This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Supreme Court is considering a case now that could force cops to be deadly less often.
That would mean, probably, shooting and killing fewer people.
It's all about holding officers who inflict unnecessary and excessive deadly force accountable.
The Rutherford Institute explains the court already has agreed to hear the dispute, and the legal team has submitted a friend-of-the-court brief that urges the justices to overturn the existing standard for moment-of-threat actions.
"The 'moment-of-threat doctrine' not only violates established Fourth Amendment principles for determining what constitutes a reasonable use of force, but it also encourages police to act recklessly with impunity," said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of "Battlefield America: The War on the American People."
"Unfortunately, this mindset that any challenge to police authority is a threat that needs to be 'neutralized' is a dangerous one that is part of a greater nationwide trend that sets law enforcement officers beyond the reach of the Fourth Amendment," he said.
The legal team explained the circumstances that prompted the fight in the courts:
In the afternoon of April 28, 2016, Harris County Texas Officer Roberto Felix initiated a traffic stop of Ashtian Barnes due to a report by the Toll Road Authority that the license plate number on his vehicle had outstanding toll violations. When asked for proof of insurance, Barnes explained that the car had been rented a week earlier by his girlfriend and the documentation might be in the trunk. The officer claimed he smelled marijuana and ordered Barnes to open the trunk. A few seconds after Barnes opened the trunk, the car's blinker toward the side of the Tollway to which Barnes pulled over turned off for about ten seconds. Once the same blinker turned back on, Felix shouted at Barnes not to move, stepped onto the door sill where the driver-side door was open, and shoved his gun into Barnes's head. At that point, the car started to move, and Officer Felix fired two shots into the car, killing Barnes.
The legal team explained Barnes' parents filed a lawsuit because he posed no threat to law enforcement and there was no justification for the use of deadly force, especially since the officer "jumped onto the car."
Lower courts then handed the police protection, calling the decision to shoot and kill "presumptively reasonable."
Rutherford argues that the reins need to be pulled on police violence, especially that which comes from relatively minor confrontations but escalates quickly and then results in police shooting unarmed citizens.
"For instance, an Illinois sheriff's deputy was charged with first-degree murder for shooting and killing Sonya Massey after she called 911 for help at her home. A year earlier in Ohio, a pregnant mother was killed by a police officer in a grocery store parking lot. And in August 2024, police officers in Arizona jumped out of their car at Tyron McAlpin, who is deaf and has cerebral palsy, and repeatedly punched and tasered McAlpin due to his startled response," the legal team explained.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to reverse the firing of a fire chief who lost his job in Stockton, California, because he attended an assigned leadership conference.
City officials apparently were enraged because the conference was in a church building.
First Liberty Institute has announced it, and others, have joined to ask the Supreme Court for a review of the case involving fire chief Ron Hittle.
"It is a tragic day for religious liberty in America when someone can be fired because they attend an event that includes religious perspectives," said Stephanie Taub, a lawyer for First Liberty Institute.
"The city showed extreme anti-religious bias and broke the law when it fired Chief Hittle. We are asking the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court's decision and uphold the clear meaning of Title VII to protect all Americans in the workplace."
Aaron Streett, a lawyer with Baker Botts, which also is working on the case, said, "City of Stockton officials were completely intolerant of Chief Hittle's religious beliefs. Federal law protects the freedom of every American to live without fear of being fired simply because of their beliefs."
The institute explained that Stockton officials fired Hittle after 24 years of service "because he attended a leadership conference hosted at a church. Although the city requested Chief Hittle attend a leadership training course of his choice, it later opened an investigation after he attended Willow Creek Church's Global Leadership Summit, a world-class conference with speakers from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds."
Speakers at that conference historically have included Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Bill Clinton.
"The city listed Chief Hittle's attendance at a 'religious event' while on duty as the primary reason for his termination," the legal team explained.
He sued but a district court took the city's side.
Alan Reinach is with Church State Council, which also is helping with the case.
He said, "Chief Ron Hittle was an exemplary leader of the Stockton Fire Department who was fired because of his Christian faith. But to make matters worse, the courts reversed the evidentiary assumptions and chose to believe Stockton's denial that it did not discriminate, instead of focusing on the abundant evidence Chief Hittle supplied."
