Trump claims minorities thrived during his presidency. Advocates disagree.

Last week, while announcing his presidential candidacy, Donald Trump said minorities thrived during his time in office.

“Two years ago, when I left office, the United States stood ready for its golden age. Our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and prestige, towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies and striding into the future confident and so strong,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where his campaign will be headquartered.

“In four short years, everybody was doing great: men, women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans — everybody was thriving like never before,” he added.- ADVERTISEMENT -

But advocates and experts say otherwise. Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that was created in 2020 after a rise in anti-Asian hate, believes that people of color were put in harm’s way during the Trump administration.

“During the pandemic, in 2020, [Trump’s] systematic use of [anti-Asian-and-Pacific-Islander] rhetoric really drove a sharp rise in hate incidents, unjust racial profiling and overall deeper divisions across our nation,” Manjusha Kulkarni, the executive director of the AAPI Equity Alliance, told Yahoo News.

The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that anti-Asian hate crimes increased in 16 of the largest U.S. cities by 145% in 2020, during Trump’s time in office.

“Asian Americans are VERY angry at what China has done to our Country, and the World. Chinese Americans are the most angry of all. I don’t blame them!” Trump tweeted on May 12, 2020.

In 2020, Trump posted at least two dozen tweets that used negative rhetoric against Asian Americans, and the tweets were shared over 1 million times, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

“I feel like we’re still really paying for the cost of Trump’s presidency and his extreme rhetoric and dehumanizing of communities of color,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, told Yahoo News.

However, Kulkarni said it’s not just Trump’s rhetoric that harmed minorities, but also the policies implemented during his administration.

“The immigration ban that suspended visas from China, [the] ban on Chinese students and researchers, policies targeting the use of WeChat and even the ban on federal racial sensitivity training — those were some of the ones that had a truly devastating impact on our communities,” she said.

Nearly two years after the end of Trump’s term in office, Asian American communities say they are still dealing with the impact of his decisions.

“Many of our community members are being targeted, whether it’s violence in the streets or some sort of discrimination, but we’re still facing that. So that’s like a very in-our-face, still-present threat to our safety,” Choimorrow said.

In the 2020 presidential election, Black Americans largely voted for Joe Biden, with over 90% voting against Trump. Four in 10 of Biden’s votes came from Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters, though Trump did make gains among Hispanic voters, according to the Pew Research Center.

“We know who’s good for us, we know what’s best for us. We feel like Trump did not represent our values and did not help our communities,” Svante Myrick, president of People for the American Way, a progressive advocacy organization, told Yahoo News.

Some minority voters have expressed support for Trump. Mateo Mokarzel, a graduate student in Texas, told BBC News in 2020 that Trump’s policies and ideals protect the United States. “He has a strong nationalist stance, and they try to portray that as racist,” he said. “Protecting your borders and building up your economy is something most Americans want. I don't see how that’s racist or some kind of dog whistle.”

Others have argued that Trump made key strides in the right direction for minorities and criminal justice reform. In 2018, the Trump administration commuted Alice Johnson’s sentence and signed into law the First Step Act, which increased prisoner rehabilitation efforts and gave judges more leeway with the sentencing of drug offenders.

Actor Isaiah Washington praised Trump at the time for passing the legislation. “I voted for 44 [Barack Obama, the 44th president] twice. I even checked my emails in his Senate Office while lobbying for Salone [Sierra Leone] to be given another chance to rebrand. Not once in 8 years was I given any support regarding Africa or the Black Agenda, but 45 [Trump] invites me to the WH to celebrate the #FirstStepAct,” Washington tweeted.

But advocates say the First Step Act had overwhelming support before Trump got involved. “He’s trying to take credit for something that would have happened with or without him, which is, you know, frankly, typical Trump,” Myrick said.

Myrick says Trump left a lasting impact on marginalized communities after he confirmed three conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court during his tenure.

“Ethnic minorities did not thrive. In fact, [Trump] was able to nominate no Black individuals to any appellate federal court in the country,” Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told Yahoo news.

“We’ve already seen those effects: abortion, health care, voting rights, all of those areas where he did things that helped himself and the Republican Party.”

Advocates say they are still working to reverse the damage from Trump’s time in office. “I think if he were to get reelected, it’s going to give him the megaphone, the microphone, again, to reignite that kind of racism and bigotry. As if we don’t already have enough of it in this country. I just think it’s going to be worse,” Choimorrow said.

As potential candidates prepare for the 2024 presidential race, minorities say they are depending on each other to show up to the polls and vote.

“I think the greatest evidence of accountability [for Trump] is the fact that he was not reelected [in 2020]. Seven million more people voted for his opponent than for him across the United States,” Kulkarni said.

Originally reported by:

Jayla Whitfield-Anderson

National Reporter

Tue, November 22, 2022 at 3:14 PM

Florida man's voter fraud charges dismissed in blow to DeSantis.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - One of the 20 people arrested for voting illegally as part of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' effort to crack down on voter fraud had his charges dismissed on Friday.

A Miami state judge threw out the case against Robert Lee Wood, ruling that the statewide prosecutor, who is overseeing all 20 cases, had no jurisdiction because the alleged crime did not occur in at least two judicial circuits.

The decision could pave the way for similar findings in some or all of the other cases, though local prosecutors could still choose to refile the charges. The governor's office said the state would appeal the ruling.

DeSantis, a Republican who is running for re-election as governor on Nov. 8 and is widely thought to be weighing a 2024 presidential campaign, touted the arrests in August as the "first salvo" from his newly created Office of Election Crimes and Security.

