Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said President Trump deserves credit for breaking the mold of U.S. foreign policy and trying to personally persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to dismantle the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear weapons program because it could yield historic possibilities.
“His boldest move … is likely his personal efforts on the issue of North Korea. President Trump has, in fact, used the past year to place his imprint on a problem spanning more than six decades,” Christie wrote in his profile of Trump for Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019.
“The President believes that only personal diplomacy can solve this crisis. The President’s supreme confidence in his own ability to persuade others to make a deal is now the basis for American denuclearization policy toward North Korea,” he said.
Trump has attended two summits with Kim in the past year. They met in Singapore in June 2018 and Vietnam in February, with neither ending in an agreement for North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program. Despite that, Christie said Trump’s approach could still work.
“President Trump deserves great credit for daring to try to personally persuade Chairman Kim to join the family of nations. This approach holds the possibility for history–making changes on the Korean Peninsula to make us all safer,” he said.
In this Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 file photo shows the University at Buffalo campus in Buffalo, N.Y. Sebastian Serafin-Bazan, a University at Buffalo student, died Wednesday, April 17, 2019, from a suspected hazing incident last week. The 18-year-old freshman from Port Chester, N.Y., was hospitalized early Friday morning after the incident at an off-campus house. (AP Photo/David Duprey, File)
The indictments stem from four months of investigative work by the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Task Force, a group of prosecutors, federal agents and data analysts that was created in December 2018 to find patterns suggesting that doctors were prescribing inordinately high numbers of pain pills, and then follow up with traditional law enforcement techniques, including the use of informants and undercover investigators.
Cases like this have been prosecuted before, including a Justice Department operation last June that resulted in charges against 162 defendants, including 76 doctors, for fraudulently prescribing and distributing opioids. Those cases were handled within the larger health fraud unit at the Justice Department.
The Appalachian task force is different, Mr. Benczkowski said in an interview, because it is aimed at corrupt medical professionals, rather than users, and is “doing it in a region of the country that is probably the hardest hit.”
Officials said they were taking care to make sure the patients of people indicted in the investigation would get help.
“When a doctor who has been prescribing opioids is arrested and his customers show up to find the clinic shuttered, public health and safety officials will be on site to get those folks the kind of help and treatment that they need,” Benjamin C. Glassman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said at the news conference.
“Enforcement and treatment are both critical, as of course is prevention, if we are to turn the tide of this opioids crisis,” he said.
John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney general to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, has defended Attorney General William Barr’s authority to overrule immigration judges in his recent decision regarding asylum seekers.
Barr ruled on Tuesday that asylum seekers coming to the United States will no longer have a chance to be released from custody on bail, and will remain in detention centers until hearings to determine the legitimacy of their claims. Yoo, now a law professor at UC-Berkeley, argued during an appearance on “The Daily Briefing With Dana Perino” on Wednesday that Barr’s ruling was “correct on the merits.”
“I think the attorney general’s critics are overblowing what this is,” Yoo said. “This is not part of some grand scheme against immigrants coming into the United States. It’s a very narrow thing the attorney general has done. He has the power to overrule immigration judges. Immigration judges have been making mistakes — they’ve been allowing bail to be granted to people seeking asylum who are caught past the border.”
He went on to discuss the difference between migrants arriving at the border to seek asylum, and those attempting to enter and remain as citizens.
“It may not actually apply to that many people,” he continued. “I’d be very surprised to see a court overturn it.”
Those fleeing areas of Central America, Yoo said, often don’t see their asylum claims approved because they don’t meet the legal threshold to qualify under United States law.
“Asylum seekers have to show what they call a well-founded fear of persecution back in their home countries,” he said. “The problem for all these people coming from Central America, they’re fleeing for economic reasons. They’re not fleeing because the government is persecuting them.”
Apart from economic purposes, many people are fleeing Central America due to gang violence, which Yoo said still isn’t likely to secure asylum status. U.S. courts typically recognize such activity as “private violence,” and only grant asylum to those being persecuted by the government, such as religious minorities or political dissidents.
“Central American migrants don’t fit in that category,” Yoo continued. “That’s why I think Attorney General Barr is correct.”
A number of prominent figures have come to Barr’s defense, including Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who told “America’s Newsroom” hosts on Wednesday that keeping asylum seekers in custody until their hearings is “what has to be done.”
A Palestinian man walks near a USAID billboard in the West Bank village of Badhan, north of Nablus, last August. Since January, U.S. financing for humanitarian programs serving Palestinians has been suspended
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A Palestinian man walks near a USAID billboard in the West Bank village of Badhan, north of Nablus, last August. Since January, U.S. financing for humanitarian programs serving Palestinians has been suspended
Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images
Under orders from the Trump administration, the U.S. Agency for International Development is preparing to lay off most of its Palestinian aid workers in its West Bank and Gaza mission, according to U.S. government communications reviewed by NPR.
It’s the latest step toward shrinking a decades-long U.S. aid mission to build the capacity for a future Palestinian state. In response to NPR’s request for comment, a USAID official emailed a statement saying that the agency has “begun to take steps to reduce our staffing footprint.” He did not want his name used.
The decision to dismiss the aid workers raises questions about how the Trump administration can implement the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan it vows to soon unveil — with an emphasis on major investments in the Palestinian economy, potentially funded by Gulf Arab states.
“It’s a huge mistake,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, who served during the Obama administration and said he was aware of USAID’s plans to lay off staffers. “Even if you get big checks from the Gulf States, you will want development experts to help steer where that money goes. We won’t have our own team of experts available. None of this makes any sense.”
USAID is aiming to reduce its local staff of about 100 employees to only 14, according to official communications reviewed by NPR. Most of the employees to be laid off are Palestinians or Arab citizens of Israel, and the others are Jewish Israelis.
Last month, USAID held preliminary termination hearings, a formality required by Israeli law in which employees get the chance to plead their case before the termination is final. Next month, the agency is expected to notify employees they’ll lose their jobs in July.
Shapiro said it would be difficult and costly to reassemble an experienced team for any future development projects under a future U.S. administration.
Two current employees confirmed they were notified about the likely layoffs, and one of these two said he was optimistic as he awaited final word on his job. Other Palestinian staff members said they were instructed not to speak to the media and declined to comment to NPR.
“The administration is firing a national treasure. People dedicating their lives to fighting for America and fighting for peace,” said Dave Harden, former director of USAID’s mission for the Palestinian territories. “We are abandoning them.”
The administration said Wednesday that it will unveil its peace plan after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assembles his new government and after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in early June.
A spokesman for Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser leading peace efforts, did not immediately return a request for comment on whether USAID layoffs could affect the peace plan.
