what he's seen in the protests. He recited one of his new verses:

"Little Black boys can't dream/Too busy livin' nightmares."

Black armed protesters attend a demonstration at the monument to Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Some armed leftists and Black gun groups have patrolled protest sites, but they're a tiny fraction of the largely unarmed movement. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Black armed protesters attend a demonstration at the monument to Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Some armed leftists and Black gun groups have patrolled protest sites, but they're a tiny fraction of the largely unarmed movement.

Rosetta laughed. "Sometimes I like to keep mine short."

As the interview was winding down, a couple of volunteers from the protesters' bike patrol approached Rosetta with a plastic bag. Inside were two loaded magazines for a semi-automatic rifle, along with a military-style coin showing Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. The volunteers told Rosetta they'd found the items in trash near the protest site and worried that someone had stashed them there for an attack.

Rosetta didn't know what to make of the items. Were they part of a bigger cache? Did they fall out of someone's bag? None of the possibilities was reassuring. He said agitators have shown up to cause trouble. Others drive by and yell slurs out the window. Rosetta said he believes guns on the premises is staving off a more brazen retaliation against the protests.

Rosetta said he would add the items to an art exhibit he's creating with found objects from protests. It will be called, "Domestic Warfare." He said the ammo is a reminder of why he keeps a pen in one hand, a rifle in the other.

Members of the Boogaloo movement carry semi-automatic firearms during a gun rights rally in Richmond, Va., on Saturday. The Hawaiian shirt-wearing so-called "boogaloo boys" are part of an amorphous movement of disenchanted, mostly white men who think another Civil War is inevitable, even necessary, to correct an overreaching federal government and other societal ills. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Members of the Boogaloo movement carry semi-automatic firearms during a gun rights rally in Richmond, Va., on Saturday. The Hawaiian shirt-wearing so-called "boogaloo boys" are part of an amorphous movement of disenchanted, mostly white men who think another Civil War is inevitable, even necessary, to correct an overreaching federal government and other societal ills.

"A lot of people don't believe this is happening," he said. "It's scary. This is happening."

Boogaloo showdown

Early in the morning on the fourth, it looked like a heavily armed luau was about to take place in front of the State Capitol in Richmond.

Event organizer Mike Dunn, 19, expresses his opposition to an order from law enforcement to move during a gun rights rally put on by members of the Boogaloo movement. "We're willing to do what it takes," he said, to safeguard Second Amendment and other constitutional rights he believes are under attack. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Event organizer Mike Dunn, 19, expresses his opposition to an order from law enforcement to move during a gun rights rally put on by members of the Boogaloo movement. "We're willing to do what it takes," he said, to safeguard Second Amendment and other constitutional rights he believes are under attack.

The Hawaiian shirt-wearing so-called "Boogaloo boys" were starting to arrive, part of an amorphous movement of disenchanted, mostly white men who think another Civil War is inevitable, even necessary, to correct what they consider an overreaching federal government and other societal ills. There's no leader and no cohesion on ideology or goals, no blueprint for what comes after the apocalyptic fight.

In Richmond, the Boogaloo boys were loosely organized by a baby-faced 19-year-old named Mike Dunn, who wore a cherry-red Hawaiian shirt and cowboy boots. A Confederate flag was visible on the back of his belt. In these circles, he's known as "Virginia Knight," part of a year-old network of militias across the state. Dunn said his activism cost him his job with the Virginia Department of Corrections.

"To me, it means we want change, and we're willing to do what we need to do to get that change," Dunn said, offering his definition of the Boogaloo movement.

White nationalists wearing white blazers and skull masks arrive at the protest in Richmond, Va. Some were sporting the insignia and other markers of white supremacist groups. Hannah Allam/NPR hide caption

White nationalists wearing white blazers and skull masks arrive at the protest in Richmond, Va. Some were sporting the insignia and other markers of white supremacist groups.

"We're willing to do what it takes," he said, to safeguard Second Amendment and other constitutional rights he believes are under attack. When told that his words might sound chilling to some people, Dunn shrugged. "It is what it is."

Among the dozens of men in Hawaiian shirts and tactical gear, another kind of demonstrator started to arrive, in skull masks paired with white blazers. They were white nationalists, sporting the insignia and other markers of hate groups.

Armed Black protesters and members of the Boogaloo movement attend a gun rights rally put on by members of the Boogaloo movement in Richmond, Va., on Saturday. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Armed Black protesters and members of the Boogaloo movement attend a gun rights rally put on by members of the Boogaloo movement in Richmond, Va., on Saturday.

Dunn and the Boogaloo crew regarded them with suspicion, but greeted them and arranged for the white nationalists to have a turn speaking before the crowd. They all mingled politely for a while, waiting for speeches to begin at 10 a.m.

Then, from around a corner, a group of armed Black protesters showed up, many of the same who patrol the Lee site. The gun-toting Black group stood across the street from the gun-toting white group. Dunn made a beeline to introduce himself: "Thank you all for coming out, make yourselves at home." He told the Black group that they might have differences but that they would all stand together for the Second Amendment.

A military veteran who goes by "Pops" represented the Black group. He had a question.

"Who's going to regulate if anything jumps off?" he asked.

A white nationalist wearing a T-shirt with the Rise Above Movement logo attends the gun rights rally on Saturday. Rise Above Movement is a white supremacist group based in Southern California. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

A white nationalist wearing a T-shirt with the Rise Above Movement logo attends the gun rights rally on Saturday. Rise Above Movement is a white supremacist group based in Southern California.

"We just hope it doesn't," Dunn said.

Dunn led the Black group across the street to merge with the bigger group. There were murmurs of disapproval among the white nationalists, but the Boogaloo boys welcomed the Black protesters, each side checking out and complimenting the others' weaponry. The police herded them all down the street, out of the shade, leaving them to swelter in their heavy flak vests.

Armed Black protesters exchange words with a far-right activist during a gun rights rally put on by members of the Boogaloo movement in Richmond, Va. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Armed Black protesters exchange words with a far-right activist during a gun rights rally put on by members of the Boogaloo movement in Richmond, Va.

At one point, a guy in a Hawaiian shirt and tactical gear wished everyone a happy Fourth of July and led the crowd the white nationalists, the Boogaloo boys, the Black gun group in a surreal rendition of "America The Beautiful." But the harmony was fleeting. The second the white nationalists took the mic to spew about white genocide, the crowd divided sharply between those who were fine with that rhetoric and those who weren't.

Dunn and most of the Hawaiian shirts rejected the separatist message. They stormed off, enraged by "Nazi wing-nuts" hijacking their rally. They joined the Black protesters in chants to drown out the white supremacists who were peddling a plan for the "peaceful Balkanization" of the country.

Dunn looked dismayed, out of his depth, a teenager who handed hate a bullhorn and came to regret it. Much of the crowd seemed to lose interest in Dunn's message of unity. For some, the time for talk was over. The melting pot had failed. Monuments, streets, patriots were under attack. It was time for Plan B.

"It's time!" a white nationalist speaker said.

"It's time!" the crowd answered.

Protesters gather near the Virginia State Capitol during Saturday's gun rights rally. Jim Urquhart for NPR hide caption

Protesters gather near the Virginia State Capitol during Saturday's gun rights rally.

"It's time for all good men, and good men alone, to come to the aid of their country, of their people, of their civilization!"

The speaker's words grew muffled as Dunn's Boogaloo camp began a chant: "White supremacy sucks! White supremacy sucks!"

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Richmond Rally Turns Into Showdown On Race - NPR

The Supreme Court said the Trump administration repealed the DACA program incorrectly last time, and gave the White House a road map for a do-over. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

THE BUZZ IN THE WHITE HOUSE is that, at some point over the next week or so, there is a plan in place to resubmit paperwork to do away with DACA. Remember: The Supreme Court said the administration repealed it incorrectly last time, and gave the White House a road map for a do-over.

OF COURSE, this will elicit head slaps from many corners of the Republican Party, but it follows in line with the TRUMP ADMINISTRATIONS consistent political belief that they are somehow at risk of losing their base.

-- NEW THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF MAYORS has sent the president a letter urging him to fully maintain the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program until Congress passes legislation that would enable Dreamers people who have lived in America since they were children and built their lives here to earn lawful permanent residence and eventually American citizenship, if they meet certain criteria. Full letter, led by Louisville, Ky., Mayor Greg Fischer

TAKE THREE!! TRY TO PUT THIS ON A BUMPER STICKER! SEAN HANNITY had President DONALD TRUMP on his show Thursday night, and again tried to get him to lay out his second-term agenda. REMEMBER: HANNITY has asked the president before, and so did ERIC BOLLING. Both times, the answer was panned as jumbled and underwhelming.

HANNITY: I asked you a question in Wisconsin and you got criticized for the answer. I want to ask you again. You are now asking America in 117 days to give you a second term as president of the United States. Lets -- what is your second-term agenda?

TRUMP: First of all, I didnt know it was criticized for that answer because its a simple question. First of all, were going to defeat the invisible enemy, and we are well on our way. And again, I told you, the mortality rate is tenfold down. Were going to rebuild the economy, were going to bring back jobs from all of these foreign lands that have stolen our jobs on horrible trade deals. We are going to continue to make great trade deals.

Were going to finish rebuilding our wall. Were going to finish, were going to have that -- its going to be almost complete by the end of this year, shortly thereafter its finished. Its made a tremendous difference. You see, were doing record numbers on the border. Very few people are able to get through. Were rebuilding with our military. Weve rebuilt the military. $2.5 trillion. We are fixing up the VA for our vets. The job weve done there, between choice and accountability.

We have choice, where they go out and get a doctor. If they are sick, they dont have to wait for five weeks, six weeks, two weeks. So we are doing great with the vets, and the vets are loving Trump. We are protecting our Second Amendment, so. We need more judges and more justices. You see that now with the Supreme Court more than ever. And the next president, Ive had two, the next president is going to be able to pick two or three or one or whatever, but a lot of justices. And that means everything, whether its for life or other things, I mean it means so much.

