From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
President Trump called for another round of coronavirus stimulus checks to Americans after calling off stimulus negotiations with Democrats on Tuesday afternoon.
“If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY,” the president said in a tweet on Tuesday evening. “I am ready to sign right now.” Continue reading “Coronavirus stimulus checks: President Trump calls for more direct payments after derailing negotiations, Pelosi responds”
Jewish Telegraph Agency – by Shira Hanau
(JTA) – Protests by Orthodox Jews against New York’s crackdown on gatherings in their neighborhoods turned tense Tuesday night as throngs of young men demonstrated in the streets of Borough Park, setting fire to a pile of masks and at one point running a reporter out of the area.
In a particularly violent episode, one man – the brother of Mordy Getz, a well-known Orthodox businessman in Borough Park who was outspoken about the need for masks and social distancing earlier in the pandemic – was beaten so severely by protesters after he took a video of the scene that he was taken to the hospital. Onlookers could be heard calling him a “moser,” one who informs on fellow Jews to the authorities and who some Jewish legal authorities say can be killed as a result, an insult applied to his brother back in April, as he was placed on a stretcher to be taken to the hospital. Continue reading “Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn burn masks during massive protest against New York’s new COVID rules”
A Texas police officer has been charged with murder after fatally shooting Jonathan Price, a 31-year-old Black man, Saturday night.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) on Monday said that Wolfe City officer Shaun Lucas did not take reasonable action in his encounter with Price, NBC News reported. Relatives of Price have said he was attempting to break up a fight between a man and a woman at a gas station. Continue reading “Texas officer charged with murder in fatal shooting of Black man”
Asset forfeiture remains one of the most abused law enforcement practices in the country. While some attempts have been made to rein in this abuse, in most locales, it’s just considered a useful law enforcement tool with minimal downsides.
Pennsylvania has some of the worst asset forfeiture laws in the nation. And it shows. Law enforcement has occasionally been benchslapped by judges for traveling past the wide boundaries granted to it by local legislators. In one case, a judge stopped the state from seizing a grandmother’s house just because her son sold officers $140-worth of marijuana from the residence. Continue reading “Pennsylvania Cops Are Still Abusing Asset Forfeiture To Help Themselves To People’s Cash”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Police said they knocked repeatedly and identified themselves for a minute or more before using a battering ram to enter Breonna Taylor’s apartment, according to Kentucky grand jury recordings released Friday, then killed her in a rapid hail of gunfire after the first officer inside her door was struck by a bullet.
But Taylor’s boyfriend, who fired on the officers, said in an police interview played for the jury that he did not hear them announce themselves. If they had, he noted, “it changes the whole situation because there’s nothing for us to be scared of.” Continue reading “Grand jury audio details moments before Breonna Taylor died”
Voters in New York City said they received their mail-in ballots this week but were surprised to find they were printed with the wrong names and voter IDs and included incorrect return labels.
Some voters said they received absentee ballots mislabeled as the official ballot for military members, while others said the envelope meant to return their ballot did not bear their name or address. Continue reading “New Yorkers report receiving ballots with wrong name, voter addresses”
JPMorgan Chase, accused of presiding over thousands of episodes of illegal trading in precious metals and Treasury markets, said Tuesday that it will pay about $920 million as part of an agreement with the Justice Department.
The Justice Department said employees stationed on desks in New York, London and Singapore engaged in an unlawful schemes to trade gold, silver, platinum, and palladium futures contracts, scooping up orders with the intention of canceling them before they were executed. Continue reading “JPMorgan Chase agrees to pay $920 million over market manipulation”
As we look ahead to the last jobs report before the Nov. 3 US election, a growing number of corporations across various hard-hit industries are announcing tens of thousands of layoffs, as ‘PPP’ employment restrictions expire and the financial backlash from COVID-19 continues to ravage corporations and households.
Already this week, Royal Dutch Shell, Continental Airlines, Dow Chemicals, and Marathon Petroleum have announced restructuring plans that involve laying off tens of thousands of workers. Yesterday, Disney announced plans to eliminate 28,000 jobs as most of its theme parks remain closed, and the movie business remains effectively shuttered. Continue reading “Flurry Of Corporate Layoffs Continue As Disney, Shell, & Continental Announce Mass Firings”
A Maryland man has been sentenced to one year in jail after he hosted two parties against the governor’s COVID-19 large gathering orders, prosecutors said.