For years, the U.S. ran aid projects in the Palestinian territories with Israel’s blessing. But last year, the Trump administration cut half a billion dollars in Palestinian aid, including money to care for Palestinian cancer patients and food to address a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The move was seen as an effort to pressure Palestinian leaders to cooperate with U.S.-led peace efforts.
Early this year, the U.S. abandoned half-complete infrastructure projects like a sewage system for a West Bank city, because of a new U.S. law targeting the Palestinian Authority for financially supporting attackers convicted of killing Israelis.
Now the U.S. is slated to part ways with much of the staff that helped oversee these aid programs.
In response to NPR’s request for comment on Wednesday, USAID emailed this statement: “We are not currently taking steps to close the USAID West Bank and Gaza mission. Given the cessation of USAID programs in West Bank and Gaza, coupled with our commitment to proper stewardship of taxpayer dollars, we have begun to take steps to reduce our staffing footprint.”
For years, USAID’s Palestinian staff often faced personal risk during armed conflict or threats from Palestinian groups for working with the U.S. When the staff faced such threats, American officials evacuated some of these employees from Gaza, Harden said.
“They or their colleagues, USAID contractors, have been caught in crossfire, detained, their families at grave risk, all along representing America,” he said.
Some local USAID employees could be offered temporary contracts with other USAID missions in the region, but they are not expected to regain full employment with the agency.
A former Palestinian development officer at USAID, who left the agency in 2015, choked up as he spoke with NPR about his former Palestinian colleagues.
“I’m emotional about this. We meant to change people’s lives,” he said, speaking anonymously because he did not wish to speak out against his former employer. “People really believed this is doable. USAID [has been] putting in infrastructure for factories, building hundreds of schools, creating thousands of jobs. There was a real hope there might be a future where we could live independently. Now that hope is collapsing.”
The Justice Department has announced when Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation will be released to Congress and the public. Veuer’s Justin Kircher has the story. Buzz60, Buzz60
WASHINGTON – Democrats are in an uproar over Attorney General William Barr’s handling of the highly anticipated report by special counsel Robert Mueller, demanding that he cancels a planned news conference on Thursday about Mueller’s findings before actually releasing the report to the public.
For weeks, House Democrats have criticized Barr’s handling of the report but those critiques intensified significantly on Wednesday, one day before the Justice Department is set to release a redacted version of the 400-page report to the public.
“Once again, Barr wants to shape the public’s perception of the report,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wrote on Twitter. “This is not justice. Just PR.”
In a joint statement, Democratic House chairs called Barr’s news conference “unnecessary and inappropriate” and called for release of the full report.
“These new actions by the Attorney General reinforce our concern that he is acting to protect President Trump,” the statement says.
“He should let the full report speak for itself. The Attorney General should cancel the press conference and provide the full report to Congress, as we have requested,” the statement continues. “With the Special Counsel’s fact-gathering work concluded, it is now Congress’ responsibility to assess the findings and evidence and proceed accordingly.”
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will hold news conference at 9:30 a.m. EDT, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. The report is expected to go to Congress between 11 a.m. and noon EDT and likely will be released to the public around the same time.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi railed against the decision and pointed to a New York Times report indicating that Justice officials had briefed the White House on the contents of the report in advance of its public release. White House and Justice officials declined to comment on The Times account.
“AG Barr has thrown out his credibility & the DOJ’s independence with his single-minded effort to protect @realDonaldTrump above all else,” Pelosi wrote on Twitter. “The American people deserve the truth, not a sanitized version of the Mueller Report approved by the Trump Admin.”
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said the idea to release the report after Barr’s news conference was ill-advised. “This is wrong,” he wrote in a tweet. He continued, saying he was “deeply troubled” by the Times report about contact between the Justice Department and the White House before the report was released.
Nadler, D-N.Y., along with four House Democrats, held a last-minute news conference in New York to discuss both Barr’s delayed release of the report and his handling of the probe as a whole.
“The attorney general appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump, the very subject of the investigation at the heart of the Mueller report,” Nadler said during the news conference. “Rather than letting the facts of the report speak for themselves, the attorney general has taken unprecedented steps to spin Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation.”
He continued, listing out concerns echoed by fellow Democrats, saying that Barr was attempting to create a narrative about the report before its release to help the White House.
“The central concern here is that the Attorney General Barr is not allowing the facts of the Mueller report speak for themselves, but is trying to bake in a narrative about the report to the benefit of the White House,” Nadler said.
Alongside Nadler was Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who tweeted that Barr’s handling of the report equated to a “dog and pony show” and urged Barr to “keep your mouth shut.”
So-called Attorney General is presiding over a dog and pony show.
Here is a thought.
Release the Mueller report tomorrow morning and keep your mouth shut.
“So-called Attorney General is presiding over a dog and pony show. Here is a thought. Release the Mueller report tomorrow morning and keep your mouth shut,” Jeffries said. “You have ZERO credibility.”
Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., also questioned Barr’s intentions.
“Why is William Barr holding a press conference if not to (once again) try and frame the Special Counsel’s findings,” he wrote on Twitter. “Just release the full report and let the American people judge for themselves!”
Why is William Barr holding a press conference if not to (once again) try and frame the Special Counsel’s findings. Just release the full report and let the American people judge for themselves!
On Twitter, Rep. Doug Collins, R-Georgia, lashed out at Nadler while defending Barr’s handling of the report.
“The only person trying to spin the report is @RepJerryNadler,” Collins tweeted. “The AG has done nothing unilaterally. After partnering with DAG Rosenstein to share principal conclusions, Barr is releasing the report voluntarily, working with Mueller’s team step by step.”
Well before Wednesday, Barr had already become a magnet for Democratic criticism.
He was lambasted by Democrats for making the determination that Trump’s conduct did not constitute a crime after the special counsel did not make a decision on whether the president’s actions during the investigation amounted to obstruction of justice.
Barr was also criticized over his four-page letter to members of Congress that went over aspects of Mueller’s conclusions. Members of Mueller’s team said that Barr’s letter “failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated,” according to the New York Times, which cited a number of unnamed officials.
Democrats have pushed for Barr to release the full report, without redactions, and said they would subpoena a full copy. Barr, no doubt, will be criticized for any redactions made to the report when it’s released Thursday.