But protecting the Second Amendment, getting more judges. All of the things that weve done, nobodys done what this administration has done in the first three and a half years. Nobodys even come close. When you look at everything that were doing. Now what were doing is working on lowering drug prices and knocking out special interests, because its not easy. Were fighting for choice. We did it for the veterans and now we are doing it for school too. One choice in school so a parent can take their child to a school of their choice, and thats happening -- very good, very, very well.

And we have many things we are doing and many things that we have already completed, and you cant do more than what weve done. I think weve set records. We actually set a record on judges. We are going to be, by the time of the end of this year, we will be up to almost 300 federal judges, and thats a record. Thats incredible, including D.C.

-- BIDEN LAYS OUT HIS AGENDA: Biden releases U.S.-centered economic plan, challenging Trumps America First agenda, by WaPos Sean Sullivan and Jeff Stein

Good Friday morning.

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THE FOLKS AT THE RNC ARE QUITE SENSITIVE to the notion that their convention this summer in Jacksonville, Fla., may be in trouble. But all publicly available evidence would suggest that, in fact, it is in trouble, and to think otherwise would be burying your head in the sand.

ABOUT A HALF DOZEN SENATE REPUBLICANS have suggested they wont go, and even more have cast doubt on the convention or said that they havent made their mind up. RNC-ALIGNED REPUBLICANS say its two months away, and its too early to make any determinations about the prospect of a large-scale gathering in hard-hit Florida. There are reports of efforts to study holding it outdoors. In August. In Florida.

ON THURSDAY, THE RNC and TRUMP were dealt another blow. APPEARING IN KENTUCKY, Senate Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL was asked if he would be attending the convention in Jacksonville this summer. He said he didnt have any idea whether the event would even be happening.

-- MCCONNELL: Well, I think the convention is a challenging situation. And a number of my colleagues have announced that theyre not going to attend, and well have to wait and see how things look in late August and determine whether or not you can safely convene that many people. The clip

AND THEN THERES THIS GREAT ANNIE KARNI and PATRICIA MAZZEI story on A15 of the NYT today, which suggests the Republican governor of Florida is trying to sabotage the convention because of a beef he has with a consultant!

-- NYT: DeSantis Is Said to Quietly Hinder Fund-Raising for Trump Convention: [Gov. Ron] DeSantis, a Republican, has directed his top fund-raiser, Heather Barker, to tell donors not to give to the convention because of a personal dispute between the governor and Susie Wiles, his former campaign manager who is serving as an informal adviser to the convention planners, according to multiple people familiar with his actions.

Ms. Wiles is a veteran Republican operative who led Mr. Trumps Florida team in 2016 and who ran Mr. DeSantiss 2018 campaign for governor. Mr. DeSantiss relationship with Ms. Wiles soured over his suspicion that she had leaked embarrassing information.

NEW THE WHITE HOUSE is launching a rapid-response Twitter account to try to drive messages and make announcements. @WHRapidResponse is now live, and will be manned by the White House communications shop, under the direction of KAYLEIGH MCENANY and ALYSSA FARAH.

-- FIRST TWEET: @WHRapidResponse at 12:01 a.m.: Follow @WHRapidResponse as we cut through the bias and provide real-time updates on the historic accomplishments of President @realDonaldTrumps administration!

MERIDITH MCGRAW: The White Houses new briefing strategy: Short, with lots of commentary: The White Houses ever-mutating press conferences have found a new form. Theyre short, with frequent prepared commentary and press critiques.

Its a format that has taken shape under new White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who took over her role in April. McEnany initially chose to resurrect the concept of semi-regular briefings in the White Houses press room which had sat unused for over a year under her predecessors. But her briefings, often announced at the last minute, have since clocked in, on average, 25 minutes. And on occasion, they have been scheduled right before President Donald Trumps official events, giving McEnany a pre-planned stopping point.

The strategy has extended to President Donald Trump himself. The president has, in recent weeks, cut back his own free-for-all press conferences from early 2020 taking questions just five times in June from a group of reporters. Instead, Trump has been gathering reporters for a self-described press conference or news conference, only to make long speeches straight into the TV camera before walking off without taking any questions.

For the White House, the tactic has given the administration the opportunity to use the cameras in the room to project its message, surrounded by reporters who arent able to ask many follow-up questions. And it has changed how the White House has conveyed information during two ongoing crises the coronavirus pandemic and the protests against police brutality and racial injustice. POLITICO

TRUMPS FRONTS: NYT, banner headline: PRESIDENT IS NOT ABOVE THE LAW, JUSTICES DECIDE The NYT also fronted a Shane Goldmacher/Jim Tankersley story with this headline: Biden Puts Economy at the Center of His Attack WSJ N.Y. POST

CANDACE OWENS RAISING MONEY FOR HERSELF! OWENS -- a conservative activist -- is sending text message solicitations to raise money for herself, through an LLC called Candace Owens LLC. The solicitation says: Hi its Candace Owens. The Black Lives Matter movement is getting more power by the day and we must stop them. Stand with me. That directs to this page, which raises money for the LLC. Paid for by Candace Owens LLC and not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee, the page reads.

-- WHAT MAKES THIS UNIQUE is it looks like a campaign advertisement, but its not. Its directing money not to a campaign committee, but rather to a corporation.

SCOOP A NEW WHISTLEBLOWER BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN: A top terrorism fighters dire warning

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CORONAVIRUS RAGING

-- NYT: U.S. Hits Another Record for New Coronavirus Cases: Officials across the United States reported more than 59,880 cases on Thursday, setting a single-day record for the sixth time in 10 days, according to a New York Times database. The surge has been driven largely by states in the South and the West that were among the first to ease restrictions established during the viruss initial wave in the spring. At least six states set single-day case records on Thursday: Alabama, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oregon and Texas.

The numbers were especially striking in Texas, which set a record for the fourth consecutive day with more than 10,900 cases. Nearly one in 10 of them were in Hidalgo County, which consists of over a thousand square miles of scrub and urban sprawl on the Mexico border.

-- WAPO: CDC feels pressure from Trump as rift grows over coronavirus response, by Lena Sun and Josh Dawsey: The June 28 email to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was ominous: A senior adviser to a top Health and Human Services Department official accused the CDC of undermining the President by putting out a report about the potential risks of the coronavirus to pregnant women.

The adviser, Paul Alexander, criticized the agencys methods and said its warning to pregnant women reads in a way to frighten women as if the President and his administration cant fix this and it is getting worse.

As the country enters a frightening phase of the pandemic with new daily cases surpassing 57,000 on Thursday, the CDC, the nations top public health agency, is coming under intense pressure from President Trump and his allies, who are downplaying the dangers in a bid to revive the economy ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. In a White House guided by the presidents instincts, rather than by evidence-based policy, the CDC finds itself forced constantly to backtrack or sidelined from pivotal decisions.

-- LAT: Coronavirus hospitalizations jump 97% in Orange County in less than a month, by Hannah Fry: The number of patients hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infections reached new heights Thursday in Orange County jumping 97% over the past three weeks an indicator that health experts say makes it clear the virus is spreading more rapidly in the region.

County health officials on Thursday reported that 691 patients were being hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infections. Seven days earlier, 556 people were hospitalized. A week prior there were 437 people in hospitals, and a week before that there were 351. The spike has prompted hospitals countywide to begin to prepare for a surge of sick patients, said Orange County Health Care Agency Director Dr. Clayton Chau.

-- NPR: Bolivian President Tests Positive For Coronavirus

MARC CAPUTO: Trump advisers fracture over Roger Stone pardon: Roger Stone is headed to prison next week unless Donald Trump intervenes. And a chorus of outside allies is pressing the president to do just that over the wishes of White House and campaign aides who dont like Stone and think Trump has nothing to gain by helping him.

Both camps expect Trump will at least split the difference by commuting Stones sentence, according to interviews with nine sources familiar with the discussions. A commutation would keep Stone from behind bars without wiping his record clean.

KNOWING ELISSA SLOTKIN TIM ALBERTA: Elissa Slotkins Reluctant War with Donald Trump: She cannot hope to win reelection this fall without persuading a significant number of voters in Michigans 8th Congressional District to split their tickets four more years for Trump, two more years for her and every feud with the White House is equivalent to a few more straight-party ballots being punched.

Whether Slotkin can have it both ways, speaking her mind about the president and winning over some of his supporters, may well determine not only her fate but the fate of Democrats in swing districts and battleground states across the country.

Slotkin didnt want it to be this way. She envisioned another hyperlocal campaign, like the one she ran in 2018, building consensus around kitchen-table issues and eluding perceptions of partisanship. But if her first two years in Congress taught her anything, its that sooner or later, everyone has to pick a side. There is no middle ground when it comes to Donald Trump.

Hes forcing my hand, Slotkin tells me a day after the tweetstorm, resignation dripping from her voice. Hes doing things and saying things that call upon me to think about my fundamental oath of office.

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TRUMPS FRIDAY -- The president will depart the White House at 9:30 a.m. en route to Miami. He will head to U.S. Southern Command in Doral, where hell receive a briefing on enhanced counternarcotics operations at 12:35 p.m. and deliver remarks. Afterward, he will head to Iglesia Doral Jesus Worship Center for a roundtable on supporting Venezuelans.

TRUMP will leave at 3:20 p.m. and fly to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for an event at a private residence in Hillsboro Beach, Fla. He will depart at 6:35 p.m. and return to Washington, arriving back at the White House at 9:45 p.m.

TV TONIGHT -- PBS Washington Week with Bob Costa: Yamiche Alcindor, Cleve Wootson Jr., Eamon Javers and Paula Reid Joan Biskupic.

