A man has confessed to killing an American scientist on the Greek island of Crete, police said on Tuesday. The police said in a statement that a 27-year-old local man “motivated by sexual satisfaction” and frustrated with his own life ran Suzanne Eaton down with his car before raping her and then abandoning her body in a cave.
“Forensic evidence showed suffocation as a cause of death. Further forensic examination presented that the body had many broken ribs face bones and multiple injuries at both hands,” Crete Police Major Eleni Papathanasiou told reporters on Tuesday.
The suspect told police he spotted Eaton out walking on July 2 near the town of Chania, as she took a break between events at a conference on the island that she was attending for the fourth time.
The man said, according to the police, that he hit her twice with his car to render her unconscious before placing her into his trunk to transfer to the abandoned WWII-era bunker, which he entered via a ventilation shaft. It was not clear exactly when or where the sexual assault took place before the suspect abandoned Eaton in the cave. Police have said previously that they believe she was already deceased when she was left in the cave.
After leaving her body, the suspect blocked the entrance of the cave ventilation shaft with a wooden palette and then went to a nearby graveyard, “where he carefully cleaned the trunk of his car from evidence and other forensic findings,” Papathanasiou said.
The police said that after questioning several individuals, the suspect was brought in for questioning on Monday and he “provided too many conflicting answers, and under the light of the collected evidence, he confessed his crime.”
CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reports the suspect is facing criminal charges over the murder and was expected to appear before a prosecutor later on Tuesday.
Eaton, a 59-year-old molecular biologist, was attending the conference when she went missing on July 2. Her body was found on July 8 in the system of man-made caves once used by the Nazis during the German occupation of Crete. Amateur cavers helping in the wide-spread search effort found her body and alerted police.
Eaton was from California but living and working in Germany when she was killed. She was the mother of two sons and married to a British scientist.
Her family members have left Crete to return to their home in Germany, but were closely following the case. They’ve said they want the world to remember her as an acclaimed scientist, talented athlete, musician and beloved mother.
Was Trump’s tweet about Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, progressive Democrats racist? panel reaction and analysis on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’
President Trump fired back Tuesday at the four freshman congresswomen who denounced his administration and renewed calls for his impeachment at a rare joint press conference, claiming Democrats have given them a “free pass” for their “vile” language and challenging colleagues to rebuke them.
House Democrats, in fact, are planning to formally rebuke Trump for weekend tweets urging those same lawmakers to “go back” to where they came from — though all but one of them was born in America. But the president, while refusing to back down from his statements, has sought to chastise Democrats for rallying to the side of those lawmakers.
“The Democratic Congresswomen have been spewing some of the most vile, hateful, and disgusting things ever said by a politician in the House or Senate, & yet they get a free pass and a big embrace from the Democrat Party,” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “Horrible anti-Israel, anti-USA, pro-terrorist & public shouting of the F…word, among many other terrible things, and the petrified Dems run for the hills.”
He added: “Why isn’t the House voting to rebuke the filthy and hate laced things they have said? Because they are the Radical Left, and the Democrats are afraid to take them on. Sad!”
The lawmakers he’s referring to are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley.
All four congresswomen held a press conference on Monday to address the president’s prior statements against them. Omar described Trump’s rhetoric as “garbage,” accused him of carrying out “the agenda of white nationalists,” and said his remarks were a “blatantly racist attack on four duly elected members of the United States House of Representatives, all of whom are women of color.”
Tlaib said Trump was running a “lawless” administration and joined her colleagues in calling for his impeachment.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who until recently was engaged in a public war of words with the “Squad” freshmen, has in the wake of the controversy called for a resolution to condemn Trump’s comments, which she labeled as “xenophobic.” This is expected to be considered Tuesday.
Omar previously has been criticized by prominent members of both parties for making remarks widely deemed anti-Semitic. The House failed to pass a resolution condemning her directly, instead altering the message to condemn hate in general, including from the right.
During Monday’s press conference, Omar defended herself, saying, “Every single statement that we make is from a place of extreme love for every single person in this country.”
Trump’s reference Tuesday to profane language was likely related to Tlaib’s famous vow to “impeach the motherf—–.”
Trump’s accusation that the Democratic establishment is reluctant to take any action against the four congresswomen follows several days of ugly comments between party members. After Pelosi dismissed them as just being “four people” who “didn’t have any following” in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez accused the speaker of targeting women of color.
The internal feuding only paused when Trump posted his tweets about those lawmakers Sunday morning — saying the “Democrat Congresswomen” should go back and fix the “corrupt” and “crime infested places” they came from and then “come back and show us how it’s done.”
Some bystanders captured video of the attack on their cellphones, recording Mr. Garner as he gasped “I can’t breathe,” dying words that became a rallying cry for protesters across the nation.
His death was one of several fatal encounters between black people and the police, including the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a month later, that catalyzed the national Black Lives Matter movement.