The petition notes, "When plaintiffs have presented evidence that creates a fact issue regarding whether they were discriminated against, they should be permitted to try their case to a jury, period. That is how it works in virtually every other context. There is no reason that plaintiffs in Title VII cases should face the added burden of disproving the employer's proffered reason for the adverse employment decision.
"Yet that errant and nontextual view holds sway in nearly half the country and is causing demonstrable injustices for worthy plaintiffs," the petition states.
The city, faced with the dispute, assembled a long list of allegations against the fire chief in order to fire him, claiming he wasn't able to implement city goals, used city resources to attend a "religious" event, the conference that the city gave him the option of choosing, didn't talk about his knowing a contractor to the department, and how he owned part of a cabin and didn't announce that.
The appeal points out that the lower court judge made decisions about disputes that only a jury should have resolved.
One lower court judge, on the fight, said, "The City of Stockton's management frequently parroted derogatory and insulting terms coined by others to criticize Chief Hittle's Christian faith. Although they now say they did so under the guise of 'show[ing] concerns about other persons' perceptions.' The Supreme Court has already rejected "a 'modified heckler's veto, in which … religious activity can be proscribed' based on 'perceptions' or 'discomfort.'"
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Michael Cohen, a New York lawyer who once worked for Donald Trump and later established his character by pleading guilty to charges including tax fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress, now is being held out as an expert by MSNBC.
There, he is given a platform to express his dislike of Trump, and stunningly claims that Trump, in the office of president, will destroy America's court system and Congress.
Cohen earlier was sentenced to three years in prison, and most recently, was a star witness in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's suspect business violation claims against Trump.
A leftist jury, guided by a leftist judge whose daughter was making money off her father's courtroom decisions and who now is under investigation for his behavior during the trial, convicted Trump and the case now is on appeal.
But MSNBC wanted Cohen's opinion and he delivered:
He said, "If, in fact, Trump wins and he does exactly what he says he's going to do rewrite the Constitution and he's going to destroy our tripartite system, get rid of the judiciary, and get rid of the Congress."
The MSNBC interviewer suggested such scandals already have taken place, but didn't explain that if it was Trump's agenda to rid the nation of the courts and Congress, why didn't he do it during the four years he was president.
Trending Politics reported that earlier, Cohen had promised that "he will be changing his name and leaving the country if Trump returns to the White House in January."
An editorial at Twitchy pointed out: "Bro, Trump has said nothing even remotely like this. But Kamala and Democrats have. Maybe he's not smart enough to know Trump from Kamala? Or maybe he thinks people watching him on MSNBC are stupid enough to believe him. We hate to break it to Michael, but the mouth-breathers watching him on that network are already voting for Kamala."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Those around Kamala Harris have been warned: Not to stand too close.
This comes after the Democrat nominee for president, hand-picked after the party's elite threw Joe Biden under the bus and chose her as a substitute this year, mocked a rally attendee who shouted "Jesus is Lord."
Someone shouted "Jesus is Lord" at Kamala's rally last night while she was speaking about abortion and she replied:
"Oh, I think you're at the wrong rally… I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street." pic.twitter.com/F8aX8xYiaI
— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) October 18, 2024
Well Well Well check this out! #JesusIsLord pic.twitter.com/nv0RiDKHxB
— Karli Bonne' (@KarluskaP) October 18, 2024
The social media opinion included, "Mock Jesus at you're (sic) own peril," and, "Nobody stand too close to her."
Nobody stand too close to her pic.twitter.com/xWbsMhV9qT
— L B (@LB5783) October 18, 2024
Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit headlined a report on the comment, and reaction, "EVIL: Kamala Harris and her supporters mock Christian attendee…"
Harris was promoting America's industry of killing unborn children at the time, saying, "We remember Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade and they did as he intended.'
Actually, the Supreme Court ruled that the Roe decision was faulty from its outset and not based on the Constitution, so it was overturned, and the result returned regulation of the abortion industry to states.
The report said the Christian "bravely stood up and proclaimed, 'Jesus is Lord.'"
Only to be mocked by Harris: "I think you're at the wrong rally." She added. "Try the smaller one down the street."
The documentation came from Jennifer McKinney, a Wisconsin resident who attended both the Trump rally in late August and the Harris event.