Following a bench trial, Shawn Marshall Myers, 42, was convicted of two counts of failure to comply with an emergency order, according to a Friday statement from the Charles County State’s Attorney’s Office. Continue reading “Man gets 1 year in jail for holding large parties against COVID-19 rules”
President Donald Trump reportedly suggested that Jews have a loyalty to their religion above other interests, repeating an accusation that has long been used to stoke anti-Semitism.
Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together,” Trump said in front of officials in his administration, according to a new report from The Washington Post on Wednesday. Continue reading “Trump said Jews are ‘only in it for themselves’ and ‘stick together,’ according to a new report”
One of three officers involved in the Louisville, Ky., drug operation that led to the police shooting death of Breonna Taylor in March 2020 was indicted Wednesday on criminal charges.
Officer Brett Hankison, whom the department fired in June, was indicted on three counts of wanton endangerment in the first degree, a Jefferson County grand jury announced Wednesday. Neither the grand jury nor the presiding judge elaborated on the charges. Continue reading “Breonna Taylor shooting: Fired Louisville officer indicted on criminal charges but not her death”
A pair of Missouri residents connected to a militia group traveled to Kenosha, Wis., amid demonstrations over the police shooting of Jacob Blake “to loot and possibly ‘pick people off,'” according to a federal criminal complaint.
Michael Karmo, 40, and Cody Smith, 33, both of Hartville, Mo., were arrested Tuesday at a hotel in Kenosha County on federal charges of illegal possession of firearms. Both men are barred from possessing firearms because of past criminal convictions. Continue reading “Militia members face gun charges, alleged to have come to Kenosha ‘to pick people off’”
AIER reports that the following letter has made an impact on public health authorities not only in Belgium but around the world. The text could pertain to any case in which states locked down their citizens rather than allow people freedom and permit medical professionals to bear the primary job of disease mitigation.
So far it has been signed by 435 medical doctors, 1,439 medically trained health professionals, and 9,901 citizens. Continue reading ““No Medical Justification For Emergency Measures” – Open Letter From 100s Of Doctors, Health Pros Urges End To Lockdowns”
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A 13-year-old Utah boy with autism was shot by police after his mother asked for help getting him hospital mental-health treatment and officers agreed to talk with him, police footage released Monday showed.
The videos show Salt Lake City officers chasing him down an alley after they arrive at his home, then yelling at him to get on the ground. The boy collapses after a series of shots ring out, moaning, “I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good.” He survived but suffered broken bones and pierced organs, the family’s attorney has said. Continue reading “Police release footage after officers shoot 13-year-old boy”
New York Post – by Lia Eustachewich
A teen was arrested and a second suspect is in the wind following an “ambush”-style shooting of an Arizona state trooper Thursday, authorities said.
Luis German Espinoza Acuna, 17, allegedly used an AK-47 to fire multiple shots at Arizona Department of Public Safety detectives in a residential area of Phoenix just before 9 a.m., the department said. Continue reading “Teen arrested, second suspect at large in ‘ambush’ shooting of Arizona trooper”
Reason – by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
The federal government shouldn’t dictate what local schools across the country teach—and in the past, conservatives have rightly denounced the idea that it should. Here, for instance, is Phyllis Schlafly in 2014 railing against Obama-era Common Core standards, which Schlafly saw as an “attempt to compel all U.S. children to be taught the same material and not taught other things parents might think important.” Yet like so many other conservative principles, this one seems to have fallen by the wayside in the Trump era. Now, President Donald Trump is announcing plans for (yet another!) executive order, this one to create a “patriotic education” curriculum for U.S. public schools. Continue reading “Trump’s 1776 Commission to ‘Promote Patriotic Education’ Is Executive Overreach”
The home of two Camden County, New Jersey, police officers and their 10-day old infant was struck six times by bullets earlier this week, and authorities are asking for the public’s help in locating the suspects.
“Thank God the officers and their baby were uninjured,” Camden County Police Chief Joseph Wysocki said at a press conference Thursday. Continue reading “Shooters open fire on home with 2 New Jersey police officers, infant inside”
MOLALLA, Ore. (Reuters) – Nicole West steered her bulldozer through the smoldering forest, pushing logs into the underbrush and away from the wildfires ripping through Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Her border collie, Oink, rode shotgun as West and a volunteer crew raced to clear a fire line.
Behind West, on the front lines of the 136,000-acre (55,000-hectare) Riverside fire, two young men pulled a water tank behind their pickup truck, struggling to douse the flames. Continue reading “How a ‘Hillbilly Brigade’ saved an Oregon town from raging wildfires”