Prosecutors did a “rigorous analysis” of the event, but in the end they did not believe they had enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Pantaleo committed a crime, a senior Justice Department official said on Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to speak on the record.
To prove criminal conduct, the official said, the government had to convince a jury that in the middle of a dynamic arrest Officer Pantaleo made a clear decision in his mind to apply a chokehold, a burden prosecutors did not believe they could meet, the official said.
None of the New York officers involved in Mr. Garner’s death have been charged with a crime or disciplined by the Police Department, a fact that has enraged the Garner family and various advocacy groups devoted to holding the police accountable for abuses of power.
Mr. Garner’s family members — including his mother, Gwen Carr, and his widow, Esaw Snipes — were scheduled to meet with federal prosecutors and the Rev. Al Sharpton on Tuesday morning, according to a statement from Mr. Sharpton. Prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York were scheduled to announce the decision after that meeting.
Amazon’s rivals are enjoying a Prime Day bump in sales, Adobe…
On Monday, the first day of Amazon’s 48-hour shopping extravaganza this year, retailers that make more than $1 billion in annual revenues saw a 64% increase in their digital…
A man has confessed to killing an American scientist on the Greek island of Crete, police said on Tuesday. The police said in a statement that a 27-year-old local man “motivated by sexual satisfaction” and frustrated with his own life ran Suzanne Eaton down with his car before raping her and then abandoning her body in a cave.
“Forensic evidence showed suffocation as a cause of death. Further forensic examination presented that the body had many broken ribs face bones and multiple injuries at both hands,” Crete Police Major Eleni Papathanasiou told reporters on Tuesday.
The suspect told police he spotted Eaton out walking on July 2 near the town of Chania, as she took a break between events at a conference on the island that she was attending for the fourth time.
The man said, according to the police, that he hit her twice with his car to render her unconscious before placing her into his trunk to transfer to the abandoned WWII-era bunker, which he entered via a ventilation shaft. It was not clear exactly when or where the sexual assault took place before the suspect abandoned Eaton in the cave. Police have said previously that they believe she was already deceased when she was left in the cave.
After leaving her body, the suspect blocked the entrance of the cave ventilation shaft with a wooden palette and then went to a nearby graveyard, “where he carefully cleaned the trunk of his car from evidence and other forensic findings,” Papathanasiou said.
The police said that after questioning several individuals, the suspect was brought in for questioning on Monday and he “provided too many conflicting answers, and under the light of the collected evidence, he confessed his crime.”
CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reports the suspect is facing criminal charges over the murder and was expected to appear before a prosecutor later on Tuesday.
Eaton, a 59-year-old molecular biologist, was attending the conference when she went missing on July 2. Her body was found on July 8 in the system of man-made caves once used by the Nazis during the German occupation of Crete. Amateur cavers helping in the wide-spread search effort found her body and alerted police.
Eaton was from California but living and working in Germany when she was killed. She was the mother of two sons and married to a British scientist.
Her family members have left Crete to return to their home in Germany, but were closely following the case. They’ve said they want the world to remember her as an acclaimed scientist, talented athlete, musician and beloved mother.
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea on Tuesday suggested it might call off its 20-month suspension of nuclear and missile tests because of summertime U.S.-South Korean military drills that the North calls preparation for an eventual invasion.
The statement by the North’s Foreign Ministry comes amid a general deadlock in nuclear talks, but after an extraordinary meeting of the U.S. and North Korean leaders at the Korean border raised hopes that negotiations on the North’s growing nuclear and missile arsenal would soon resume.
Story Continued Below
The statement serves as a reminder of North Korea’s longstanding antipathy toward U.S.-South Korean military cooperation, which the allies call defensive and routine but the North sees as hostile. It also ramps up the pressure on the United States going into any new round of talks.
At the dramatic June 30 meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, Trump crossed the border dividing the North and South, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korean territory. The leaders agreed in closed-door talks to resume nuclear diplomacy that had been stalled since their failed second summit in Vietnam in February.
Despite the seeming mini-breakthrough, there has been little public progress since. North Korea wants widespread relief from harsh U.S.-led sanctions in return for pledging to give up parts of its weapons program, but the United States is demanding greater steps toward disarmament before it agrees to relinquish the leverage provided by the sanctions.
Amid the diplomatic jockeying, North Korea said Tuesday that upcoming regular summertime U.S.-South Korean military drills are forcing it to rethink whether it should be committed to the promises it has made to the United States. It cited its moratorium on nuclear and missile tests and other steps aimed at improving ties with Washington.
The statement said Trump vowed to suspend military drills with South Korea during his first and third meetings with Kim, but the planned summertime drills with Seoul and the deployment of weapons in the South show that Washington is not fulfilling that promise.
“With the U.S. unilaterally reneging on its commitments, we are gradually losing our justifications to follow through on the commitments we made with the U.S. as well,” said the statement, carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
It also said it is not bound by any legal documents to suspend its nuclear and missile tests.