SUNDAY SO FAR

Gray TV

Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren: President Donald Trump.

NBC

Meet the Press: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Panel: Anna Palmer, Kristen Welker and George Will.

ABC

This Week: Panel: Chris Christie, Rahm Emanuel, Amanda Carpenter and Zerlina Maxwell.

CBS

Face the Nation: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego Terry Shaw Scott Gottlieb Tom Wyatt New battleground tracker for Texas, Florida and Arizona.

FOX

Fox News Sunday: Thomas Inglesby. Panel: Karl Rove, Jane Harman and Josh Holmes. Power Player: Vanilla Beane.

Sinclair

America This Week With Eric Bolling: Horace Lorenzo Anderson Sr. HUD Secretary Ben Carson Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas). Panel: Ameshia Cross and Sebastian Gorka.

PHOTO DU JOUR: Police in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday carry the alleged body of Mayor Park Won-soon, who was reportedly found dead after leaving a will-like message for his daughter. A sexual harassment legal complaint involving him was reported to have been filed Wednesday. | Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

ERIK PRINCE STILL PUSHING ON AFGHANISTAN DAILY WIRE: Top Security Expert Points To History To Show How Trump Can Successfully End The War In Afghanistan

JOSH GERSTEIN: Trump poised to run out political clock on emoluments suits: A key lawsuit over spending by foreign entities at President Donald Trumps businesses appears likely to remain on hold until the fall, effectively blocking what appeared to be the best vehicle for the presidents critics to demand details of such spending in advance of the November election.

A federal appeals court Thursday extended a stay on fact-finding in the lawsuit so the Justice Department can ask the Supreme Court to order dismissal of the suit, filed in 2017 by the State of Maryland and the Washington, D.C., government.

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VALLEY TALK LEAH NYLEN: California investigating Google for potential antitrust violations: California has opened its own antitrust probe into Google, intensifying the pressure on the search giant already in the middle of investigations by the Justice Department and a host of other states, according to three people with knowledge of the inquiry.

The move by California's attorney general comes as Google has come under increasing scrutiny from both Congress and foreign regulators for its market conduct and acquisitions that have turned it into the world's top search engine and the most profitable online advertising company.

In September, attorneys general from 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia announced an antitrust investigation into Google focused on the companys dominance of the advertising technology market. Over the past 10 months, that investigation led by Texas has expanded into other aspects of the companys business, including its conduct in the search market.

California which houses Googles headquarters in Mountain View was the most notable holdout in the multi-state group, and Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra has repeatedly declined to answer questions about why the state wasnt a participant. The California antitrust probe is a separate investigation from the multi-state effort, two of the individuals said. All of the individuals spoke on condition of anonymity to talk openly about a confidential probe. Alabama is now the only state that is not investigating the company. POLITICO

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Private equity invests in every state in America learn about our positive impact here.

ON THE BORDER -- Arrests at U.S. Border With Mexico Jumped 40% in June, by WSJs Michelle Hackman: The number of migrants arrested at the southern border jumped by 40% in June from the prior month, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The jump in numbers came at a time when the Trump administration is immediately turning back most migrants at the border for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. Arrests of migrants surged to 30,300 last month, including about 27,000 people who were turned back under the new policy.

MEDIAWATCH -- Trump Appointee Might Not Extend Visas for Foreign Journalists at V.O.A., by NYTs Pranshu Verma and Edward Wong: As many as 100 foreign citizens working in the United States as journalists for the Voice of America, a government-funded news outlet, might not have their visas extended once they expire, according to people familiar with the planning.

Michael Pack, the new chief executive for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, has indicated he may not approve extensions for any journalist holding a J-1 visa, which allows foreign citizens to temporarily work in the United States in ways that promote cultural exchanges.

The decision could be a blow to the news-gathering and global-broadcasting abilities of the V.O.A., which operates independently but is funded by the government. Foreign journalists on the specialty visa are often recruited to work there because they are able to translate American news reports into difficult languages like Swahili or Mandarin and can do reporting using those languages. NYT

Send tips to Eli Okun and Garrett Ross at [emailprotected].

TRANSITIONS -- Gina Reis is now video director for Mark Kellys Senate campaign in Arizona. She previously was a video producer/editor for Pete Buttigiegs campaign. Mikka Kei Macdonald is joining Community Change as a senior digital organizer. She previously was associate director for campaigns at the Hub Project.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD -- Eduardo Lerma, COS for Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), and Johanna Lerma, a registered nurse at MedStar Georgetown Hospital, welcomed Noemi Soledad Lerma early Thursday morning. Pic

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Kyle Griffin, senior producer for MSNBCs The Last Word. What hes been reading: Im reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. Its not for the faint of heart. Its about a fictional flu pandemic. Im a glutton for punishment when it comes to extracurriculars, but its interesting to compare the book to our real-world experiences. Her writing is clear and vivid -- she knows how to paint a bleak picture. And as a TV news writer, Im a sucker for the teases she writes at the end of each chapter. Playbook Q&A

BIRTHDAYS: CDC Director Robert Redfield is 69 Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) is 44 Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) is 64 ... Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) is 4-0 ... Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) is 65 ... State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus (h/t Katie Martin) Megan Ortagus (h/ts Sam Vinograd) Sam Stein of The Daily Beast and MSNBC Sarah Boxer Alex Angelson of Michael Best Strategies Ben Napier is 3-0 Katie Pavlich is 32 POLITICOs Chris Cadelago, Matt Daily, Catherine Boudreau, John Appezzato and Ashley Afranie-Sakyi Melanie Seitz David Dinkins is 93 Julianna Smoot, co-founder of WaterWorks (h/t Jon Haber) Rena Shapiro, head of politics and public affairs at a4 Media Sam Harper, VP of comms at SoundExchange Eli Yokley, Morning Consult political reporter Quibis Shawna Thomas Karen Hinton

Kenny Day (h/t Tim Burger) former Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), now chair of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, is 63 former Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Mo.) is 62 (h/t Mitchell Rivard) former Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) is 78 Hazel Rosenblum-Sellers, who just accepted a job at NEWCO Strategies, is 23 (h/t Claire Goldberg) Emil Caillaux Rob Bogart White & Cases Keir Whitson is 51 Kayla Maree Sanders Remley Johnson is 29 ... WSJs Heather Haddon ... Phillip Hedayatnia ... Jamie Lockhart ... Peter Bondi Barbara Goldberg Goldman is 71 Christine Turner ... Caroline Ciccone ... CUNY Board Chairman Bill Thompson ... Ian Rivera ... Amanda Woloshen Glass ... Kevin Call ... Bill Roberts ... Sarah Hodgkins ... Caroline Gransee ... Clay Haynes ... Chris Terris ... Finlay Lewis is 82 ... Elie Jacobs ... Monty Warner ... Elizabeth Bartz ... Chuck Lewis ... Jeff Mitchell

A message from the American Investment Council:

The numbers are in. The American Investment Council released its annual Top States and Districts Report, which ranks the countrys top twenty states and Congressional districts in total private equity capital and the number of companies receiving investment in 2019.

Private equity invested over $700 billion last year in diverse communities and industries across the country, helping to rescue, build, or grow 4,841 businesses. Private equity firms provided capital to a broad range of industries, from financial services and healthcare to technology and consumer businesses.

Drew Maloney, President and CEO of The American Investment Council, released the following statement:

Our 2019 Top States and Districts Report underscores how private equity is unlocking critical capital in every state and Congressional district across the United States. The figures in this report are more than just numbers. They represent jobs, economic security, and well-being for millions of Americans.

See the article here:

POLITICO Playbook: White House weighing another swing at DACA - Politico

Here's what to know about the primary runoff in Texas. Wochit

One of the most competitive congressional races in the country is in El Paso's backyard.

The race for outgoing U.S. Rep. Will Hurd'sseat is in full swing, and on July 14 Republican voters in the district will decide who should represent their party on the November General Election ballot.

Republicans Tony Gonzalesand Raul Reyes are in a runoff for a district that spans much of the Texas-Mexico border and includes part of El Paso. Early voting in the race is ongoing and ends July 10.

The runoff election day is Tuesday, July 14.

Republicans Tony Gonzales (left) and Raul Reyes (right) are in a runoff for Congressional District 23.(Photo: Contributed)

Hurd, R-Helotes, announced last year that he wouldn't seek reelection to the House seat he won by a narrow margin in 2018.

That opened the doors for a crowded primaryin March. Gonzales, a Navy veteran, and Reyes, anAir Force veteran, garnered the most votes in the pool of nine candidates.

Gonzales received28.11% of the votes district wide, followed by Reyes who received 23.31%. In El Paso County, Reyes received37.97% of the votes and Gonzales 28.48%.

Congressional District 23 has flipped between being represented by Republicans and Democrats in the past. It's been held by a Republicansince Hurd took office in 2015, but Democrats are working to flip it.

Hurd, who has crossed party lines and criticizedPresident Donald Trump in the past, won his reelection for a two-year term in 2018 by less than 1,000 votes.

His opponent, Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer, won the Democratic primary in 2020 and is on the November ballot.

Gina Ortiz Jones(Photo: Courtesy of the Gina Ortiz Jones campaign)

"This is one of themost competitive districts in the country, so all eyes are going to be on it," said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor. "It is a district which has been purple ... Republicans have been successful in part because Will Hurd was a popular figure in the area."

Hurd receivedattention in 2017for a"bipartisan road trip"with then U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-El Paso. O'Rourke left Congress after his failed bid to upset U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018.

President Donald Trump chimed in on Twitter July 3 in the race for Texas 23rd Congressional District, announcing his endorsement of Gonzales.

Tony Gonzales will be a GREAT Congressman for Texas!, Trump wrote on Twitter. A Navy veteran, he is Strong on the Economy, Life and the Second Amendment. We need him to defeat the Radical Left in November. Tony has my Complete and Total Endorsement!