Board member of MCI Telecommunications, Nicholas Katzenbach, second left, speaks at hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on “The WorldCom Case: Looking at Bankruptcy and Competition Issues” on Capitol Hill in Washington, July 22, 2003. Witnesses are, from left, Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Verizon Communications William Barr, Katzenbach, Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP’s Marcia Goldstein, Communications Workers of America President Morton Bahr, National Bankruptcy Conference Vice-Chair Douglas Baird, Cerberus Capital Management Chief Operation Officer Mark Neporent. AKIRA ONO, AP
He has also been targeted for his past conduct before he was nominated attorney general by the president.
In June last year, Barr authored an unsolicited, 19-page memo outlining his opposition to an obstruction investigation of Trump. He shared that memo with White House lawyers.
That memo, written months before Trump selected him as the next attorney general, called the obstruction theory “fatally misconceived” and said that it was based “on a novel and legally insupportable reading of the law.” Barr acknowledged that he did not know what type of case Mueller was pursuing, but argued that Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey didn’t constitute obstruction and that the president shouldn’t be forced to testify to Mueller’s investigators.
Mr. Kim put forth a much more modest bargain in Hanoi. The North would dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear complex, an aging facility at the heart of its nuclear program, for an end to the sanctions most damaging to its economy, those enacted since 2016.
Talks quickly broke down, and the summit collapsed, with both sides pointing fingers.
In a speech earlier this year, Mr. Kim warned that his country might take a “new way” of protecting its interest if the United States insisted on maintaining sanctions.
During Thursday’s test of the weapon, which was conducted by the North’s Academy of Defense Science, Mr. Kim said its development “serves as an event of very weighty significance in increasing the combat power of the People’s Army,” the North Korean news agency said.
After that test, the South Korean news media, quoting government sources, said that North Korea appeared to have tested multiple-rocket launchers, not missiles. Besides the North’s nuclear weapons and missiles, which are probably capable of reaching the continental United States, such rockets are considered one of the greatest military threats to South Korea, because the North deploys them near the countries’ border to target the South’s capital, Seoul, a city of 10 million people.
The Defense Ministry of South Korea did not immediately comment on the North’s latest weapon test. But officials there said the test of a “tactical weapon” indicated that Mr. Kim was being careful not to step over the line by conducting nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests.
While Mr. Kim is clearly impatient with Washington, he has avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump. Instead, he has portrayed other members of the administration as hawks, or warmongers, making clear the only way to resolve the issues is in personality-driven diplomacy with Mr. Trump.
Dozens of people, including 53 medical professionals, have been charged for their alleged participation in the illegal prescription and distribution of opioids and other narcotics, Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services officials said Wednesday. Federal law enforcement and health officials held a press conference in Cincinnati where they announced charges resulting from the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force takedown operation that began only four months ago.
“The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and Appalachia has suffered the consequences more than perhaps any other region,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement. “But the Department of Justice is doing its part to help end this crisis. One of the Department’s most promising new initiatives is the Criminal Division’s Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force (ARPO), which began its work in December.”
The charges leveled by the ARPO Strike Force involve over 350,000 prescriptions and over 32 million pills distributed out by health care officials across several states, including Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Florida. Thirty-one doctors, seven pharmacists and eight nurse practitioners were charged on Wednesday. Some of the examples of medical malfeasance found in the indictment are striking in their scope.
According to the indictment, one pharmacy in Dayton, Ohio prescribed over 1.75 million opioid pills between October 2015 and October 2017, earning the nefarious designation of “pill mill,” a medical office that prescribes opioids for no legitimate health care purpose.
The indictment states one doctor in the Western District of Tennessee, who called himself the “Rock Doc,” would exchange opioids and benzodiazepines with patients in return for sexual favors. Over a three-year period this doctor prescribed approximately 500,000 hydrocodone pills, 300,000 oxycodone pills, 1,500 fentanyl patches, and more than 600,000 benzodiazepine pills.
One doctor charged in Tennessee allegedly prescribed approximately 4.2 million opioid pills.
A 30-year-old patient in Alabama allegedly overdosed after being prescribed more than 800 oxycodone pills over two months prior to her death, whereupon the doctor who prescribed them allegedly directed the patient’s husband to dispose of all pill bottles before police arrived at the scene.
The indictment lists other alleged abuses by medical professionals that include filling fraudulent prescriptions, prescribing opioids to known addicts, and providing Facebook friends with opioid prescriptions based on messenger requests.
“Opioid misuse and abuse is an insidious epidemic, created in large part, by the over-prescribing of potent opioids nationwide, and unfortunately, Appalachia is at the center,” said John Martin, Drug Enforcement Agency Assistant Administrator, on Wednesday. “Today’s announcement sends a clear message that investigations involving diversion of prescription drugs have been, and continue to be, a priority for DEA.”
According to the Center of Disease Control, approximately 115 Americans die every day from opioid-related overdoses. The National Institute of Drug Abuse calculated that over 70,000 Americans died of drug abuse in 2017, including 47,000 from any opioid and 28,400 from fentanyl and its analogs.
A bus carrying German tourists has plunged off a road and overturned on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
At least 29 people died and another 27 were injured in the accident near the town of Caniço, according to national news agency Lusa.
Local mayor Filipe Sousa said all the tourists on the bus were German but some local people could also be among the casualties. Eleven of the fatalities were men and 17 women, Mr Sousa added. The bus was reported to be carrying 55 people.
The devastating destruction of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has fueled a wave of grief across the globe, but it’s also prompted discussion about tragedies that have long received far less attention: the active abuse of lands sacred to Native Americans across the US.
“The concern and dismay is being felt by many around the world,” reads a quote from attorney Casey Douma posted by Indigenous Goddess Gang on Instagram. “Now imagine that the damage to this historic and religious site was caused by a pipeline running through it, by fracking, or due to development.”
Statements like this one fit into a larger online discourse that’s emerged in the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which has included concerns about France’s role as a colonizer and the overwhelming attention that white western cultural edifices receive compared to religious structures of other cultures.
In the US, that disconnect is keenly felt by some Native Americans, who have seen the pervasive abuse of their sacred sites throughout American history. And while that disregard is currently affecting more than 30 sites across the country, such as Bears Ears in Utah, activists have repeatedly been shot down by the courts as they’ve tried to defend them.
“Year after year, sacred landscapes that are integral to the exercise of Native religions are being destroyed or are under threat by development, pollution, recreation, vandalism, or other public and private actions,” reads a statement from the National Congress of American Indians’ website. “There is no effective comprehensive policy to preserve and protect sacred places and Native Americans’ rights to access them.”
Indigenous Goddess Gang, a magazine dedicated to covering indigenous peoples through a feminist lens, was far from the only voice to respond to the attention directed at Notre Dame with a call to address the abuse of other holy sites with comparable concern.