Since it conducted the third of its three intercontinental ballistic missile tests in November 2017, North Korea hasn’t tested any long-range missiles potentially capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. After entering talks with Washington, Kim suspended nuclear and long-range missile tests, allowing Trump to boast of winning an achievement in his North Korea policy.
Later Tuesday, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued another statement warning that it will wait to see if the U.S.-South Korea military drills take place as planned to decide on the fate of North Korea-U.S. nuclear diplomacy.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the country’s main spy agency, told lawmakers in a private briefing Tuesday that there were no suspicious activities at North Korea’s main long-range rocket launch site in the northwest and its missile research center on the outskirts of Pyongyang, according to Kim Min-ki, one of the lawmakers who attended the briefing.
Outside experts say North Korea has suggested that it could further put off or cancel the resumption of nuclear talks if the United States doesn’t offer to accept its calls for a slow, step-by-step nuclear disarmament process or widespread sanctions relief. But some analysts say North Korea will eventually return to the talks because Kim wants cooperation with outside powers as part of a plan to revive his country’s troubled economy.
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello says he will not step down following the publication of private chat messages laden with misogynist and homophobic language.
Evan Vucci/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Evan Vucci/AP
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello says he will not step down following the publication of private chat messages laden with misogynist and homophobic language.
On Monday evening, thousands of demonstrators gathered near Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s mansion. Late in the evening, things took a turn when police in riot gear who’d formed a line blocking access to the executive mansion shot pepper spray and tear gas into the crowd.
It was the third consecutive day of demonstrations as marchers in the streets of the capital chanted, “Ricky Resign!” The island’s police commissioner later stated at a press conference that the demonstrators were throwing rocks and improvised gas canisters at police.
The outrage follows the publication of nearly 900 pages of profane and offensive private text messages between the governor and members of his inner circle. They show Rosselló and top officials in his administration repeatedly used sexist, homophobic and other distasteful language to insult women and political opponents. They also reveal discussions about how to manipulate public opinion and efforts to discredit the work of a federal police monitor and journalists critical of Rosselló’s administration.
The messages were published by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism on Saturday. Since then many of the Rosselló’s political allies have withdrawn their support.
While two of Rosselló’s top officials stepped down this weekend, the governor said it is in the island’s best interest for him to stay on. According to CBS, he also indicated he plans to run for a second term in November 2020.
“I’ve asked everyone for forgiveness,” Rosselló said in Spanish during an interview on the radio show Nacion Z.
But much of the public has not been in a forgiving mood. And Rosselló’s mea culpas have done little to assuage feelings of betrayal, anger and frustration over the leaders’ callous attitudes and repeated corruption scandals that have plagued the island.
“The time has come for us to take the streets,” said Mildred Diaz, a retired school teacher. “Enough of this abuse from our government, from this corrupt governor.”
Diaz said the dissemination of the remarks have led an “awakening,” pushing people past a breaking point. “In these last three or four days I’ve seen people angrier and more indignant than I’ve seen in a long time.”
Aggravating matters for Rosselló is the timing of the scandal. Last week, two former officials in his administration were arrested by the FBI on fraud charges for allegedly steering $15 million in contracts to friends and political allies.
Miosotis Cortes said she and her partner have been taking turns reading the text messages out loud to each other. They consider it their patriotic duty. So far, she said, they are about 400 pages into the tome.
As they slog through the offensive chats, she said the worst part is seeing how the governor and his coterie sneer at the many struggles facing Puerto Ricans. In one text, the governor’s chief financial officer cracks a joke about the dead bodies that piled up in a government facility before and after 2017’s Hurricane Maria.
“You can see that our politicians lack humanity,” Cortes said. “They lack decency.”
The publication of the texts has unleashed a visceral wave of fury and indignation that many Puerto Ricans feel over the direction the island is taking. Puerto Rico is in the 13th year of a recession and in massive debt. The governor and a federal control board have slashed public services and moved to privatize public assets, including the power grid, schools and roadways. Many people fear these policies will widen the gap between the island’s rich and poor.
Legislative leaders decided Sunday night to give Rosselló some time for “introspection.”
Speaking on the radio Monday morning, the governor admitted his credibility has been battered by the scandal. But he insisted, “I have to lift myself up. And I have to move forward to do what’s best for Puerto Rico.”
Watching the four-woman “squad” respond to President Trump’s already famous Tweets urging “progressive” Democrats to “go back” to their “original countries,” one wonders why Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts would want to be lumped in with the other three.
Pressley’s remarks were standard-issue liberal, but restrained and dignified in the face of Trump’s out-of-bounds comments. The other three Democrats handled the situation very differently, combining mendacity, smears, and radicalism in ways with which Pressley should not want to be associated.
Pressley never even used the words “racist” or “racism.” Using the words correctly, she accused Trump of making remarks that were “xenophobic and bigoted.” That’s a far cry from, and much more defensible than, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota accusing Trump of “white supremacy” and of an agenda of a “white nationalist.”