Gonzales, who has also been endorsedby Hurd, retweeted the post, thanking the president for his support.

Lets win in November! he said in the tweet.

Trump's endorsement comes just days after Sen. Cruz, R-Texas, announced his support for Reyes in the election. In an advertisement, Cruz casts Reyes as one of the "conservative warriors" needed in the House.

"President Trump needs more congressmen like Col. Reyes," Cruz says in the advertisement. "Leaders who won't surrender our border, our sovereignty, our way of life."

Jones predicted that Trump's endorsement would get Gonzalesthrough to November in a Friday tweet.

"Well, meet my likely opponent," Jones said in the tweet. "I'm a proud first-gen American, daughter of a single mom, and Iraq and Air Force veteran. And unlike him, I'm running in #TX23 to fight for affordable health care, good jobs, and an economy that works for everyone."

TheDemocratic Congressional Campaign Committee maintained that while the endorsement may help Gonzales in July, it could hurt him in November. In 2016, the district went for Clinton by just over 3 percentage points,though Hurd was elected in the congressional race.

With this toxic endorsement in a pro-Clinton and pro-Biden district, Tony Gonzales is now the overwhelming favorite to win on July 14 and lose on November 3,"DCCCspokesman Avery Jaffe said in the statement.

Reyes paints Gonzales as the establishment candidate who would be a "continuum of the legacy of Will Hurd."

Reyes' key policy issues include the Second Amendment and border security. He's for "zero red flag laws and no more infringement on the Second Amendment" and his an advocate for the construction of a border wall. He also wants to "bring jobs to district 23," including El Paso.

"We would be a powerhouse in Congress, fighting for the people, to get things really done," Reyes said.

Gonzales maintained he'sthe candidatewho can bring togethermembers of the RepublicanParty. He pointed to endorsements from Hurd, U.S. Reps. Kevin McCarthy, R-California, and Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston, asexamples.

Economic growth, advocating for veterans healthcare and helping veterans transition into the workforce are areas of interest for Gonzales. Border security is also a focus of his campaign, citing a need for resources to keep communities safe, "whether that's added technology" or "resources to DHS, ICE, Border Patrol and elsewhere."

"The biggest thing that distinguishes me from Reyes, is I can unite the party," Gonzales said.

Eleanor Dearmanmay be reached at361-244-0047;edearman@elpasotimes.com; @EllyDearman on Twitter.

Read or Share this story: https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/08/texas-election-republicans-runoff-replace-will-hurd-district-23/5383216002/

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Texas Election: What to know about the congressional race to replace U.S. Rep. Will Hurd - El Paso Times

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President Donald Trump, supported by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), raised a major controversy in early June by suggesting that active-duty troops be used to impose order in the streets of American cities. The Trump administration made moves toward implementing that suggestion, including dispatching part of the Armys 82nd Airborne Division to locations just outside Washington, DC. The response in opposition by former senior military officerswith former defense secretary James Mattiss statement being the most eloquenthas been heartfelt and appropriate.

As part of Trumps guns-and-toughness posturing, the president has conflated the notion of Army troops confronting American citizens in American cities with another favorite part of that posturing, which is the gun rights issue invoking the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Trump made that conflation explicit in the Rose Garden speech that he delivered shortly before Attorney General William Barr ordered the use of stun grenades and tear gas to clear a path to Trumps photo-op at a church. In the speech, Trump stated, I am mobilizing all available federal resourcescivilian and militaryto stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.

Trumps further rhetoric on this assortment of issues has been contradictory. He has shown no fondness for public order when egging on protestors who have resisted the authority of governors while threatening violence and brandishing assault rifles in state capitol buildings. Moreover, invoking the Second Amendment in the same breath as threatening to put active-duty military personnel into the streets involves another contradiction, as a matter of law and history.

The Second Amendment is about well-regulated militias. It says in the first line of the amendment that a well-regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State. For over two centuries the courts did not regard it as limiting the power of states and localities to enact laws regulating individual ownership of firearms. Then, in 2008, lobbying spearheaded by the National Rifle Association finally got five Supreme Court justices in Heller v. District of Columbia to abandon any semblance of original intent and construe the Second Amendment as a basis for striking down gun control laws that have nothing to do with militias, let alone well-regulated ones.

Story continues

When the Bill of Rights, of which the Second Amendment is a part, was written, militias were in good odor among Americans of all political persuasions. Militias, after all, deserved much of the credit for standing up to the British Redcoats during the American Revolution.

After independence, militias became an important part of two over-arching political issues. One was the issue of how much power the new federal government would have relative to the authority of the states. Enactment of the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, was a concession by the federalists to the anti-federalists who considered it vital to restrict the powers of the federal government and keep it out of the business of the states, including the business of preserving local order.

This subject was closely related to the second big and relevant issue, which was a general antipathy to standing armies. As much as militias were in good odor among Americans of that day, a full-time military under the control of a central government was in bad odor. (After the almost complete demobilization of the Continental Army at the end of the Revolution, this attitude was reflected in U.S. policy until increased tensions in the 1790s, first with Britain and then with France, led to the restoration of a small standing military.) The strong pro-militia statement the Second Amendment makes was a statement against any federal army butting into the states business. The right to bear arms was made universal out of a fear that the federal government might butt into the states business not only through the deployment of a federal army but also by limiting the size of a states militia. Baron von Steuben, the Prussian officer who became George Washingtons inspector general during the Revolution, had suggested just such a limitation.

In short, the Second Amendment embodies opposition to the very use of federal troops that Donald Trump and Tom Cotton are talking about. The authors and early champions of the amendment would be appalled to hear it invoked by those arguing that a federal army should be used to corral and coerce American citizens in the streets of American cities.

Useful context is provided by the Third Amendment, which protects citizens against having to quarter soldiers in their homes. The Third Amendment, like the Second Amendment, is a statement against standing armies getting involved in the local lives of Americans. Today, no one is talking about restoring that kind of military housing arrangement, and the Third Amendment is perhaps the least-cited portion of the entire Constitution. But reading itas well as that first line of the Second Amendmentwould aid understanding of the underlying issues.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.

Image: Reuters

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How Donald Trump Abused the Second Amendment - Yahoo News

For months, news accounts have reported on the nationwide surge in gun sales. The soaring demand for guns has led in turn to soaring prices for gun stocks. Shares of firearms manufacturers like Smith & Wesson and Ruger have sharply outpaced the broader stock market.

All this was happening before Americans learned about Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd on May 25, or saw the video of Gregory and Travis McMichael, the two Georgia men one an ex-cop who gunned down Ahmaud Arbery after seeing him jog past their home. Black Americans in particular have been getting a pointed lesson in the value of their Second Amendment right to bear arms, and translating that lesson into action.

Hence the explosion in the number of Black gun owners nationwide, as David Dent reports in The Daily Beast. The National African American Gun Association, which began in 2015 with a single chapter in Atlanta, now comprises more than 100 chapters with 40,000 members 10,000 of whom joined within the past five months. They include not only recreational shooters, but new owners like Iesha Williams, a young mother who, Dent writes, was persuaded by recent events to acquire a gun as a form of protection against racial violence. Black gun ownership is as essential today as it was in 1892, when Ida B. Wells wrote that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.

Millions of Americans instinctively grasp that private ownership of guns makes them safer. But advocates of more gun control never see it that way. When Michael Bloomberg was asked in January about a Texas church where a massacre was aborted when a 71-year-old parishioner shot and killed the gunman, his response was that guns are for police. Its the job of law enforcement to have guns and to decide when to shoot, said Bloomberg. You just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.

Only cops should have guns and decide when to shoot? Try telling that to the families of Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Botham Jean, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Michael Dean, and Walter Scott, all of whom were killed when cops whether from recklessness, incompetence, or racism decided to shoot.

Of course, most cops are neither racists nor thugs. But even the most dedicated police officers cannot always be there to provide protection when it is needed. The Second Amendment exists in part for just that purpose, as persecuted minorities have had good reason to know.

The denial of the right to own weapons reinforced the racial repression of Americas first centuries. In its infamous Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that if Black people were considered US citizens, the Second Amendment would give to persons of the negro race . . . the right . . . to keep and carry arms wherever they went. Gun controls racist roots run deep. Before the Civil War, a multiplicity of laws barred slaves from owning weapons and permitted free Black people to do so only with a courts approval. In the Jim Crow era, states found other ways to disarm Black Americans. They heavily taxed handgun sales, for example, or permitted pistols to be sold only to sheriffs and their deputies a category that often included KKK terrorists.

The Second Amendment is always revitalized when we feel threatened, writes David Harsanyi in the current National Review. Between the coronavirus pandemic, the killing of George Floyd, and the recent wave of demonstrations and looting, this is an alarming moment in American life. Black and white Americans, millions of them, have chosen to meet the moment by arming themselves. The hoplophobes may disapprove, but this is what the Second Amendment is for.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jeff.jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby. To subscribe to Arguable, his weekly newsletter, go to bitly.com/Arguable.

Excerpt from:

Black and white Americans are embracing the Second Amendment - The Boston Globe

Is the text of the Second Amendment contrary to slavery? So argued the great abolitionist Lysander Spooner in his 1845 book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1866-68, the Amendment's supporters agreed with Spooner that if the Second Amendment were enforced, slavery would be impossible.

Author of important books and pamphlets on scores of subjects, Lysander Spooner's greatest passion was antislavery. A radical theorist, Spooner was a hero to many antislavery activists, including John Brown, whose raid on Harper's Ferry was inspired by reading Spooner. He was "pre-eminent in the group of abolitionists who developed the constitutional law now incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment." C. Shively, Introduction to 4 Lysander Spooner, Collected Works 11 (1971). For more, see Randy E. Barnett, Whence Comes Section One? The Abolitionist Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment, 3 J. Legal Analysis 165 (2011).