Klee Benally, a Native American activist, juxtaposed an image of the Notre Dame Cathedral against one of the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, a site that’s considered holy by 13 indigenous nations. As Benally writes, the land on this sacred site was burned by workers employed by the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort, a company that had obtained a permit from the National Forest Service to do so.
“I can’t help but reflect with many of my brothers and sisters in struggles to #defendthesacred, on the deafening silence we’ve endured when our most holy sites have been maliciously burned and maimed in the name ‘progress,’” he writes in his Facebook post.
Benally says his post was born out of “frustration,” noting that he viewed the Notre Dame Cathedral with “reverence and respect,” but wondered why native peoples’ sacred sites weren’t treated the same way.
The broader social media outcry was likely driven by the sheer contrast the response to the Notre Dame fire drew to other instances when indigenous lands have been desecrated, says Dartmouth Native American Studies professor Maurice Crandall.
“That this happened in a nation that actively participated in genocide and colonialism for centuries has caused many indigenous peoples to reflect and say there’s not an outcry when our sacred spaces are destroyed by pipelines or by more benign things like national forests or national parks,” he told Vox. “Not trying to discount people’s grief, but there’s this sense that we’ve been suffering similar injustices for centuries and there’s been little to no attention paid to that.”
In the US, Native Americans’ sacred lands are not always protected by law
A major reason Native Americans have struggled to shield sacred lands from destruction: They lack the legal protections to do so.
In the Supreme Court case of Lyng v. Northwest, the court ruled that Native American sacred sites are not protected from government action by the First Amendment, even if that action would disturb religious practices. Part of the context for the case was that the land in question was property the US government already owned, says University of Pennsylvania constitutional law professor Sally Gordon.
Gordon noted that it was tough to find another religious structure that could provide a direct comparison to how sacred lands were treated in that case, but noted that the government is currently in the process of trying to seize a Catholic Church to build a wall along the southern border.
The US government has been able to capitalize on many sacred lands because it took it as settlers were taking over different parts of the country, Gordon says: “The process of eliminating native power and consigning native Americans primarily to reservations meant the appropriation, through treaty or otherwise, of so many millions of acres.”
In addition to taking lands formerly occupied by Native Americans, the US government has also been exceedingly slow to acknowledge native religions, the practice of which was not protected until 1978. The American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which passed that year, sought to protect access to sacred lands as part of its tenets, though the legislation ultimately has very little legal weight.
“American law does not acknowledge indigenous religions on the same level as European and mainstream religion,” says Dina Gilio-Walker, a policy director at the Center for World Indigenous Studies. Gilio-Walker notes that the state of the law — combined with entrenched white supremacy — has fueled and continues to enable the seizure of Native lands.
“We’re talking about white supremacy not in a discourse of racism, but how white supremacy still constructs dominant society’s relationship with Indian country including in the legal system,” she added.
In addition to spurring a discussion about how sacred lands are treated, the Notre Dame fire has also attracted attention to the harm that’s been caused to other churches in the US, including three historically black churches in Louisiana that were destroyed by suspected hate crimes. The churches have since raised $1.3 million in order to rebuild.
There are efforts to reform existing laws
Changing the laws on a broader scale is one of the key ways to truly enshrine protections for sacred lands, and there are a couple different ways to do that.
One approach, which lawmakers including Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM), one of the first Native Americans ever elected to Congress, are pushing, is legislation that would protect places like Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and bar any additional development by the government. A similar strategy is being tried in Bears Ears, though it’s an approach that Benally notes is very “site-specific.”
More sweeping change could take the form of Congress passing amended versions of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would codify protections for sacred sites in a more standardized way.
Benally argues that the recent conversations about the way sacred sites are treated, spurred by the Notre Dame tragedy, could provide a launchpad for more substantive engagement. “It’s about our cultural survival,” he said. “Let’s go beyond the memes, let’s go beyond the social media postings.”
U.S. Attorney General William Barr decided on Tuesday that asylum-seekers who clear a “credible fear” interview and are facing removal don’t have the right to be released on bond by an immigration court judge while their cases are pending.
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr decided on Tuesday that asylum-seekers who clear a “credible fear” interview and are facing removal don’t have the right to be released on bond by an immigration court judge while their cases are pending.
Andrew Harnik/AP
The Department of Justice issued an order on Tuesday that could keep thousands of asylum-seekers detained while they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration court — a wait that often lasts months or years.
The ruling by Attorney General William Barr is the latest step by the Trump administration designed to discourage asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. hoping for refuge.
In a written decision that overturns a 2005 policy, Barr directed immigration judges not to release migrants on bail once their cases have been approved for expedited removal proceedings — a status granted only after an applicant successfully establishes “a credible fear of persecution or torture” in the home country.
“I conclude that such aliens remain ineligible for bond, whether they are arriving at the border or are apprehended in the United States” Barr, who has the authority to overturn prior rulings made by immigration courts, wrote.
Instead, asylum-seekers “must be detained until [their] removal proceedings conclude.” Only those people granted parole by the Department of Homeland Security will be eligible for release, according to Barr’s order.
Barr’s ruling does not apply to family units or to unaccompanied children, who generally cannot be held in detention for more than 20 days under the terms of the Flores settlement.
It is unclear how or where the Justice Department expects to detain more people. Last month U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the increase in the number of family units and unaccompanied children has led to a “humanitarian crisis.”
“We are currently experiencing a system-wide emergency in our processing and holding facilities,” CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert E. Perez said in a statement.
“The humanitarian crisis created by a massive influx of family groups and unaccompanied children in recent months has forced CBP to reallocate resources away from law enforcement, trade and travel missions to process and provide care for those in our custody,” Perez added.
The change comes at a time when the backlog of cases in immigration courts is at an all-time high. As of February the court’s active docket topped 855,000 cases, an increase of more than 300,000 pending cases added to the existing backlog since the end of January 2017, when President Trump took office. Additionally, increasing numbers of Central American migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are fleeing to the U.S. That means Barr’s ruling could lead to thousands of asylum-seekers getting stuck in detention for years until their cases can be heard.
While Barr stayed the order for 90 days, immigrant-rights advocates have already pledged to challenge the Trump administration’s decision in court, Michael Tan, an attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told NPR.
“The Constitution doesn’t let the government lock people up without basic due process,” he said. “You can’t lock people up without giving them the basic hearing before a judge. Where that judge can look at the person and determine if they need to be locked up in the first place.”
The Trump administration has consistently argued that to solve the escalating immigration crisis, it must end the “catch and release” policy, which allowed border-crossers to live freely in the interior of the country while their cases were adjudicated, a process that could take up to years.