Omar also repeated the accusation, without a shred of proof, that children detained at the U.S.-Mexican border are being forced to drink water from toilets. She repeated, against all known proof so far, that there is “credible” evidence that Trump “colluded” illegally with a foreign country. And, without offering a single example of Trump having committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” she called for the president to be impeached. All of those claims or suggestions are completely without foundation.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan also called for impeachment. Like Omar, Tlaib offered no specific allegation that would amount to an impeachable offense. This is irresponsible. The impeachment-and-removal process is serious business. General obnoxiousness, of which Trump is certainly guilty, is far from an ordinarily acceptable reason for removal from office.
Then there was the noted publicity hound Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who throws around balderdash like a toddler throwing strained peas. Not content to blast the president alone, she accused his secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, of working with Trump to turn the nation’s education system into a corrupt “cash cow” for their own enrichment. That’s slander, pure and simple. She also accused Trump of believing that Americans do not deserve healthcare. This is, well, risible.
All in all, even when appearing to try to keep their remarks somewhat restrained, Reps. Tlaib, Omar, and Ocasio-Cortez showed why their radicalism has made them deeply unpopular with the American public. That’s all the more reason for Pressley, who even in pointed remarks still stayed within ordinary bounds of civil discourse, to speak on her own without associating herself with the three rabble-rousers.
INYO COUNTY, Calif. (KABC) — The family of a Huntington Beach hiker who was found Monday, four days after she vanished in the Inyo National Forest, says she was chased by a man with a knife.
Her husband said she went to take their dog for a walk while he moved their Jeep the day she went missing. The woman strayed away when a man who appeared to have been hiding out in the area went after her down a hill, wielding a knife.
Powell’s family said she thought the man was chasing her.
Powell, who is described as an experienced hiker, traveled at night to avoid dehydration. She also managed to find water and a cactus to eat, but after a certain point, she couldn’t walk any further.
Ground search teams used aerial reconnaissance and thermal imaging to find her.
Searchers described Powell as “resilient and strong but exhausted” after being lost for days in an extremely remote area, according to the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office. She was transported to a local hospital for medical clearance. She’s expected to be released in a few days.
The dog, Miley, was found Monday morning about 2 miles from where Sheryl went missing, authorities said.
“Everything happened so fast. We’re so happy,” said daughter Farrah Powell.
The hiker’s children thanked everyone who helped find their mom, and they thanked the community for their support.
“Nothing counts. Nothing in the world counts anymore,” the hiker’s husband said. “This is a miracle of miracles.”
But there were also signs of trouble. In 2015, a lawsuit accusing Ms. Maxwell of complicity in Mr. Epstein’s abuses drew news media attention. In 2016, the Upper East Side townhouse where she had resided was sold and she disappeared from New York’s party circuit. The next year, her lawyers claimed she was in London but said they did not know her address, angering a judge overseeing another lawsuit against her. Last weekend — just a week after the new charges brought by New York federal prosecutors against Mr. Epstein became public — Ms. Maxwell’s nonprofit, the TerraMar Project, shut down. The website posted a message saying it was “sad to announce that it will cease all operations.”
An old friend, Christopher Mason, drew a connection between the scandals that Ms. Maxwell has been caught up in — the first involving her father, whose life ended in disgrace, and the second that of Mr. Epstein, the most defining male figure in her adult life.
“Her father was a swashbuckling rogue,” Mr. Mason said in an interview. “Jeffrey had a less social persona, but he was in his way swashbuckling, too.”
A Financial Resurrection
She grew up in a 53-room mansion in Buckinghamshire, where childhood activities included sailing on a family yacht named the Lady Ghislaine and rubbing shoulders with aristocrats and royals. Her father, Robert Maxwell, was a Czech-born World War II hero who founded Pergamon Press, an extremely successful publishing house for science and medical books. After that, he bought British tabloids, including The Mirror, as well as a stake in MTV Europe and the American publishing giant Macmillan.
Ms. Maxwell was the youngest of his nine children and, if the name of his yacht is any indication, a favorite. She attended Oxford and moved to New York in 1991, around the time her father bought The Daily News.
But later that year, her father tumbled off his boat and died in the midst of mounting debt, and it was shortly revealed that he had pillaged his employees’ pensions. With much of her family’s publishing empire gone, Ms. Maxwell moved into a modest Upper East Side apartment.
Asylum-seekers who arrive at the southern border and claim to be LGBT are exempt from the U.S.-Mexico “Remain in Mexico” policy and will not be returned to Mexico to await decisions by U.S. immigration judges, several U.S. border officials told the Washington Examiner.
“Mexican immigration is not taking anybody back into Mexico under the MPP [Migration Protection Protocols] program that’s identifying as part of the LGBT community. If they say they’re gay or bisexual, any of those, Mexico won’t take them back,” one official said.