She explained the "smaller" Trump rally had about 7,000 attending, while Harris had perhaps a reported 2,500.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
WASHINGTON – January 6 political prisoner Ryan Samsel has sounded an alarm via text message from his jail tablet to WorldNetDaily while detained in the general population of the Washington, D.C. Correctional Treatment Facility.
The J6 defendant, who like other "J6ers" has been held in pretrial detention for an extraordinarily long period of time – almost four years – said in a text sent Wednesday that a jail guard took away his mattress while spewing racial epithets. Immediately after this, he asked his family and this reporter to call the jail's command center to investigate the situation.
"Hey can you call LT brown at command center and ask why he took the mattress away and called me a cracker and is mad BC I had ppl call up there for my legal mail they wont give me," Samsel wrote. "He said ant no cracker getting a mattress and took my mattress."
Samsel is also blowing the whistle on what, ironically, could be called an election-fraud scandal of sorts inside the jail.
The law in Washington, D.C. – specifically D.C. Law 23-277, the Restore the Vote Amendment Act of 2020 – "allows District residents to vote while incarcerated."
"I have everyone writing grievance on the jail for not giving us [our] ballots and now [they're] holding my mail," Samsel wrote.
The notorious "D.C. Gulag," in which approximately 300 January 6 defendants have been held pretrial for nearly four years, is the same correctional facility in which Samsel was assaulted by jail guards weeks after his Jan. 30, 2021 arrest, after protesting in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
Samsel's 2021 beatdown by jail guards resulted in the fracturing of his "orbital floor and potentially untreated brain damage," according to his medical records.
During another assault at another prison, Samsel explained that he was tied to a 4-point restraint chair and held backwards for approximately 12 hours while being brutally assaulted by jail guards who spat on his face and berated him with profane racial epithets.
Photographs of Samsel locked in a broom closet in a Philadelphia jail went viral across the internet, garnering attention from Gen. Mike Flynn and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, who called the torture of this defendant a "national disgrace."
As Samsel has stated, he was locked in the broom closet for five months with the light left on, after guards discovered he was being smuggled food and coffee through the toilet.
Fellow J6 prisoner, Marine Corps veteran, and Proud Boys leader Zachary Rehl has confirmed that he provided Samsel food, potentially saving his life when Samsel was being starved for nearly two weeks.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Kamala Harris has been promising a lot of people a lot of money, in her campaign to be voted in to the White House next month.
She wants to give a bigger child tax credit, and a cash bonus to first-time homebuyers, and to housing developers.
She wants to raise the inheritance tax, destroying many small businesses, raise taxes on companies, and "rich" people. She's also copied President Donald Trump's plan for not taxing tips.
But exactly where all that money she wants to give away would come from hasn't been clear.
Until now.
In campaign's fundraising email on Wednesday announced a "brass tax."
The email states, "Let's get down to brass tax, Felicia. We've got our final FEC deadline tonight at midnight. It's the last chance we have to show the strength of this movement before Election Day, so I'm asking folks directly to give what they can."
But wait, this doesn't sound like a "tax" proposal, and it's not, it's a solicitation for donations.
The "tax" likely is just a mistake, much like the mistakes that appear in Harris' many word salad answers, and the "mistakes" of Tim Walz when he tries to remember his military career, or his travels, or his family's encounter with IFV, and more.
"Here the notion is that, in order to be more accurate than the rough-and-ready measuring of a yard of material by holding it out along an arm's length, cloth was measured between brass tacks which were set into a shop's counter. Such simple measuring devices were in use in the late 19th century, as is shown by this piece from Ernest Ingersoll's story 'The Metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, 1880':"
"I hurried over to Seabright's. There was a little square counter, heaped with calicoes and other gear, except a small space clear for measuring, with the yards tacked off with brass tacks."
It added, 'We can rule out links with any form of 'brass tax'. There have been taxes on brass at various times, but no one can find any connection with this phrase. 'Getting down to brass tax' appears to be just a misspelling."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Kamala Harris, writing a book she called "Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer" some 15 years ago with co-author Joan O'C. Hamilton, used other people's work as her own, according to a new report.
It is activist Christopher Rufo who has published details on his Substack column explaining she was found to have lifted from other sources, without attribution, a number of sections of the project.