Spooner was "the most theoretically profound advocate" of the position that slavery was unconstitutional. David A. J. Richards, Abolitionist Political and Constitutional Theory and the Reconstruction Amendments, 25 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 1187, 1193 (1992).

In the widely-distributed and frequently reprinted book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, Spooner argued that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the original public meaning of the words in the text. In case of ambiguity, words should construed according to natural justice. Spooner did not favor looking to speeches by political figures, newspaper essays, or other sources to put a gloss on the constitutional text itself.

As Barnett explains:

Spooner supplemented this interpretive claim about original public meaning with a principle of construction he took from the 1805 Supreme Court case of United States v. Fisher in which John Marshall articulated a 'plain statement' rule of construction for resolving ambiguities in the public meaning of statutes. "Where rights are infringed, where fundamental principles are overthrown, where the general system of the laws is departed from," wrote Chief Justice Marshall, "the legislative intention must be expressed with irresistible clearness, to induce a court of justice to suppose a design to effect such objects."

As elaborated by Spooner, under this rule of construction, when the original public meaning is ambiguousthat is, when there is more than one reasonable meaning"the court will never, through inference, nor implication, attribute an unjust intention to a law; nor seek for such an intention in any evidence exterior to the words of the law. They will attribute such an intention to the law, only when such intention is written out in actual terms; and in terms, too, of 'irresistible clearness'"

For example, Spooner's natural justice interpretation of the Second Amendment was straightforward:

This right "to keep and bear arms," implies the right to use themas much as a provision securing to the people the right to buy and keep food, would imply their right also to eat it. But this implied right to use arms, is only a right to use them in a manner consistent with natural rightsas, for example, in defence of life, liberty, chastity, &c. . . . If the courts could go beyond the innocent and necessary meaning of the words, and imply or infer from them an authority for anything contrary to natural right, they could imply a constitutional authority in the people to use arms, not merely for the just and innocent purposes of defence, but also . . . robbery, or any other acts of wrong to which arms are capable of being applied. The mere verbal implication would as much authorize the people to use arms for unjust, as for just, purposes. But the legal implication gives only an authority for their innocent use. (Unconstitutionality of Slavery, p. 66).

Spooner used the Second Amendment to argue that slavery was unconstitutional. Since a slave is a person who is (or can be) forbidden to possess arms, and the Second Amendment guarantees that all persons can possess arms, no person in the United States can be a slave. Similarly, the militia clauses (Art. I, sect. 8, cls. 15-16) give Congress the power to arm the militia and to call it forth. He elaborated:

These provisions obviously recognize the natural right of all men "to keep and bear arms" for their personal defence; and prohibit both Congress and the State governments from infringing the right of "the people"that is, of any of the peopleto do so; and more especially of any whom Congress have power to include in their militia. The right of a man "to keep and bear arms," is a right palpably inconsistent with the idea of his being a slave. Yet the right is secured as effectually to those whom the States presume to call slaves, as to any whom the States condescend to acknowledge free.

Under this provision any man has a right either to give or sell arms to those persons whom the States call slaves; and there is no constitutional power, in either the national or State governments, that can punish him for so doing; or that can take those arms from the slaves; or that can make it criminal for the slaves to use them, if, from the inefficiency of the laws, it should become necessary for them to do so, in defence of their own lives or liberties; for this constitutional right to keep arms implies the constitutional right to use them, if need be, for the defence of one's liberty or life. (Id. at 97-98.)

As Spooner recognized, the Constitution never expressly used the words "slave" or "slavery." James Madison explained that he kept those words out of the document because it would be "wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men." Timothy Sandefur, The Anti-Slavery Constitution, National Review, Sept. 30, 2019. So the word "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution until 1865, with the 13th Amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude."

Spooner argued that the so-called "Fugitive Slave Clause" was no such thing. The actual text said:

No person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due. (Art. IV, sect. 2, cl. 3.)

According to Spooner, the text could be read to apply only indentured servants, or other persons who voluntarily undertaken a service or labor obligation. Indentured servants were not legally free, but (unlike slaves) their required service would end after several years, according to the contract they had signed. For example, some immigrants to America paid for their sea voyage by signing a five-year indenture that the ship's captain could sell upon arrival in America. Indenture contracts were legally enforceable.

In Spooner's theory, reading the clause to encompass slavery would violate Chief Justice Marshall's rule of interpretation.

As for the right of "persons whom the States call slaves" to use arms to resist recapture by government officers, Spooner wrote:

The constitution contemplates no such submission, on the part of the people, to the usurpations of the government, or to the lawless violence of its officers. On the contrary it provides that "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." This constitutional security for "the right to keep and bear arms," implies the right to use them,as much a constitutional security for food, would have have implied the right to eat it. The constitution, therefore, takes it for granted that, as the people have the right, they will also have the sense, to use arms, whenever the necessity of the case justifies it. (Lysander Spooner, A Defence for Fugitive Slaves 27-28 (1850).)

Similarly, Spooner contended that unconstitutional laws need not be obeyed pending their repeal. To require obedience to unconstitutional laws would be to allow the government "to disarm the people, suppress the freedom of speech and the press, prohibit the use of suffrage, and thus put it beyond the power of the people to reform the government through the exercise of those rights." Id. at 28.

In Spooner's best seller, the 1852 An Essay on the Trial by Jury, he used U.S. Constitution right to jury trial and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" to make his point that the "right of resistance is recognized by the constitution of the United States." (p. 17).

Courts in the 1840s and 1850s did not adopt Spooner's view that slavery was unconstitutional. Then in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment made explicit was Spooner had argued was always implicit: slavery is unconstitutional. The Thirteenth Amendment was insufficient by itself to prevent the newly-freed from being de facto re-enslaved. If former slave states could prohibit freedmen from assembling, from contracting their labor freely, from traveling, or from defending themselves, then they could be reduced to servitude by the Black Codes being adopted in the ex-confederate states.

Just a few weeks after the Confederate States surrendered at Appomattox, Frederick Douglass declared:

Now, while the black man can be denied a vote, while the Legislatures of the South can take from him the right to keep and bear arms, as they canthey would not allow a negro to walk with a cane where I came from, they would not allow ve of them to assemble togetherthe work of the Abolitionists is not finished. Notwithstanding the provision in the Constitution of the United States that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, the black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms; and the Legislatures of the States will still have the power to forbid it, under this [Thirteenth] Amendment. They can carry on a system of unfriendly legislation, and will they not do it? Have they not got the prejudice there to do it with? (Frederick Douglass, In What New Skin Will the Old Snake Come Forth? Address delivered in New York City, May 10, 1865, pp. 83-84 [In Frederick Douglass Papers, series 1, vol. 4).

The next year, Congress recognized that disarming the freedmen was indeed part of the efforts of southern state governments and terrorist organizations to keep the freedmen in de facto servitude. So in 1866, the Second Freedmen's Bureau bill ordered the Union army in the South to protect the freedmen's "full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and estate including the constitutional right to bear arms." The same year, the Civil Rights Act was passed, and the Fourteenth Amendment was sent to the States for ratification. All were enacted with supporters' expressly stated purpose of protecting the Second Amendment self-defense rights of the freedmen. McDonald v. Chicago (2010) (Thomas, J., concurring) (detailing legal history, and citing Spooner).

Whether Spooner's 1845 approach to constitutional interpretation is the best one can be debated. It can be said that parts of his constitutional vision were so compellingand so much in accord with natural justicethat they became the law of the land. As the Fourteenth Amendment recognizes, slavery and the constitutional right to arms are opposites.

Read the original here:

Does the Second Amendment prohibit slavery? Reason.com - Reason

Gatherings of all sizes and kinds marked a lengthy Saturday in the Tri-State, capped with a group spending the evening keeping an eye on businesses in Evansville.

About 15 men came together in the parking lot near Target on the east side, many of them openly carrying firearms.

They told us they were there to protect the community and they didnt want to see anything torn up.

The armed members of the group became the latest in a series of expressions of constitutional rights, done so through the night in peace.

For Saadia Miles, speaking out today is a family affair.

Were tired. Im raising up two beautiful black women. And this cant keep happening. After the whole worlds seen George. Its changed the dynamic of how were moving today, she explained.

She joined others in bringing their kids down to the waterfront in peaceful demonstration Saturday afternoon.

Spreading a message not just across the city, but through generations.

I think its just sad that the racism is going around, her daughter Bianca said.

Weve had a lot of negativity out here. And thats been hard to deal with, Saadia added. Were still not getting the support we need. And thats why were still standing here. Were still fighting. This is all a learning lesson.

For their family, coming out isnt just about a single issue.

We have to stop, and its not even about the police at this point either. We have to stop the gun violence against us too. We have to love each other for everybody to love us as well, Saadia explained.

As crowds continued to gather throughout the afternoonat the Four Freedoms monument before marching to the Ford Centerother mothers in the group of hundreds also shared how the last moments of George Floyd brought them out.

Im a momma. Ive got four kids but I have two black grandkids. It just bothers me. He cried for his momma at the end. Its just sad. Its horrible, Melissa Key said.

Saadia Miles, and her daughters, echoed that idea

We wanna live. This is why were here. Thats why my kids are here. We want to live. We want the same respect we give to everybody else, Saadia explained.

as their voices, and that of others from across the city, echoed through the streets.

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Groups Exercise First, Second Amendment Rights in Peaceful Gatherings - wevv.com

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts departs the Trump impeachment trial in Washington,January 29, 2020.(Brendan McDermid/Reuters)The most likely explanation is that neither of the Courts ideological factions was confident enough of Robertss support to risk granting certiorari.