Rank-and-file officers working at ports of entry as well as agents who process asylum-seekers who have illegally crossed from Mexico and are to be returned south of the border are well aware asylum-seekers who identify as LGBT are not eligible for the program, according to three senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection and National Border Patrol Council officials.
The first official suggested the department has kept it hush-hush out of fear non-LGBT people would attempt to exploit the loophole to gain immediate entry because “there is no standard — no way to prove” a person’s claim is true or false.
“They really don’t want that to get out. And I would imagine the Mexican government doesn’t want that to get out either,” the first official said. “As soon as everybody has figured out to say, ‘I am gay,’ then I would imagine that that dirty little secret would be used.”
A senior border official said there was no known written proof of the exemption and suggested it was intentionally withheld from documents so that the public did not learn about it. The official said the U.S. implemented the policy not because Mexico did not want to accept LGBT people but because that population would be at greater risk of personal harm if forced to remain in the country.
“If the policy exists, it would make sense. The MPP is and will undergo a number of legal challenges, and if we return individuals whom we know are vulnerable to Mexico and they are harmed, the MPP will face more court challenges which could be harmful to the program. Again, nothing confirmed, and I’m not aware of any such cases, but the rumor is making the rounds,” a senior border official shared with the Washington Examiner Monday evening.
The official public three-page description of MPP by Homeland Security makes no mention of this specific exempted class or any other group that is not allowed to return south of the border. Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
A separate internal list of exempted classes provided to the Washington Examiner outlines more than a handful of exempted people Mexico will not take back, but does not mention people who are LGBT.
“Aliens in the following categories are NOT amenable to the MPP: UACs [Unaccompanied Alien Children]; Mexican Citizens/Nationals; Aliens processed for ERs [Expedited Removals]; Aliens in special circumstances such as known physical (including pregnancy) or mental health issues; criminals/history of violence; or Government of Mexico or U.S. Government interest; or Other aliens at the discretion of the CPA [Chief Patrol Agent],” the document states.
Mexico also will not receive back any person with a medical issue.
Up until December, existing policy mandated any person who arrived at a port of entry and passed a credible fear screening for asylum could stay in the U.S. while his or her claim made its way through the legal system and was eventually decided by a federal immigration judge, which can take two to five years.
As illegal crossings at the southern border increased each month through late 2018, the Trump administration worked with Mexico to find a way to prevent people from being allowed into the country while their claims were considered.
Six months ago, both countries announced the MPP, which would require migrants who make a claim at select ports of entry, or border crossings, to return to Mexico until their asylum adjudication date.
The program was aimed at Central Americans, who comprised 90% of those apprehended at the border in fiscal 2019.
At a ceremony Monday at the White House, President Trump defended his racist tweets against Democratic lawmakers. The language used in that tweet has a long history connected with nativist political movements in the U.S.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
At a ceremony Monday at the White House, President Trump defended his racist tweets against Democratic lawmakers. The language used in that tweet has a long history connected with nativist political movements in the U.S.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
When President Trump tweeted his racist remarks Sunday, asking why certain Democratic congresswomen don’t just “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he did not just take aim at the four young women of color — three of whom were actually born in the U.S.
He did so using a taunt that has long, deeply entrenched roots in American history: Why don’t you just go back where you came from?
The question doesn’t always appear in those precise words, nor does it always surface in the same situations. And it doesn’t always get directed at the same groups of people — far from it, in fact. But more often than not, it conveys the same sentiment: You — and others like you — are not welcome here.
“There have been different phrases that have been used,” says Michael Cornfield, a scholar of rhetoric at George Washington University, “but the idea that we don’t have any more room for people, or those people don’t look like us, this is a long, ugly strain in American history.”
Jennifer Wingard, a University of Houston professor who has looked at rhetoric and immigrant communities, traces this sentiment at least to 1798, when the U.S. passed a series of laws — together known as the the Alien and Sedition Acts — that were aimed at making citizenship more difficult for immigrants and deportation easier for U.S. authorities to carry out.
“The legislation is actually constructed for the ability to remove immigrants who are saying things against the U.S. government,” she says, explaining that these laws were passed in a tumultuous political climate.
“We were starting to see different political parties and different politicians arguing for different ways that the government should be run. And it just happened that politically, they could try to maintain and try to withhold the status quo by putting it on the backs of immigrants.”
Those laws established a pattern, she says, which would resurface with new waves of immigration and new perceived threats — from the Great Famine in Ireland and the Spanish-American War, to the Great Depression and the attacks on Sept. 11.
This cartoon, published around 1855, reflects the pervasive anti-Catholic sentiment of the era — perhaps best epitomized by the rise of the Know-Nothings, a nativist political party. Here, Catholics, led by the pope, are depicted as an invading force of foreigners, rebuffed by an Uncle Sam who likens them to the anti-Christ.