Rufo cited famous Austrian "plagiarism hunter" Stefan Weber in his report on about a dozen fragments that were plagiarized.
The Daily Mail reported, "Weber's report shows that Harris copied verbatim content from Goodwill Industries, her partner on her 'Back on Track' crime program, into the text of her book."
And, the publication asserted, "The report shows that Harris lifted and entire section of text from an Associated Press story published in April 2008 about low graduation rates."
"They not only lifted material from sources without proper attribution, but in at least one case, relied on a low-quality source, which potentially undermined the accuracy of their conclusion," Rufo wrote. The news triggered a response from former President Donald Trump's campaign and running mate Sen. J.D. Vance.
He wrote, "Lmao Kamala didn't even write her own book!"
"Yikes! More evidence that Kamala Harris is a fraud!!!," said Donald Trump Jr.
Plagiarism is a serious charge for a political candidate. After all, one of Joe Biden's earlier presidential bids was derailed by allegations of plagiarism.
The Daily Mail reported that another section of the book quotes sections from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release nearly verbatim without attribution.
The report explains Biden's 1987 campaign was brought to a halt after he "appeared to be copying phrases and mannerisms from a British Labour Party politician," the report said.
That followed accusations Biden plagiarized during law school.
"Rufo said that Harris and her publisher should retract the plagiarized passages from her book and issue a correction," the Daily Mail reported.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
JERUSALEM – Mere days after outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden requested Israel tone down its strikes on Hezbollah terrorists in Beirut, Iran's Lebanese proxy launched what is suspected to have been a Russian-made drone, which impacted in Israel's Binyamin region.
At least 67 people are known to have been wounded, and early reports suggest at least 4 or 5 people are in a critical condition and may have been killed.
Two drones were launched, with the Israeli Navy succeeding in taking out one over the sea.
The second, however, which did not set off the incoming alert siren, traveled approximately 25 miles to the south-east of Haifa and impacted at an army base at which new recruits go to train. A Hezbollah source told Al-Jazeera: "We attacked the Binyamina area with a swarm of drones, our capabilities are strong and capable of reaching deep into Israel."
Some 15 people were moderately wounded with many of the remainder lightly hurt in the drone attack. Most were taken to Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera. Others were taken to Sheba Hospital in Ramat Gan, Rambam Hospital in Haifa, and Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva.
Rumors also began to circulate during the night Sunday that IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi had been assassinated, propagated by X Spaces host Mario Nawfal, who has more than 3 million followers.
However, there has been absolutely no corroborating evidence to suggest this is in any way correct.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Former President Donald Trump is warning of a "bigger problem" than foreign agents potentially causing chaos across America on Election Day.
Maria Bartiromo of Fox News asked the ex-commander-in-chief on her "Sunday Morning Futures" program if he expected chaos on Election Day this Nov. 5.
"No, not from the side that votes for Trump," the Republican presidential nominee responded.
Bartiromo continued: "But I'm just wondering if these outside agitators will start the up on Election Day. Let's say you win. Let's remember, you've got 50,000 Chinese nationals in this country in the last couple of years. There are people on the terrorist watch list, 350 in the last couple of years. Like you said, 13,000 murderers and 15,000 rapists. What are you expecting? Joe Biden said he doesn't think it's going to be a peaceful Election Day."
Trump explained: "Well, he doesn't have any idea what's happening, he spends most of his day sleeping.
"I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people that have come in and are destroying our country. By the way, totally destroying our country, the towns, the villages, they're being inundated.
"But I don't think they're the problem in terms of Election Day. I think the bigger problem are the the people from within.
"We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical-left lunatics, and I think they're … and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military. Because they can't let that happen."
Trump specifically named U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., as one of the enemies within, calling him a "lunatic" and "sleazebag."
"The thing that that's tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside like Adam Schiff. Think of it, this guy's going to be a senator. He's running against a guy that doesn't understand politics at all, [former Los Angeles Dodger Steve] Garvey, but he was a good baseball player. But he doesn't understand politics at all. Adam shifty Schiff, who's a total sleazebag, is going to become a senator. But I call him the enemy from within.