White House officials, including Trump, have insisted that the policy allowed vast numbers of undocumented migrants to disappear into the population and never return for mandatory hearings. But the Justice Department’s data contradict that assertion.
Between 60% and 75% of nondetained migrants return to attend immigration court proceedings, according to a report analyzing data from the last five available years.
Other research shows that asylum-seekers with legal advocates have even higher rates of court attendance. Studies of a small and short-lived pilot called the Family Case Management Program concluded that 99% of participants showed up for court appearances and ICE check-ins. The program, which connected released asylum-seekers with case managers, was canceled by the Trump administration in 2017.
“We know that the asylum-seekers coming from Central America right now have real asylum claims, often based on gang violence, gender-based violence and other forms of persecution that they’re highly motivated to pursue in court. They’re not trying to run away,” Tan said.
The president’s aides have devised a strategy where numerous lawyers and political aides will quickly read different parts of the document to develop a rebuttal strategy, according to multiple people briefed on the plan.
The recent conversations between the Justice Department and the White House were first reported by ABC News.
Democrats on Capitol Hill, armed with subpoena power and deeply mistrustful of Mr. Barr’s motivations since he was first nominated, have pressed for more and believe they could soon have the upper hand.
They have already demanded the full text of the report and access to the underlying evidence they say is necessary for continuing congressional inquiries into foreign influence and obstruction of justice.
The House Judiciary Committee has already authorized a subpoena for its chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, to try to force Mr. Barr to hand that material over to Congress. Democrats involved in the planning say the subpoena could be sent to the Justice Department within a day of the redacted report’s delivery if Mr. Barr has withheld material the committee deems necessary for its work.
Promising more transparency, the government said it would let a select group of lawmakers see some of the material related to the case against Roger J. Stone Jr. that had been redacted from the initial public version of the report, according to a filing on Wednesday in the Stone case. Mr. Stone was indicted in January for lying to federal prosecutors, witness tampering and trying to obstruct the special counsel’s investigation.
President Trump participates in a roundtable on immigration and border security at the U.S. Border Patrol Calexico Station in Calexico, Calif., on April 5.
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President Trump participates in a roundtable on immigration and border security at the U.S. Border Patrol Calexico Station in Calexico, Calif., on April 5.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
President Trump is trying to ratchet up public pressure on congressional Democrats to bend to his administration’s will on immigration, but the House majority is dismissing new White House proposals to discourage the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a Wednesday morning tweet, the president called on Congress to return early from the scheduled two-week April recess to pass a border bill.
Democrats in Congress must return from their Vacations and change the Immigration Laws, or the Border, despite the great job being done by Border Patrol, will only get worse. Big sections of Wall now being built!
Administration officials last week told White House reporters that they want Congress to act to change immigration laws affecting how families are held in detention, the processing of unaccompanied minors at the border, and the criteria migrants can use to claim asylum. The collective goal is to discourage more migrants from attempting to cross the border and to make it easier to hold them in detention if they do.
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told NPR the White House’s ideas are “an anti-immigrant wish list that does nothing to keep our country safer and erodes our values as a nation of immigrants.”
Last week, the speaker defended congressional action on the border, noting the bipartisan spending deal reached in February and signed by the president included significant border resources, including $1.375 billion in funding to build barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“There is money there for increased judges to adjudicate the cases more quickly; there is funding there for humanitarian assistance for the people coming in; there is money for repairs and for physical necessities that may be there; and there is funding to send to countries of the Northern Triangle [Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador] to try to alleviate the problem before it reaches our shores,” Pelosi told reporters.
House Democrats do plan to act on immigration this year, but on a revamped Dream Act to provide legal status and a path to citizenship for up to 3.6 million people who were brought to the U.S. as children and reside in the country illegally or who are in legal limbo through the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that is being challenged in court.
For two years, President Trump has offered varying degrees of support for the Dream Act and taken it on and off the table in sporadic negotiations on immigration that have yet to result in any tangible immigration proposal that can pass both chambers of Congress and earn his signature.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is up for reelection in 2020, told reporters last week that he was open to a new round of immigration talks. “I think it’s way past time, on both sides, that we sit down together and see what we could agree to to improve the situation, not only border security, but also the asylum laws that are very challenging when you are confronted with this onslaught of people,” he said. He did not elaborate on what could clear a 60-vote hurdle in the Senate.
Efforts to pass comprehensive immigration legislation have failed under the previous two administrations, and it is far less likely to succeed under Trump as the two parties move further apart on the policies needed as the 2020 elections near.
The president and his allies have always seen his hard-line stance on immigrants and immigration as a reason for his 2016 victory and a key to bolstering his prospects for reelection. Meanwhile, Democrats see opposition to Trump’s immigration policies as a reason for their own successes in the 2018 midterms and believe they can campaign on the issue with minority voters heading into 2020.
NPR’s Mara Liasson and Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.
“When I looked at this photo last night, I was really astounded by what I saw,” Rowan told Scotland’s Daily Record. “When I look at it I see a silhouette of Jesus. I really see a vivid image.”
Dom Disanto added: “I can see it pretty clear, gown and all.”
Rowan said she hopes it will “bring comfort to people in Paris and all over the world at this sad time.”
The Notre Dame Cathedral caught on fire a little after closing time Monday evening, one day after Palm Sunday during Holy Week. The Catholic church burned for over 13 hours as onlookers posted videos and photos of the fire and smoke billowing from the Gothic cathedral. Dramatic footage showed Notre Dame’s spire collapsing, but many relics were saved and no one was harmed during the catastrophic blaze.
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to rebuild what was destroyed within the next five years.
Dozens of medical professionals in seven states were charged Wednesday with participating in the illegal prescribing of more than 32 million pain pills, including doctors who prosecutors said traded sex for prescriptions and a dentist who unnecessarily pulled teeth from patients to justify giving them opioids.
The 60 people indicted include 31 doctors, seven pharmacists, eight nurse practitioners and seven other licensed medical professionals. The charges stem from the government’s largest prescription-opioid takedown. It involves more than 350,000 illegal prescriptions written in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia, according to indictments unsealed in federal court in Cincinnati.
“That is the equivalent of one opioid dose for every man, woman and child” in the region, Brian Benczkowski, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview. “If these medical professionals behave like drug dealers, you can rest assured that the Justice Department is going to treat them like drug dealers.”
The charges include unlawful distribution or dispensing of controlled substances by a medical professional and health-care fraud. Each count carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, and many of the defendants face multiple counts. One doctor in Tennessee is charged in connection with an overdose death caused by opioids, officials said.