Nathaniel Currier/Library of Congress
hide caption
toggle caption
Nathaniel Currier/Library of Congress
This cartoon, published around 1855, reflects the pervasive anti-Catholic sentiment of the era — perhaps best epitomized by the rise of the Know-Nothings, a nativist political party. Here, Catholics, led by the pope, are depicted as an invading force of foreigners, rebuffed by an Uncle Sam who likens them to the anti-Christ.
Nathaniel Currier/Library of Congress
“Every wave of immigration that gets in sees the next wave as the threat. That is the wave that is now going to take the jobs, that is now going to take things away,” Wingard says. “The latest flow in is always the one that seems the most threatening.”
Alan Kraut, a scholar at American University who is writing a history of anti-immigrant feeling in the U.S., says he saw this kind of thing play out firsthand when he was a child growing up in the Bronx.
“When kids had a fight in the street and the kids were from different ethnic groups, one kid would often say to the other: ‘You and your parents go back where you came from,’ ” Kraut recalls.
“You know, it could mean Brooklyn. But it could also mean go back where you came from — you know, Russian Jews who came to the United States, southern Italians who came to the United States, Puerto Ricans newly arrived,” he continues. “So when this came out of the mouth of this president who’s from Queens, it sounded almost like a child saying that in my memory on the streets of New York.”
The process renews often, Wingard says, and she says the sentiment remains steady even if the names of the targeted groups change.
A cartoon, published in 1891, titled “Where the Blame Lies.” In it, a man gestures toward a crowd of immigrants — including the “German socialist,” “Italian brigand,” “English convict,” etc. The gesturing man tells a sagging Uncle Sam: “If Immigration was properly Restricted you would no longer be troubled with Anarchy, Socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!”
Sackett & Wilhelms Litho. Co./Library of Congress
hide caption
toggle caption
Sackett & Wilhelms Litho. Co./Library of Congress
A cartoon, published in 1891, titled “Where the Blame Lies.” In it, a man gestures toward a crowd of immigrants — including the “German socialist,” “Italian brigand,” “English convict,” etc. The gesturing man tells a sagging Uncle Sam: “If Immigration was properly Restricted you would no longer be troubled with Anarchy, Socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!”
Sackett & Wilhelms Litho. Co./Library of Congress
“There’s a fancy theoretical term — it’s called a palimpsest,” says Jennifer Wingard, a rhetoric scholar at the University of Houston. A palimpsest, she explains, is a text that has been erased and overwritten — but that nevertheless continues to bear many of the markings and meanings largely concealed beneath the new writing.
“They carry these sentiments that we have seen over centuries, but then they get repurposed for the current moment — and a phrase like that [racist taunt] becomes almost like a shorthand for anti-immigrant sentiment,” Wingard says. “You know, ‘go back where you came from’ is the same as ‘go back to your own country’ is the same as ‘you are not allowed here’ is the same as ‘no immigrants allowed.’ Yet it carries all of this historical shorthand with it.”
Cornfield says it’s partly the statement’s variability that makes it so powerful.
“It plays to the fear that somehow America is getting too full or that the mixing of ethnicities and races would somehow aggravate issues,” he says. “It’s a potent phrase and part of its potency is its ambiguity.”
Its simplicity, too.
“When you use a phrase like this, you’re just asking people to forget about context and forget about policy choices,” he adds, “and just get angry at people who don’t look or sound like you do.”
A group of Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft sit on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on March 13, 2019, after the jet was grounded by U.S. regulators. (Ralph Freso/Getty Images)
A new lawsuit alleges that Boeing and Southwest Airlines endangered public safety by colluding to hide a design flaw in the 737 Max jet.
“This action seeks to hold Southwest and Boeing responsible for their reckless, greedy conspiracy to launch the defective 737 Max 8 and to keep it flying,” says the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
The suit was filed on behalf of nearly a dozen passengers who traveled on a 737 Max between Aug. 29, 2017 and March 13, 2019, the date the planes were grounded in the wake of fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people.
“We intend to vigorously defend against the claims in the filing and strongly believe that the allegations made are completely without merit,” Southwest said in a statement. “Safety has always been Southwest’s most important responsibility to both our Customers and our Employees and we stand ready to fully comply with all requirements to safely return the Max aircraft to service.”
Officials at Boeing declined to comment on the suit.
The lawsuit alleges that Southwest is profitable in part because of its “collusive relationship with codefendent The Boeing Company (“Boeing”).” It said that because Southwest’s entire fleet consists of Boeing-built airplanes the company enjoys a special relationship with the aviation giant.
Southwest has 34 of the 737 Max 8 jets in its fleet of about 750 planes, the most of any U.S. carrier. The airline has canceled flights on the aircraft through Oct. 1.
Some of the allegations in the lawsuit, mirror other legal claims against Boeing, including those filed by victims’ families, who allege that the manufacturer failed to warn pilots and the public about issues with an automated anti-stall system known as the maneuvering characteristics augmentation system or MCAS. Preliminary investigations into both the Oct. 29, crash of a Lion Air flight and the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight point to a malfunction with MCAS as a factor in both crashes.