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review all ten of the Second Amendment cases it had pending on its docket. Though the cases presented different fact patterns and procedural postures, the Court simply refused to weigh in on any of them. There seems to be one likely reason: Chief Justice Roberts does not want the Court to take a stance on the Second Amendment. We know because it only takes four justices to agree to hear a case but five to reach a decision once a case is heard and there are four justices on record as being in favor of the Courts reviewing Second Amendment issues.

Justice Thomas has been dissenting from the Courts refusal to review those issues for years, and he did so again on Monday, writing to protest the Courts decision to pass on Rogers v. Grewal, a case addressing New Jerseys unconstitutional handgun-carry-permit laws:

This case gives us the opportunity to provide guidance on the proper approach for evaluating Second Amendment claims; acknowledge that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry in public; and resolve a square Circuit split on the constitutionality of justifiable need restrictions on that right. I would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.

Justice Alito authored the landmark 2010McDonald v. Chicagoopinion, which incorporated Second Amendment rights to cover the states, and recently filed a scathing dissent to the Courts decision inNew York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York:

Twelve years ago inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller. . . we held that the Second Amendment protects the right of ordinary Americans to keep and bear arms. Two years later, our decision in McDonald v. Chicago . . . established that this right is fully applicable to the States. Since then, the lower courts have decided numerous cases involving Second Amendment challenges to a variety of federal, state, and local laws. Most have failed. We have been asked to review many of these decisions, but until this case, we denied all such requests.

Alitos dissent goes on to review the underlying merits of the case and argue that the New York City gun-control law at issue is certainly unconstitutional.

Justice Kavanaugh is also in favor of the Courts weighing in on Second Amendment issues. He wrote a well-knowndissent in Heller II, a follow-up case stemming from the Heller decision Alito references, in which he chastised the D.C. Circuits reasoning and directly applied the Supreme Court test that was established inHeller. More recently, he joined Thomass dissent against the Courts refusal to hearRogers, and wrote, in a concurrence to theNew York State Rifledecision:

I share Justice Alitos concern that some federal and state courts may not be properly applyingHeller andMcDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.

Finally, Justice Gorsuch, while being quieter on the subject, has voiced his support for a review of Second Amendment issues as well: He has joined a couple of dissents penned by Justices Thomas and Alito, inPeruta v. CaliforniaandNew York State Rifle, respectively.

If youre counting along at home, thats four Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh in favor of the Courts reviewing Second Amendment issues. Those four together can grantcertiorariin any case they wish. One presumes that the only reason they didnt do so in one of the ten Second Amendment cases the Court passed on Monday is that they were unsure how Chief Justice Roberts would vote once the cases were heard.

To be clear, the Court wasnt in want of choice. The ten cases pending before it covered issues ranging from New Jerseys handgun-carry regulations (Rogers) to Californias presumptively unsafe handgun law (Pena v. Horan) and Massachusetts assault weapon and high-capacity magazine bans (Worman v. Healey).

Some of the ten also showed a clear circuit split a conflict between two or more courts of appeals in the nation as to how to decide a similar or identical issue which tends to make the Court far more likely to hear a case. In this instance, there was and is a clear split between circuits on the applicability of the Second Amendment outside the home.

So, ruling out votes and issues, the remaining roadblock would seem to be Chief Justice Roberts. What is unclear is why.

Some have speculated that Roberts wants to avoid risking the Courts reputation on a controversial case during a tense political cycle. But, if the Court had grantedcertiorariin one of these cases today, the case would have been briefed over the summer, argued in late 2020 or early 2021, and decided in early or mid 2021, well after the next president had been elected.

Does Roberts actually align with the four progressive-leaning justices on the Court when it comes to the Second Amendment? Not likely. Remember, the four progressive-leaning justices can grant review of a case just as the four conservative-leaning justices can. Given that they didnt on Monday, they likely dont believe Chief Justice Roberts is on their side of the issue.

The conclusion were left with is that Chief Justice Roberts doesnt want the Court to weigh in on the Second Amendment right now, and neither the four conservative justices nor the four progressive justices were confident enough of his siding with them on the issue to risk granting certiorari in any of the ten cases.

Keep in mind, when the chief justice is in the majority on a decision, he gets to pick who writes the opinion.If Chief Justice Roberts is the swing vote in a case, hell be in the majority however he decides, and could easily assign himself the opinion. Given that the rest of the Court is evenly split, no matter how he drafted it, the justices who agreed with the outcome of the opinion would almost have to sign on, regardless of its reasoning, and that could spell trouble.

For now, we will have to rely on the decisions of the circuit courts in gun-rights cases. But while its unclear what the impact of this week will be on the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence, those of us committed to defending Second Amendment-protected rights will not give up the fight.

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Why Did the Roberts Court Punt on Ten Second Amendment Cases? - National Review

In response to a number of emails sent to the Kalispell City Council regarding the national debate over defunding police departments, the council assured residents at a recent meeting that the current police department funding would be maintained as it was originally set for the 2021 fiscal year.

The councils June 15 meeting agenda didnt have any items regarding police funding, but numerous people from the public showed up at council chambers to address the issue, as well as to discuss the recent Black Lives Matter protest in Kalispell.

We do fund our police force in Kalispell, Mayor Mark Johnson said. We dont anticipate ever cutting the funding for the police force and we will maintain that funding for as long as I am the mayor.

The proposed 2021 budget for the police department will remain at $5,659,635, a 6.85% increase from the 2020 fiscal year, which the council will finalize this summer.

I think that all of us on the council agree that chain emails are not necessarily how we make decisions, Councilor Kyle Waterman said. Ive seen chain emails from both sides in my inbox they are fairly full and that is not how we make decisions and thats not how we are swayed on funding things.

Community members attended the meeting to express their views on Kalispells Black Lives Matter protest, which occurred on June 6 in Depot Park and included the presence of members of the Flathead Patriot Guard, many who were armed with high-powered rifles and said they were there as peacekeepers.

Roughly 25 local Flathead Valley residents spoke during public comment, some supporting the peacekeepers and others against them, but all speakers agreed in their support of the police department.

I do understand theres some individuals that would like to reform or defund our law enforcement, and Im also concerned about those who are here who exercise their Second Amendment rights, Kalispell resident Bill Miles said, who expressed his support for local police.

While several other residents expressed their support for the police department and the Second Amendment rights on display at the June 6 protest, others spoke out against the armed peacekeepers.

I was (at the protest) with my parents with my granddaughter with my children I was of course shocked to see the heavily armed men all through that park, Valeri McGarvey said. Thats not something Ive ever been around and frankly it didnt feel peaceful. I didnt feel protected. It was frightening to me and very stressful.

Others defended the armed individuals at the protest, saying they were needed after hearing rumors, which were ultimately unfounded, that Antifa, an anti-fascist group, would also be at the protest.

We had intel that Black Lives Matter was coming in to town, Kalispell resident Dennis Gomez said. And also when Black Lives Matter comes into town, Antifa follows with them. Antifa are the rioters We went to the war memorial; I am a veteran of Vietnam We are here to protect our war memorial and our community.

But other residents at the meeting felt that protection should be the responsibility of the police department.

I went to the Black Lives Matter protest and I have a different perspective than a lot of you do, Kalispell resident and Kalispell Regional Healthcare nurse Tara Lee said. I am so grateful for our police. I believe in our police force here within town. I didnt feel that there needed to be excess firearms because I entrust my life with the police who are already here.

The council agreed on the importance of supporting the police department and felt the event was a learning experience for the future.

Im very pleased that when we got to that evening at midnight and checked in and nothing had happened, I was much relieved, Johnson said. But I want to carry on some of that conversation because I think theres a lot that we can learn from this. I think theres a lot of misinformation or lack of information shared amongst the different people who put in community input, but I do want to have that conversation.

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Police Funding, Second Amendment Discussed at Kalispell Council - Flathead Beacon

An image on social media attributes a quote on arms and ammunition to the first president of the United States, George Washington. The quote, however, is partly inaccurate.

Reuters Fact Check. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

The image shows a memorial plaque titled 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. The text that follows reads: A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.

Examples of the post are visible here and here .

The plaque in the picture can be found at a landmark in Amarillo, Texas called the Second Amendment Cowboy ( here ; here ; goo.gl/maps/6DuiCV9BMEBbSPtm8 ).

The first sentence of the text accurately quotes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, visible here ( bit.ly/37HpGtI ).

The first few words of the second sentence are taken from Washingtons First Annual Message to Congress on January 8, 1790 ( here ).

However, according to the library at Mount Vernon, George Washingtons estate and museum which is managed by a private non-profit, the quote is then manipulated into a differing context and the remaining text is inaccurate ( here ).

The actual text from Washingtons speech is as follows: A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.

Partly false. The quote on arms and ammunition attributed to George Washington does appear on a plaque in Texas but is partly inaccurate.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here .

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Fact check: George Washington misquoted on the need for arms and ammunition - Reuters

Clearly, the attorney general of California didnt expect researchers to actually check his historical sources. If he had, common sense tells us he would have been more careful. But then, gun-control advocates have long been willing to just make up historymuch of academia and the media, after all, wont mind and, in fact, will likely applaud them for it.

If you have been following the gun-rights battles for some time, you likely remember Michael Bellesiles rewriting of American history in his 2000 book Arming America. Incredibly, his version of early America had almost no guns in it until the Mexican War, almost no hunting, many restrictive gun-control laws and, generally, in his revisionist history, the people had a deep distaste for guns. If you remember Bellesiles, you might also recall that I played a part in discrediting him. (Last I heard, Bellesiles was tending bar, not teaching his peculiar form of history at Emory University.)

California Attorney General Xavier Becerras mischaracterization of history is nearly as egregious as Bellesiles.

A lawsuit over a ban on open carry of firearms in California brought this about. Until 1967, open carry of loaded firearms was lawful throughout California. Starting in 1967, open carry remained legal in cities if the gun was unloaded. Outside of most cities, open carry remained legal. Recently, the California legislature required people to get a license to open carry everywhere in the state. In Baird v. Becerra (filed in October 2019), gun-rights activists challenged this new California law.