The indictments are part of a broader effort by the Justice Department to combat the nation’s prescription pain pill epidemic, which claimed the lives of nearly 218,000 Americans between 1999 and 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Over the past two years, Justice Department officials said they have targeted doctors, health-care companies and drug manufacturers and distributors for their roles in the epidemic. Last year, the department charged 162 defendants, including 76 doctors, for their roles in prescribing and distributing opioids and other dangerous narcotics.
Benczkowski said he created the Appalachian Regional Prescription Opioid Strike Force late last year to target the region, which has been devastated by the epidemic. The department analyzed several databases to identify suspicious prescribing activity and sent 14 prosecutors to 11 federal districts there.
“The opioid epidemic is the deadliest drug crisis in American history, and Appalachia has suffered the consequences more than perhaps any other region,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement.
Once they had the data indicating suspicious prescriptions, investigators used confidential informants and undercover agents to infiltrate medical offices across the region. Cameras and tape recorders were rolling as they documented how medical professionals used their licenses to peddle highly addictive opioids in exchange for cash and sex, officials said. The arrests began early Wednesday morning.
In one case, a doctor operated a pharmacy in his office, just outside the exam room, where patients could fill their prescriptions for opioids immediately after receiving cursory exams, according to the Justice Department. In another, prosecutors said, patients consented to having their teeth pulled so they could obtain opioid prescriptions from a dentist and then paid in cash.
In a number of cases, according to the indictments, doctors across the region traded prescriptions for oxycodone and hydrocodone for sexual favors. Some physicians instructed their patients to fill multiple prescriptions at different pharmacies. Prosecutors also documented how patients traveled to multiple states to see different doctors so they could collect and then fill numerous prescriptions.
“What these doctors have done is pretty remarkable in its brazenness,” Benczkowski said.
In Dayton, Ohio, which has been hit particularly hard, a doctor who authorities say was the state’s highest prescriber of controlled substances, along with several pharmacists, was charged with operating a “pill mill.” Prosecutors say that the health-care professionals dispensed more than 1.7 million pills between October 2015 and October 2017.
In Tennessee, a doctor who branded himself the “Rock Doc,” allegedly prescribed dangerous combinations of opioids and benzodiazepines, sometimes in exchange for sexual favors. Over the course of three years, prosecutors say he prescribed nearly 500,000 hydrocodone pills, 300,000 oxycodone pills, 1,500 fentanyl patches and more than 600,000 benzodiazepines.
In Alabama, a doctor allegedly recruited prostitutes and other young women to become patients at his clinic and allowed them to use drugs at his home, prosecutors said. Another Alabama doctor allegedly prescribed opioids in high doses and charged a “concierge fee” of $600 per year to be one of his patients.
Prosecutors allege that a doctor in Kentucky prescribed pain killers to his Facebook friends who would come to his home to pick up their prescriptions in exchange for cash.
Prosecutors also said some health-care professionals prescribed opioids for themselves. An orthopedic surgeon in West Virginia allegedly wrote fraudulent prescriptions for pain pills using the name of a relative and a stolen driver’s license from a colleague. In Pennsylvania, a state outside the targeted region, prosecutors say a nurse filled out phony prescriptions for oxycodone in her name and in the names of others to obtain pills for herself.
The arrests could leave thousands of addicts and legitimate pain patients without access to their doctors and health-care professionals. Federal and local public health officials say they are working together to “ensure continuity of care.”
“It is also vital that Americans struggling with addiction have access to treatment and that patients who need pain treatment do not see their care disrupted,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.
The opioid indictments come as more than 1,500 cities, counties, Native American tribes and unions are suing drug companies in one of the largest and most complicated civil cases in U.S. history.
A federal judge in Cleveland is overseeing the cases, which accuse some of the biggest names in the industry of fueling the opioid epidemic by failing to report suspicious orders of narcotics and falsely marketing opioids to pain patients. The companies have blamed the epidemic on corrupt doctors and pain management clinics and say the epidemic is too complicated to attribute to their actions.
Justice officials Wednesday did not discuss the companies that have supplied opioids to the seven states. Benczkowski said this investigation targeted medical professionals because they were “the gatekeepers to the patients.”
“But obviously, if there are doctors or others who give us information working backward up the chain in the course of this case or any other case we’re going to be interested in hearing what they have to say,” he said.
Media captionThe bus plunged off a road and overturned near houses
At least 28 people have died after a bus carrying German tourists plunged off a road and overturned on the Portuguese island of Madeira.
Another 28 were injured in the accident near the town of Caniço, according to national news agency Lusa.
The accident happened at 18:30 (17:30 GMT) when the driver lost control of the bus at a junction and went off the road, reports said.
Portuguese media showed the overturned vehicle had come to rest near houses.
“I have no words to describe what happened. I cannot face the suffering of these people,” local Mayor Filipe Sousa told broadcaster SIC TV.
He said all the tourists on the bus were German but some local people could also be among the casualties. Eleven of the fatalities were men and 17 women, Mr Sousa added. The bus was reported to be carrying 55 people.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption
The bus appeared to have rolled down a hillside
Image copyright AFP
Image caption
Ambulances ferried the injured to hospital
The scene of the crash has been sealed off and the injured transferred to a hospital in the island’s capital, Funchal, Lusa said. An investigation into the crash has been launched.
Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is flying to the island to visit the scene, the agency said.
Prime Minister Antonio Costa has sent a message of condolence to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Reuters reported.
National security adviser John Bolton announced Tuesday seven crackdowns and sanctions targeting the governments in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. | Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo
John Bolton’s call to arms against socialism abroad is a message designed to resonate in 2020.
MIAMI — On the 58th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton addressed a group of Cuban American veterans of the failed effort to topple Fidel Castro’s regime and announced a series of crackdowns on Cuba and its allies.
It was part of a call to arms to fight socialism abroad, but it was also a message for domestic consumption — particularly in Florida, the nation’s largest swing state and home to large Cuban American and Central and South American communities.
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With at least a half-million voters who were born in Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia or Nicaragua — and more with ancestral roots in those countries — it’s a constituency that could prove pivotal in November 2020 in a state that’s essential to Trump’s reelection fortunes.
“We will need your help in the days ahead. We must all reject the forces of communism and socialism in this hemisphere — and in this country,” Bolton told the veterans group called Brigade 2506.
“Together, we can finish what began on those beaches, on those famous days in April, 58 years ago today,” Bolton said to rousing applause from the aging brigade members who backed Trump in 2016 when he narrowly won the state.