The lawyers, who filed the suit on behalf of plaintiffs who reside in several states including, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New York and Nevada, are seeking a jury trial. All the plaintiffs said they would not have purchased tickets had they known about the dangers posed by the aircraft.
After eight years of pro-choice judges, increased abortion funding, and terrible policymaking by President Barack Obama’s administration, pro-lifers had reason to be hopeful when a Republican entered the White House in 2017. But two and a half years into Trump’s presidency, an honest analysis shows that his record on abortion isn’t exactly impeccable.
Let’s start with the good. Yes, Trump reenacted the Mexico City Policy, which forbids the use of federal funding for abortion overseas. His administration also recently stopped funding aborted fetal tissue research, and he is attempting to cut about $60 million in Title X funding to Planned Parenthood. According to Ballotpedia,Trump has confirmed 127 judges to federal judgeships, and these judges surely have a much stronger pro-life bent under his administration than they would have under Hillary Clinton’s.
But is there anything remarkable about any of this? This seems like the bare minimum for a solid pro-life policy agenda, not something deserving of brownie points or special admiration. Furthermore, these policies are not unique to the Trump administration by any means.
Every Republican administration since President Ronald Reagan’s has enforced the Mexico City Policy. The advance of embryonic stem cell research and aborted fetal tissue research began with Obama, who reversed President George W. Bush’s much more pro-life position on the issue. And as far as Planned Parenthood funding goes, Trump is actually worse than all his predecessors.
On the campaign trail, Trump did say he would defund Planned Parenthood. But despite having a Republican Congress for two years, Planned Parenthood has not been defunded, nor has its funding gone down, nor has the funding even remained stagnant. On Trump’s watch, Planned Parenthood funding has gone up and reached an all-time high of $563.8 million per year. If Trump is successful in reallocating Title X money, he would be on par with the Obama administration for Planned Parenthood funding. No honest conservative believes that’s something to brag about.
Additionally, few serious conservatives actually believe Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s most recent Supreme Court appointee, will overturn Roe v. Wade. Pro-lifers wanted Trump to nominate Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett last summer instead, and Trump disappointed with a more moderate choice.
Despite Trump’s inability to gain new ground in the abortion battle, many pro-life organizations sing his praises unconditionally, and conservative pundits such as Charlie Kirk have called him the “most pro-life President in US history.” Why?
Trump’s abortion policy looks better than it really is because it’s juxtaposed with that of Obama and 2020 Democrats running for president. Compared to candidates who want taxpayers directly funding abortion, any reasonable person looks fairly pro-life. The most pro-choice adversary President George W. Bush and his predecessors were compared to was President Bill Clinton, who said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare,” a far more moderate position than that of today’s Democratic Party.
Many pro-life organizations sing Trump’s praises because honest criticism of Trump could turn off big donors who love him, and thus decrease the funding these organizations can use to do great pro-life work. They’re in a bit of a pickle, and it’s sort of understandable why they tend to give a one-sided picture of Trump’s abortion policies.
But it’s still important to call balls and strikes on this issue and every other. Pro-lifers should certainly be glad Trump won the White House rather than Hillary Clinton, but it’s still crucial to be honest: Trump is no pro-life hero.
“The administration has been trying to fight against asylum at the southern border for a long time now and if they are able to get away with this regulation, they have effectively ended it for the vast majority of the population that we see applying for asylum at the southern border,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told NBC News.
On Monday morning, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced that they would move to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants and other asylum-seekers coming to the southern border in the latest attempt to restrict the influx of migrant families coming to the United States.
The rule is set to publish in the Federal Register on Tuesday and would be effective immediately. It states that asylum-seekers who pass through another country before reaching the U.S. and do not attempt and fail to seek asylum there will not be eligible for the protection, according to a statement from the two departments.
Keren Zwick, a litigator with the National Immigrant Justice Center, said in a news teleconference Monday afternoon that the rule was the administration’s “most egregious attack on the asylum system” to date.
Charanya Krishnaswami, advocacy director for the Americas for Amnesty International, said on the call the rule would “fundamentally eviscerate the right to territorial asylum in the United States.”
Meanwhile, Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, told NBC News she believed the rule was the “most extreme” against asylum by the Trump administration.
Several advocacy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, quickly vowed to challenge the rule in court. In the past, federal judges have blocked other attempts by the administration to change the asylum policy, most notably the president’s effort to deny the protection to anyone who did not enter the U.S. through a legal port of entry.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said in the statement Monday morning that the rule “will help reduce a major ‘pull’ factor driving irregular migration to the United States and enable DHS and DOJ to more quickly and efficiently process cases originating from the southern border, leading to fewer individuals transiting through Mexico on a dangerous journey.”