I keep track of such cases because I have been a California refugee, now located in Idaho, for 20 years. Lawyers working on Baird v. Becerra hired me as an expert witness to read the California attorney generals brief defending the law. That brief claimed that open carry has not traditionally been legal in America, so I looked at their evidence for this. I found a collection of distortions.

Denying Open Carry Was LawfulCalifornias lawyers defended this new law in a brief that claimed open carry was never generally legal in America. They listed dozens of laws, starting with Britains 1328 Statute of Northampton, and state laws up to the Civil War that they claimed showed that open carry was unlawful. They also cited a dozen or more state Supreme Court decisions holding that open carry was unlawful.

So I did what I had done with Bellesiles scholarship. I looked up their sources. The dozen or so state laws from the antebellum period they claimed banned open carry turned out to be, in most cases, not even slightly on-topic.

Their brief referred to what are called session laws, the laws passed at each meeting of the state legislaturedate, state, page number, chapter and after the , the section number of the law. Here is an example of their citations: e.g., 1786 Va. Acts 33, ch. 21; 1795 Mass. Law 436, ch. 2; 1801 Tenn. Laws 259, 260-261, ch. 22, 6; 1821 Me. Laws 285, ch. 76, 1.

Nearly all of these collections of session laws were available online, so it was easy to check them. The law 1786 Va. Acts 33, ch. 21; was actually An act for giving further time to officers, soldiers, sailors and marines, to settle their arrears of pay and depreciation, with the auditor of public accounts.

The 1795 Mass. Law 436, ch. 2 is worse. Page 436 begins in the middle of chapter 68, An Act to Enable Sheriffs, Deputy Sheriffs & Constables, to Require Aid in the Execution of Their Respective Offices in Criminal Cases, and starts chapter 69 with: An Act for Recording Births and Deaths by the Clerks of Towns & Districts.

The 1821 Me. Laws 285, ch. 76, 1. is actually Resolve appointing a Committee to examine certain accounts, and to report the same to the Governor and Council.March22, 1821. And there were many other examples where the cited laws had nothing to do with guns at all.

There was just one match to their list of antebellum laws forbidding open carry: 1801 Tenn. Laws 259, 260-261, ch. 22. This is indeed An Act for the restraint of idle and disorderly persons. This was a vagrancy law for persons of ill fame or suspicious character, which includes the text of the Statute of Northampton (1328), an ancient law that forbid the wearing of armor to the terror of the people. Armored knights scared peasants and judges, because it suggested combat might occur at any moment.

How long Tennessees 1801 law stayed on the books is an interesting question. Simpson v. State (Tenn. 1833) was a Tennessee Supreme Court decision. Simpson was a drunken man who was armed while threatening others. The court concluded that Simpson had broken no law, and there was no mention by either prosecutor or defense attorney of that 1801 law.

Becerra, however, didnt simply make up his citations. The same session laws actually refer to different lawslikely both passed in early America during different sessions of a legislature that occurred in the same year. Instead, what he did was play semantics with words and phrases used at the time and he, it seems to me, intentionally hides the true purpose of law he cites by conflating the various session laws.

Peace Bond LawsAnother set of laws Californias lawyers cited by Becerra included a Massachusetts law that prohibited going armed with a dirk, dagger, sword, pistol or other offensive and dangerous weapon, absent reasonable cause to fear an assault, or other injury, or violence to ... person, or to ... family or property, on pain of being arrested and required to obtain sureties for keeping the peace. What was left out in their quotation? What was missing was that any person having reasonable cause to fear an injury, or breach of the peace could request a judge to order a peace bond. This law was written to be used on specific individuals who were given due process; it wasnt, as Becerra maintains, a sweeping prohibition on the carrying of arms.

Actually, this was sort of like a restraining order is today. You had to persuade a judge that you had reasonable cause to fear an injury from a particular person carrying a weapon. This was not a general ban on carrying a gunit was just for persons who a judge considered a danger to others. The California attorney generals brief listed seven other states with similar laws.

Three of the other state laws they cited were like this Massachusetts law, and all were nearly identical. As with their other citations, the other laws they listed had nothing to do with guns or peace bonds.

The actual Maine statute they claimed was like the others had this title: Resolve in relation to the Military road. Pennsylvanias read: A supplement to the several acts of the Assembly relative to the Pennsylvania State Lunatic Asylum.

It gets even worse when they start citing state Supreme Court decisions; for example, they quote: But the historical evidence shows that in America, as in England, a gun was considered an unusual weapon, citing State v. Huntly, 25 N.C. 418, 422 (1843). That decision actually says on that page: a double-barrelled gun, or any other gun, cannot in this country come under the description of unusual weapons, for there is scarcely a man in the community who does not own and occasionally use a gun of some sort.

The defendant, Huntly, was in court because he had made death threats while armed. The Huntly decision ends with: For any lawful purposeeither of business or amusementthe citizen is at perfect liberty to carry his gun. It is the wicked purposeand the mischievous resultwhich essentially constitute the crime.

Californias lawyers also tried to attribute the carrying of guns in the South to racism and slavery. But gun control has been a mechanism used to keep minorities from becoming fully free members of society.

Becerras brief tells us even in those [Southern] States, open carry was uncommon. (See, e.g., State v. Smith, 11 La. Ann. 633, 634 (1856)) But that is not what Smith says, if you read the whole sentence, not picking two words here and three words there, it says, We must understand the district judge as speaking of weapons as ordinarily worn, and where the partial exposure is the result of accident or want of capacity in the pocket to contain, or clothes fully to cover the weapon, and not to the extremely unusual case of the carrying of such weapon in full open view, and partially covered by the pocket or clothes.

Carrying weapons in full open view was not unusual according to the Smith decision; carrying a weapon in full open view, and partially covered by the pocket or clothes was what was extremely unusual.

Among the methods used, gun-controllers have put up lists of these distortions of laws at seemingly reputable university websites.

Deceptions About RacismCalifornias lawyers also tried to attribute the carrying of guns in the South to racism and slavery. But, as the work of many historians (including by Robert Cottrol and myself) has demonstrated, gun control has been a mechanism used to keep minorities from becoming fully free members of society from colonial times through the civil-rights movement.

Californias history of gun control is awash in racist assumptions. Even Californias current concealed-weapon license law was passed as part of a package of laws, that, in the words of the man who persuaded Gov. Friend William Richardson to sign it, was for checking tong [gang] wars among the Chinese and vendettas among our people who are of Latin descent. At the next election, in 1923, Richardson was endorsed byand refused to answer if he was a member ofthe Ku Klux Klan.

When California wrote its first state constitution in 1850, there was some discussion of whether it should include a right to keep and bear arms, as most state constitutions of that era did. A member of the convention named McCarver argued against it. Another delegate named Sherwood argued that denying an individual the right to bear arms would be null and void, inasmuch as it would be in opposition to the Constitution of the United States, and then quoted the Second Amendment. Sherwood thought an arms guarantee in the California Constitution was unnecessary because the Second Amendment already protected such a right.

Today, McCarver is remembered for another proposal he later made: that blacks would be forever banned from living in California. This was not just a ban on slaves, but free blacks as well.

When California revised its constitution in 1878, the subject came up again. Delegate ODonnell requested this constitutional provision: No alien who cannot become a citizen of the United States shall be allowed to bear arms. Why? Until 1952, no person of East Asian ancestry could become a naturalized citizen. Why add such a provision banning bearing arms by one segment of society if there was no right to bear arms?

In 2009, the California Assembly apologized for these laws. Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 42, July 17, 2009 read in part: Among other things, these laws denied the Chinese in California the right to own land or property, the right to vote and the right to marry a white person, denied children of Chinese descent access to public schools, denied Chinese immigrants the right to bear arms.

As I have said previously, the California attorney generals brief is a falsification of history.

The American Bar Association has Rules of Professional Conduct. Rule 4.1 says, In the course of representing a client a lawyer shall not knowingly: (a) make a false statement of material fact or law to a third person. I am pretty sure that if a pro-Second Amendment lawyer made this many false statements and out-of-context quotes there would be professional discipline. But, it seems, the rules do not apply to the other side.

If you want to read my entire expert witness declaration that corrects these false and deceptive claims with copies of all the documents, visit: claytoncramer.com/Declaration.pdf.

Clayton E. Cramer teaches history at the College of Western Idaho. His hobbies include machining, astronomy and disturbing the California state government. His ninth book is Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The Origins of American Gun Culture.

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Did the Attorney General Of California Really Think He'd Get Away With This? - America's 1st Freedom

Marine Corps veteran Aliscia Andrews will challenge Democratic incumbent Jennifer Wexton in the Nov. 3 election for Virginias 10th Congressional District.

On June 20, Andrews won the final round of voting in the 10th Congressional District Republican convention, securing the GOP nomination. The convention was held outside Shenandoah Universitys James R. Wilkins Jr. Athletics and Events Center.

Andrews received 57.5% of the vote, defeating fellow Republican candidates Jeff Dove, Rob Jones and Matthew Truong.

I think we worked incredibly hard, but so did every campaign that was here today, Andrews said in a phone interview afterward. And I just am so humbled to be the nominee for the 10th District of Virginia.

The convention was held drive-through style, with 1,240 Republican delegates filling out ballots in their own cars and handing them to a volunteer. Voting took place from 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Each delegate ranked their first, second, third and fourth choices. The ranked-choice voting was done to ensure that the Republican nominee for the 10th District race would be supported by a majority of the party, rather than a plurality. The votes were counted inside the Wilkins Center.