"When you look at the danger he put our country in potentially with Russia with a phony, made-up deal that he made up with Hillary [Clinton], that started off as an excuse for why she lost an election that a lot of people thought she should have won. The polls indicated she might win, and then she got beaten everywhere, virtually. When you look at that, they said it was Russia, they used it as an excuse. And then the fake news picked it up."
Continuing on the subject of fake news, Trump hammered CBS News and "60 Minutes" for its recent deceptive editing of its interview with 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
"Let's talk about the single greatest scandal, in my opinion, in broadcast history," Trump said.
"'60 Minutes' and CBS interviewed Kamala, and she's incompetent. She gave them the dumbest answer anyone's ever heard. So they took that answer out, the whole answer they threw out, and they took another answer that she gave to a totally different question and inserted it. And supposedly, they did this a number of times. And they got caught. '60 Minutes' and CBS should lose their license for that."
Trump also slammed the response of the Biden-Harris administration response to recent disasters including Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
"A lot of governors have done a good job. But the response from the White House has been absolutely terrible. Her response has been terrible," Trump indicated.
He also voiced his opinion that the current administration used money from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and gave it to illegal immigrants.
"That group has no idea what's happening," Trump said. "Look, it's the worst president and the worst vice president in the history of our country. They're horrible. And he can't stand her for one simple reason. She overthrew him. But she didn't do it, the party did. Call it the Deep State, whatever it is, but the party did it. And it was really a coup. I mean, he is a very angry guy."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
It's not that CBS had a firm grasp on a reputation for impartiality or neutrality anyway.
For instance, it recently colluded with the Kamala Harris campaign in what some have described as election interference to change her answer to an interview question:
But it's now gone further at the network, with the apparent establishment of a bureau that runs stories past a "racial ideology" agenda before allowing them on the air.
According to a report at Revolver.news, "What if we told you that a so-called 'trusted' news source in the United States—the land of the 'free press'—is now running their story ideas through a radical left-wing ideology department that has the power to approve or disapprove of what airs on American televisions and across the internet?"
But that's what's happening, the report said.
"According to a new report, CBS must now get the 'okay' from a radical new department before any of their stories ever make it to air or print," the report said.
"Incredibly, that department, which OF COURSE was created in the wake of George Floyd's overdose and heart attack death, is called the 'Race and Culture Unit.' You may be curious: what exactly happens if a CBS News employee runs afoul of the 'Race and Culture Unit'? Apparently, the answer is a company-wide, hilarious struggle session."
The story line then turned to Puck News, which explained the fight erupted over a recent CBS interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and how executives were out of sorts because the interview allegedly "failed to meet the network's editorial standards."
The report said what had happened was that CBS News officials delivered that conclusion based on co-anchor Tony Dokoupil's "interrogative on-air scrutiny of Coates" and his new book.
The report confirmed, "Dokoupil kicked things off by noting that The Message offered a one-sided account of the Israel-Palestine conflict that, absent Coates's name and reputation and an American publisher, wouldn't have been out of place in an extremist's backpack. Dokoupil eventually cooled his heels and focused on some serious and significant shortcomings of the book. In particular, he keyed in on Coates's surprising decision not to include certain critical pieces of historical context, including, for instance, the First Intifada, the Second Intifada, and various terrorist attacks.
"Surprised, but seemingly game, Coates blithely pivoted away from these concerns and put forward a passionate but historically shallow view that appeared to offer little room for the Jews' multi-thousand-year history of global persecution in his argumentative framework. He made clear that his sympathies lay with the Palestinians, and drew parallels with his own experience in post-Jim Crow America. "
It was, in short, "two smart guys actively disagreeing with one another," the report said.
But within 24 hours, dozens of network workers objected to Dokoupil's questions and some so-called journalism groups signaled their dissatisfaction. There were charges and countercharges.
So the fight went to the network's administration, which said those questions were not run through its "Race and Culture" and "Standards and Practices" ideologies.
Dokoupil is Jewish and some said he actually upheld journalistic values by asking tough questions. But the fireworks already were lit, and the CBS staff split.
Then the "60 Minutes" interview scandal hit, the report said.
Revolver noted, "Putting aside the hilarity of it all, it's downright Orwellian that CBS is running all of its content through a new regime-inspired racial 'Ministry of Truth,' undoubtedly manned by hardcore Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion commissars."