Attorney General William Barr called the interim final rule a “lawful exercise of authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum.”
The departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on criticism of the rule and threats to challenge it in court.
The rule has three limited exceptions, criteria which advocates said would be highly difficult for migrants to meet. The exceptions were for migrants who applied for protection in at least one other country before the U.S. and were denied, migrants who can show they meet the definition of a “victim of a severe form of trafficking in persons,” or migrants who came to the U.S. through countries which are not parties to three international treaties regarding asylum and refugees.
Pierce said based on the language of the rule, “tens of thousands” of migrants already waiting in Mexico to legally seek asylum at a port of entry could be affected. The Trump administration’s policy of restricting how many people can enter a port of entry to seek asylum in a day, known as “metering,” has resulted in migrants waiting weeks or months in border cities across Mexico before they are allowed to make their claims.
“As of tomorrow, those individuals will likely no longer qualify if they haven’t first applied for asylum in Mexico and been denied,” she said.
The departments released the language of the rule Monday ahead of its publication.
The rule said that the new bar does not restrict the ability of migrants to seek two other forms of protection, withholding or deferral of removal and protection under the Convention against Torture.
But Pierce said that meant the migrants would be subjected to much more difficult standards “to get far less of a benefit” than asylum, such as not being able to petition for relatives to come to the U.S. She added that withholding of removal was a “very limited benefit” where while the U.S. says it will not deport you, “you don’t actually have legal status.”
Advocates also said the asylum processing system in countries such as Mexico and Guatemala were highly underresourced and unprepared to take on an influx of asylum claims.
Mexico was already expected to receive around 60,000 applications for asylum in 2019, much higher than the year before, Christopher Wilson, the deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, said.
“It is a system that has never been under anything of the type of stress it is under currently,” he said, adding this was also occurring during a time of budget cuts for the agency.
He added that while some migrants may be able to have successful claims and build lives in Mexico, many of the border areas were incredibly unsafe and migrants are specifically targeted for extortion and kidnapping or other violence.
“Both migration and police authorities lacked adequate training concerning the rules for establishing refugee status,” the report said.
In its 2018 report on El Salvador, the department said as of July 31, only four asylum petitions had been submitted, three of which were denied and one was pending.
Young, of Kids in Need of Defense, said the system in Mexico was “grossly underresourced and understaffed.” She said they also have a backlog of asylum cases and migrants may be held in “inappropriate or substandard conditions while they wait.”
She said that while the rule affected all asylum-seekers at the border, children were left especially vulnerable.
“We spent 15 years slowly trying to set up a system that recognizes the unique vulnerabilities of unaccompanied children and in less than two years, they’ve decimated that system,” she said.
Archi Pyati, chief of policy at the Tahirih Justice Center, said many women and children her group works with who faced violence or persecution in their home countries have experienced rape, sexual assault or domestic violence “during their journey or while waiting in Mexico.”
“What we’re going to see really is that a lot of individuals who really would merit protection are simply going to be turned away,” she said.
The document, filed by Epstein’s criminal defense lawyers and unsealed Monday, shows that the financier and registered sex offender is worth an estimated $559,120,954.
The filing was made last week as Epstein, 66, seeks release on bail following charges that he trafficked underage girls so they could visit his Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida, mansions, where he allegedly sexually abused them.
“His token effort to account for his finances makes painfully clear the need for detention,” prosecutors wrote in a filing to the judge arguing that Epstein should be locked up pending trial.
Epstein, a former friend of presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, has pleaded not guilty. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state charge of procuring an underage girl for prostitution, and served a 13-month jail term.
Read: Financial Disclosure Form filed by Jeffrey Epstein’s defense lawyers
A big chunk of Epstein’s assets, roughly $195 million worth, is in hedge fund investments and private equity, according to the financial disclosure in Manhattan federal court.
Another $112.7 million of assets comes in the form of equities. Epstein listed just $14.3 million from fixed income securities.
Another island owned by Epstein in the Virgin Islands, Great St. James, is valued at almost $22.5 million.
Epstein’s defense lawyers value his Upper East Side townhouse in Manhattan at $55.9 million, citing his Jan. 1 property tax bill. But they note that federal prosecutors have claimed that the residence is worth $77 million.
Rounding out the real estate portfolio is Epstein’s New Mexico ranch, his Palm Beach home and a residence in Paris, France.
Epstein was arrested July 6 at at New Jersey airport after flying there on a private plane from France.
To highlight companies that are committed to making American goods, President Donald Trump is hosting the third annual “Made In America Product Showcase.”
NBC News is a leading source of global news and information. Here you will find clips from NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and original digital videos. Subscribe to our channel for news stories, technology, politics, health, entertainment, science, business, and exclusive NBC investigations.
“People were crying,” said Gediman, who was there when the cover was removed from the entrance to Curry Village on Monday morning. Visitors who were gathered at the historic site recalled holding engagements, marriages and even christenings there, he said.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"