In the first round of voting, Rob Jones received 31.67% of the vote, Truong 30.47%, Andrews 27.53% and Dove 10.33%. After Dove was eliminated, the people who supported him had their votes allocated to their second choice. In the second round, Jones had 34.29%, Andrews 33% and Truong 32.67%. After Truong was eliminated and the votes reallocated, Andrews ended up with about 57.5% of the vote, while Rob Jones had 42.5%.

Im ready to start a Wexit movement to ensure that Virginia 10s constituents are represented for the first time in a long time, Andrews said. I genuinely want to thank the men I was up against for running an incredible campaign Rob, Jeff and Matt are incredible competitors. They are just wonderful men and I just am so humbled. And I am just so excited and Im so ready to take the hill.

Wexton has represented the 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2019. She defeated incumbent Republican Barbara Comstock in the 2018 contest by 12.4 percentage points.

The 10th District includes all of Clarke, Frederick and Loudoun counties; the cities of Winchester, Manassas and Manassas Park; and parts of Fairfax and Prince William counties.

Andrews said she stands with President Donald Trump in wanting to build a wall along the U.S.s border with Mexico, close immigration loopholes and secure Americas ports to stop illegal immigration. According to her website, she also stands with law enforcement and border patrol and supports policies that enable them to do their jobs while the far-left demonizes them.

Andrews, who is a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security and Intelligence on border security issues, considers national security a top priority. According to her website, she believes the U.S. should have a fully-funded and operational military, stating that the country needs to maintain military dominance over China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. She also vows to never vote in ways that infringe upon Second Amendment rights to bear arms, and she supports the Virginia counties that want to declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries.

Heather Rice, of Manassas, who was elected to the Republican Partys State Central Committee during Saturdays convention, said there is an understanding among Republican voters that whoever wins, we all will rally behind them. She said the convention had a good turnout, considering the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Im very proud of our party and their participation, Rice said. Weve got really great people participating in this event.

Frederick County Commissioner of the Revenue Seth Thatcher, who voted for Jones, said he will support the GOP nominee.

I dont think theres a bad candidate in the group, Thatcher said. I think the majority of people will fall behind the nominee.

Winchester resident Tony Growden said any of the Republican candidates could easily go up against Jennifer Wexton and defeat her.

Also during the convention, former Loudoun County Supervisor Geary Higgins was named chair of the 10th Congressional District Republican Committee, defeating incumbent Matt Leeds. Mark Sell, Ron Wright and Rice were elected to the Republican Party of Virginias State Central Committee. Ginni Thomas, Jo-Ann Chase and former Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio were made 10th District delegates to the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Phil Griffin, Rice and Wright were made alternate national delegates. Cathy McNickle became 10th District Presidential Elector.

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Aliscia Andrews wins GOP nomination for 10th Congressional District - Loudoun Times-Mirror

The President carried the district in 2016, He's endorsed Scott Taylor in 2020 Republican primary.

NORFOLK, Va. President Donald J.Trump has now weighed in on Tuesday's Virginia Second Congressional District Primary.

He has given his "complete and total endorsement" to Scott Taylor, calling him in a tweet, a "fighter" who is "strong on the border, the military and the second amendment."

"I'm super humbled and appreciative of the President's support, of course," said Taylor.

The other two candidates in the contest have expressed admiration and support for the President.

"I'm supporting Trump on the economy, what he's done on various policies, what he's done around the world," said Ben Loyola. "It's not an apologetic tour. It's an America First tour."

And, said Jarome Bell: "That's one thing you can say about President Trump. He's a straightforward guy. And he's like me. He's a fighter and outsider. He's going to let you know what he's thinking. He's going to let you know where he stands."

Christopher Newport University political analyst Quentin Kidd says whoever wins the primary will do whatever he can to tie himself to Trump heading into the November general election.

"The Republicans who turn out to voter for Donald Trump are going to be energized and excited to vote for Donald Trump," he said. "The Republican candidate in the 2nd Congressional District needs that percentage of voters who vote for Trump to also vote for them.".

In 2016, President Trump carried the second district by 3 percentage points over Hillary Clinton, garnering more than 156,000 votes.

But in 2018, Democrat Elaine Luria defeated the incumbent Republican Congressman Taylor, also by around 3 percentage points; pulling in over 139,000 votes.

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Considering the role of Trump in Virginia's 2nd Congressional District - 13newsnow.com WVEC

EVERETT A man of color said its scary that he has to coach his children on what to do if they are accosted by police.

A white woman recalled how officers needlessly accused her Black boyfriend of having drugs during a traffic stop.

And yet, during four hours of testimony at a Monday night town hall on race and criminal justice, there was disagreement among the more than 50 speakers as to whether institutionalized racism has taken root in Snohomish County.

As a woman of color, looking at a non-colored panel, you cannot tell me that systematic racism does not exist. It does, one speaker, who did not identify herself, told the all-white County Council. You cannot make changes for people of color when you dont know the issues or youre being blinded to the issues.

The town hall comes as a wave of protests nationwide have called for an end to police brutality in the name of George Floyd, who died at the hands of police in Minnesota on May 25, and others whose lives have ended in law enforcements custody.

It highlighted the challenges that the council will face as it attempts to develop policies that promote equity in a county where some people say they live in different realities because of the color of their skin and others dispute that notion.

This is just the first of many steps, Council Chairman Nate Nehring said at the conclusion of the meeting. All of us want to follow through with genuine action.

The council announced the meeting after County Executive Dave Somers unveiled a sweeping racial justice plan, including body cameras, cash bail reform and a community police oversight board. Theres no definite timeline or funding for the county executives plan; Somers has said it will likely take years to bring to fruition and require support from the leaders of county governments two largest law enforcement agencies, Sheriff Adam Fortney and Prosecutor Adam Cornell.

Mondays meeting showed Somers that theres still quite a bit of denial about the racism that exists in the county, the county executive said at a Tuesday morning press briefing.

Weve got a long way to go, he said. Still, I think theres been an awakening, and Im very optimistic that were going to make some really real progress in our county and our community, he added.

Several speakers at the town hall, including Ben Smith, expressed concern about racism against white people.

Smith said he was against Somers proposal to ingrain social justice in county government policies. He said Somers is scared of mob-like protesters who are shouting for change.

Social justice becomes racism. Social justice becomes discrimination, Smith said. Lets continue whats so great about America and try to be colorblind about most things.

Another man, Randy Hayden, called on the county executive to step down. Hayden accused Somers of throwing gas on the fire instead of water by sharing posts on Facebook about white privilege that Hayden said contained false information.

The town halls suggestions for criminal justice reform ranged from shooting unruly protesters with paintball guns to overhauling the public school funding system so that its no longer tied to property tax values.

The Snohomish County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is asking that the county create a community task force to review complaints of excessive force or misconduct by law enforcement, install dashboard cameras in sheriffs office vehicles and implement training programs that teach deputies how to recognize and manage systemic discrimination. Sandra Palmer, one of the branchs executive officers, made those requests after criticizing Fortney for his refusal to enforce Gov. Jay Inslees stay-at-home order amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Palmer also blasted Fortneys decision to clear a deputy of wrongdoing after the deputy tackled a Black woman accused of jaywalking.

Sheriffs Office personnel are required to attend two hours of crisis intervention training every year, plus additional instruction related to using force and preventing harassment and discrimination, a council staffer said at the beginning of the meeting.

Several people said two hours was not enough time.

Some called on the council to redistribute sheriffs office funds to other programs and social services that promote community well-being.

Those suggestions echoed demands that a group of public defenders made on June 8 when they called on the council to allot half of the sheriffs office budget to housing, counseling and other social services.

Advocates have made similar requests to defund law enforcement in cities across the United States. They say social workers and other specialists are better suited than police to deal with 911 calls related to issues such as mental health and domestic disputes.

We need to shift these funds from the police department to actually deal with the root causes that people call 911 for which is homelessness and housing and social services for mental health and health in general for people, Lynnwood resident Yolimar Rivera Vazquez told the council. People of colors lived experience is being erased by other peoples comments. You really need to look beyond that.

Attendees alluded to events that recently unfolded in Snohomish, when armed vigilantes lined the historic downtown in what some say was an attempt to protect local boutiques from alleged leftist looting threats that never materialized. One of the self-appointed guards waved a Confederate flag, and some wore apparel blazoning hate group symbols.

A few people who spoke during Mondays meeting defended the vigilantes.

It didnt look violent at all while we were there, said Dave Goldsmith, a Snohomish resident, who added that he was against violating the Second Amendment gun rights of those on Snohomishs First Street.

Others, though, called for a deeper investigation into the incident and any involvement by hate groups.

Brittany Tri, an attorney who lives in Everett, stressed the need for fundamental criminal justice reform, beyond additional training for officers.

We have to modify the entire system, not just individual officers actions, Tri said. This is not about weeding out bad eggs or individual racists in the system. This is a system that we have seen consistently brutalizes people of color, people in poverty.

The meeting, which was originally slated for 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., continued until 10 p.m. It drew several hundred viewers.

Rachel Riley: 425-339-3465; rriley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @rachel_m_riley.

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County town hall shows schism over whether racism is here - The Daily Herald

The Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on Monday notified the Substantial Acquisition of Shares And Takeovers (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2020.

The Board seeks to amend the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations, 2011.

In regulation 10 a new sub-regulation (2A), any acquisition of shares or voting rights or control of the target company by way of the preferential issue in compliance with regulation 164A of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2018 shall be exempt from the obligation to make an open offer under sub-regulation (1) of regulation 3 and regulation 4, shall be inserted.

The exemption from the open offer shall also apply to the target company with infrequently traded shares which is compliant with the provisions of sub-regulations (2), (3), (4), (5),(6), (7) and (8) of regulation 164A of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2018. The pricing of such infrequently traded shares shall be in terms of regulation 165 of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2018, the notification explained.

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SEBI notifies Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2020 - taxscan.in