The centerpiece of Bolton’s announcement of sanctions was the decision to activate a portion of the 1996 Libertad Act and allow U.S. citizens who had property seized in Cuba after Castro’s 1959 revolution to sue businesses who have profited off the “trafficking” on stolen land. The industries that could be affected include port construction firms, cruise ship companies, hotels, banks, agricultural interests and rum producers.
In all, Bolton announced seven crackdowns and sanctions targeting the governments in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, which he referred to as the “troika of tyranny.” Bolton nicknamed Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega “the three stooges of socialism.” But he alsomentioned former U.S. President Barack Obama, whose Cuba rapprochement policies Trump has been rolling back, more than anyone else.
The Trump administration’s aggressive positioning in the Western Hemisphere was made clear by the national security adviser, who said Wednesday: “We proudly proclaim for all to hear: The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well” — a reference to a policy used in the past to justify interventions in Latin America. Some in the crowd said they want tougher sanctions still and even military involvement in Venezuela, an option Trump refuses to rule out.
The administration’s posture is a clear appeal to crucial Hispanic voters in Florida who helped the GOP win statewide last year.
“This is for us. This is a very strong sign of friendship,” said Lincoln Díaz-Balart, a former Republican congressman from Miami who helped write and pass the Libertad Act — also known as the Helms-Burton Act — which helped enshrine the Cuban embargo in statute. All administrations had waived a provision of the act allowing U.S. citizens to sue the Cuban government over their seized property until Trump.
“The reality is the community is very grateful to President Trump,” Díaz-Balart said. “We will not forget this.”
Cuban Americans are the only Hispanic voters in Florida who consistently vote Republican. Hispanics account for about 17 percent of registered voters in the state, or roughly 2.3 million people.
The voter rolls don’t break down Hispanic voters by country of origin, but experts and consultants estimate that about a third of Hispanic voters are Cuban American and are clustered in Miami-Dade County, acting as a Republican bulwark that has checked the increasingly Democratic electorate in the area.
As other Hispanic voters — especially Democratic-leaning Puerto Ricans — flock to Florida, the influence of the Cuban American community in elections has waned.
But the rise of Maduro’s dictatorial regime in Venezuela and Ortega’s return to power in Nicaragua gave Republicans hope that anti-Castro Cuban Americans would find common cause with voters with roots in those countries under the GOP banner.
Led by former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, Florida Republicans also increased their outreach to Colombian Americans, who watched their country suffer from a civil war with leftist guerillas years ago and are now witnessing it become destabilized by a massive migration crisis from its neighbor Venezuela.
“The actions by the Trump administration will lead to the further consolidation of the Cuban American base and it will bring along Venezuelan voters, Nicaraguan voters and Colombian voters,” said Carlos Curbelo, a former Republican congressman from Miami who clashed with Trump but supports the policy against “rogue anti-American countries.”
Curbelo cautioned that any electoral benefit Trump could gain in Florida from the sanctions could be offset by “his anti-immigrant rhetoric and needless confrontations with Mexico and with our Central American allies.”
At the same time, Florida Democrats have fretted that progressives in other states, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, have given Trump entrée with these Hispanic voters by not denouncing Maduro’s government. But Democrats have also criticized Trump for not giving temporary protected status to enough Venezuelans fleeing Maduro’s government.
Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala, who slammed Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for not denouncing Maduro as a dictator, said she was concerned that Trump’s new policy on the Libertad Act could be counterproductive.
“This change has the potential to hurt the Cuban people more than helping them; helping the Cuban people should be our priority,” she said.
Dan Smith, a University of Florida political science professor and expert on the state’s voting patterns, said that at least 358,000 voters in the state reported they were born in Cuba, 44,000 reported being born in Venezuela, 33,000 in Nicaragua and 96,000 in Colombia.
Only 24 percent of Hispanics registered to vote in the state are Republicans, and 39 percent are Democrats, but Smith noted that Republican Hispanic turnout was far higher in 2018, when Republicans made a strong push for Hispanic voters and criticized their Democratic opponents for being soft on socialism. For instance, in the 2018 elections, 71 percent of the 150,000 registered Cuban-born Republicans turned out to vote, he said, compared with only 50 percent of Democratic and unaffiliated party affiliation Cuban-born voters who cast ballots in 2018.
As for the effects of Trump’s policy announcements, Smith said, it’s hard to quantify the benefits, if there are any.
“We know that second- and third- and fourth-generation Cuban Americans are not nearly as Republican as their parents and grandparents,” Smith said. “But we don’t know whether their ideological ties to, or concerns about the future of the island will trump the issues that are important to them in Florida: jobs, education, affordable housing, health care.”
One of the Bay of Pigs veterans who attended Bolton’s speech, Frank de Varona, said he and other Cuban Americans have liked what they’ve seen from Trump, which is why they backed him in 2016 and will again in 2020. But he wants to see more, starting with Venezuela.
“If Trump doesn’t get rid of Maduro somehow by 2020, he’s going to lose a lot of support,” said de Varona, who favors U.S.-led airstrikes in Venezuela in combination with ground troops sent by Colombia and Brazil.
In his speech Wednesday, Bolton didn’t address the issue of military involvement. But he referenced the last presidential election and said more is to come from the administration.
“This is just the beginning. As long as the people of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua stand for freedom, the United States will stand with them,” Bolton said. “The remarkable story of Brigade 2506 helped inspire President Trump’s hard-hitting Cuba policy. During the 2016 campaign, he visited you here in Miami, he heard your heroic accounts, he saw your stirring pictures and today he is proud to stand by your side.”
A website apparently belonging to Sol Pais, the Florida woman whose alleged threats shut down schools in the Denver area, is filled with references to depression, isolation, suicide and guns. It also includes veiled references to her “plans” and to the Columbine High School shooting, which authorities say Pais was “infatuated” with. Officials said Pais, 18, was found dead in Colorado Wednesday amid a massive manhunt.
The webpage includes scanned pages from a journal that has the name “Sol Pais” on its final page. Authorities have not confirmed that the site belonged to Pais.
The homepage for the site, which is under the name “Dissolved Girl,” says, “I want to leave a record of myself before I, well…”. The site includes a scanned journal, blog entires and a page of music recommendations. The pages are dated between May 2018 and March 30, 2019.
On page after page, entries describe self-loathing and a hatred of humanity.
“Being alive is f—ing overrated,” it says on the first page, above a sketch of a handgun being fired.
“its become a fight to the death, fighting for my sanity, for my morals, for everything I’ve ever wanted,” an entry dated Feb. 1 says; “the last few days have been especially painful and tumultuous, which kickstarted me again to start revising my plans and getting on with them…so i basically spent the first few hours of my birthday cleaning through my belongings in preparation of my death. huh. gotta do what you gotta do.”
One entry details a dream “about the future” where the author has a “shotgun.” Another says, “I wish I could get a gun by the end of the summer.”
The pages are littered with drawings of guns, a knife, the world on fire and a man in a trench coat holding a firearm.
There are some entries about reuniting with an apparent love interest who is never named. “There isn’t a doubt in my mind that soon i will be back where i need to be…back home…back with you [E],” one says.
The website also includes blog entries dated between Aug. 11, 2018 and Jan. 15, 2019, which include dark and disturbing material. “i feel like a pot of scolding water on the verge of boiling over… so dangerously close to spilling over.. and what that may cause is yet to be seen and most likely a hazard, to myself and others,” the final entry says.
The site’s “About Me” page has a picture of a frowning young girl: “i am the face of loneliness and misery, of isolation and misery, of exhaustion and anxiety, of anguish and grace,” it says.
The music page has songs and lyrics from bands including Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and KMFDM.
The bottom of every page on the site says “1999 – the nobodies.” The Columbine shooting happened in 1999, and Marilyn Manson has a song called “The Nobodies” that references the Columbine attack.
Pais also appeared to have an account on the website Listography, which links to the Dissolved Girl site. “be the best killer you can be,” it says. The page includes a “to do” list with five items: self destruct,” “burn out,” “walk away,” “reject apologies” and “fade.” The background of the page is an image from the film “Zero Day,” which depicts a fictional school shooting inspired by Columbine.*
Authorities said Pais traveled from Miami to Denver on Monday night and bought a pump-action shotgun and ammunition. Denver-area schools, including Columbine, closed Wednesday after police said Pais had made a “credible threat.”
Investigators closed in on Pais Wednesday near the Echo Lake Lodge at the base of Mount Evans in Clear Creek County, CBS Denver reported. Officials said she was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The threats and manhunt came just days before the 20th anniversary of the Columbine shooting, which left 13 people dead and ended when the two attackers killed themselves.
A manhunt for a woman allegedly ‘infatuated’ with the Columbine massacre who forced schools in Colorado to close after threatening violence came to an end Wednesday after she was found dead.
A manhunt for a woman allegedly “infatuated” with the Columbine massacre who traveled from Florida and forced schools in Colorado to close after threatening violence came to an end Wednesday after she was found dead of an apparent suicide in the mountains southwest of Denver.
Sol Pais,18, was found near the base of Mount Evans in Clear Creek County, located about 60 miles southwest of Denver, according to Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Shrader. Shrader said that Pais was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“Everything that I’ve heard in briefings does not indicate that she had any assistance or friends in the area, just a fascination with the Columbine area and the horrendous crime that went on there 20 years ago,” he told reporters.
A photo taken from near Echo Lake, Colorado by FOX31 showed police officers swarming a parking lot close to where the 18-year-old’s body was discovered.
Clear Creek County Sheriff’s vehicles can be seen near Echo Lake, Colorado, where Sol Pais was found dead on Wednesday. (KDVR)
While federal officials were expected to give a comprehensive briefing later, the FBI’s Denver Office said on Twitter there was “no longer a threat to the community.”
Before Pais’s death was reported, 20 to 30 officers were seen Wednesday morning near the Echo Lake Campground during an extensive search operation, according to CBS Denver.
A woman who was hiking in the area Wednesday morning told CBS Denver she was told to leave the area because “a naked woman matching the description with a gun was spotted in the area running through the woods.”
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI had said the 18-year-old was “considered to be extremely dangerous” after traveling to Colorado from Miami on Monday night before purchasing a pump-action shotgun and ammunition. Shrader said the gun was legally purchased at a gunshop in the Littleton, Colorado area and followed the state’s legal process.
Gun buyers in Colorado must provide fingerprints and pass criminal background checks.
This combination of undated photos released by the Jefferson County, Colo., Sheriff’s Office shows Sol Pais, who was found dead on April 17, 2019. (Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office)
Colorado law allows someone who is not a state resident to purchase a “long gun,” but not a handgun, from dealers with federal firearms licenses. Buyers of long guns, such as shotguns, must be at least 18 years old while handgun purchasers must be at least 21 years old.
Pais had made threats to “commit an act of violence in the Denver metropolitan area” just days before the 20th anniversary of the attack, according to officials.
Pais had apparently been last seen not far from Columbine — in the Jefferson County foothills outside Denver — in a black T-shirt, camouflage pants and black boots. The alert initially released by authorities said police who come into contact with her should detain her and evaluate her mental health.
Because of the threat, Columbine and more than 20 other schools outside Denver locked their doors for nearly 3 hours Tuesday afternoon, and some canceled evening activities or moved them inside. About a half million students in the Denver area were forced to stay home Wednesday because authorities believed Pais still posed a threat to a school.
“We deal with a lot of threats at Columbine,” John McDonald, executive director of security for the Jefferson County school system, said when the manhunt was over. “This one felt different. It was different. It certainly got our attention.”
Following a lockdown at Columbine High School and other Denver area schools, authorities had sought a woman suspected of making threats. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Jefferson County Sheriff Superintendent Jason Glass said that normal school operations are expected Thursday with “heightened security.”
“We are relieved that the threats to our schools and our community is no longer present,” he said at a news conference.
On Tuesday night, her father, in Surfside, Florida, told reporters through a closed door at the family home the experience was “like a bad dream.”
Her father, who was not identified, said the family last saw Pais on Sunday. A neighbor said the family moved to the area about 10 years ago, and that Pais was frequently spotted in the neighborhood and attended Miami Beach High School.
Miami-Dade Public Schools confirmed in a statement to Fox News that Pais was a senior at the high school.
FBI tweets there is no longer a threat to the community; Alicia Acuna reports from Denver.
“We are disturbed about the events that have transpired and saddened by the heartbreaking outcome,” Superintendent of Miami Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said in a statement. “Our Mental Health Department and our crisis team have been deployed to Miami Beach Senior High to assist students and employees through this difficult time.
“In an abundance of caution, M-DCPS will remain on heightened alert through the end of the week and will continue reviewing all documents related to this case in an effort to inform our mental health detection practices,” Carvalho added.
After the manhunt was over, Police Chief Julio Yero asked that the family be given “privacy and a little time to grieve.”
“This family contributed greatly to this investigation from the very onset. They provided valuable information that led us to Colorado and a lot of things that assisted in preventing maybe more loss of life,” he said.
Another neighbor told CBS4 in Miami that Pais was a quiet person but well behaved.
“She always kept to herself. She never got in trouble at school,” Patricia Bilstin told the television station. “So surprising, and I feel sorry for the family.”
Fox News’ Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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