The agency, which includes state law enforcement officers, was established amid a nationwide push by Republicans to tighten voting laws in the wake of former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The ruling on Friday came two days after the Tampa Bay Times published police body camera footage taken during the arrests that showed several defendants appearing baffled by the charges.

All 20 are former inmates convicted of murder or felony sex crimes. A 2018 constitutional amendment restored voting rights for many ex-convicts but specifically excluded people who committed those offenses.

In the videos, several defendants said they had been allowed to vote by election officials and did not understand why they were being arrested. Under state law, voter fraud requires intent.

In Wood's case, prosecutors argued that his ballot, cast in Miami, was eventually sent to Tallahassee to be tallied, thus fulfilling the requirement for the crime to occur in two separate locations.

But Judge Milton Hirsch agreed with Wood's defense attorney that Wood had nothing to do with the transfer of ballots from one place to another.

"Here, all the criminal misconduct, if there was any, was performed by one man in one county," the judge wrote in his order.

Wood's attorney, Larry Davis, said prosecutors should abandon the case. Wood registered to vote after being told he was allowed, received a voter card and cast a ballot, all without any objection, Davis said.

"There's no way he would have done so without being told it was OK," Davis said in a phone interview. "My client had absolutely no intent to break the law."

In a statement, a DeSantis spokesperson, Bryan Griffin, said, "The state will continue to enforce the law and ensure that murderers and rapists who are not permitted to vote do not unlawfully do so."

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Daniel Wallis)

Reposted by Ricardo Martinez

Jury reaches decision on sentence of Parkland school shooter.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A jury said Thursday that it has reached a decision on whether to recommend that Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz be executed for the 2018 massacre that killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The recommendation was not immediately released and came in the second day of deliberations, 15 minutes after jurors arrived and examined the gun Cruz used.

The decision promises an end to a three-month trial that included graphic videos, photos and testimony from the massacre and its aftermath, heart-wrenching testimony from victims’ family members and a tour of the still blood-spattered building.

The jury’s decision must be unanimous if it intends to recommend the death penalty, and if that happens, it will be up to Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer to make a final decision. If all jurors can’t agree on recommending death, then Cruz would get life in prison.

The jury of 12 people had asked late Wednesday to see the AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, but the Broward County Sheriff's Office security team objected, even though the gun has been made inoperable and Cruz's ammunition would be removed from the jury room.

Lead prosecutor Mike Satz, who has more the five decades of experience, pointed out that in every murder case he has tried or knows, jurors got to examine and handle the weapon in their room — and he said a knife or machete is more dangerous than a gun without a firing pin. Security has never been an issue, he said.

Cruz's attorneys had no objection to jurors seeing the gun.

Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year ago to murdering 14 students and three staff members and wounding 17 others on Feb. 14, 2018. Cruz said he chose Valentine's Day to make it impossible for Stoneman Douglas students to celebrate the holiday ever again. The jury will determine only if Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole. For Cruz to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous.

During the prosecution's rebuttal case, Satz and his team argued that Cruz's smooth movements with the gun and his ease in reloading helps show he does not have any neurological disorders, as claimed by his attorneys.

Lead defense attorney Melisa McNeill and her team have never disputed that Cruz committed a horrible crime, but they say his birth mother's excessive drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and put him on a path that led to the shooting.

The massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

As reported by Terry Spencer on Oct 13th, 2022

Los Angeles Councilwoman Nury Martinez resigns following her leaked racist remarks.

LOS ANGELES, CA - Embattled Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez has resigned, days after a recording of her making racist comments against the city's Black and Oaxacan communities was leaked.

"It is with a broken heart that I resign my seat for Council District 6, the community I grew up in and my home," she said in a statement.
The recorded conversation involving Council-members Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León captured the now-former councilwoman describing the Black son of a white council-member in crude and racist language. She also described Oaxacan immigrants in Koreatown as "short little dark people."

The resignation comes hours after protesters disrupted a scheduled Wednesday city council meeting inside Los Angeles City Hall. With no resignation, there would be no meeting, they said in chants.

Prior to her resignation, Martinez had stepped down as president of the council, but stopped short of leaving the council altogether. Cedillo and de León have issued apologies, but haven't resigned.

Council-member Mike Bonin, whose son was the subject of Martinez's comments, earlier in the day tweeted a call for the three to step down.
It's unlikely that just Martinez's resignation will satisfy the L.A. community.

Dozens of protesters inside the meeting room on Wednesday shouted over President Pro Tempore Mitch O'Farrell as he attempted to speak and call for order. The protesters held signs that demanded members resign and chanted for an hour, as the meeting sputtered along.

O'Farrell attempted to order the group to quiet down, but finally called the meeting to an end after losing a quorum before anything on the agenda was addressed.

As reported by: Jaclyn Diaz & Vanessa Romo for NPR News on September 13th, 2022

Dad chokes driver who tried to run Florida family off road in hate crime.

Pinellas County, FL - After a driver tried forcing a family off the road, in what prosecutors say was a racially-motivated hate crime attack in Florida, the father fought back in self defense.

The roadway attack escalated at a red light where the man got out of his car, charged and tried punching the father, court documents show. But the incident ended when the dad, who is Black, got the man in a chokehold, according to officials.

What Jordan Patrick Leahy, 29, didn’t know was that the father is a martial artist who swiftly dodged his closed fist and kept Leahy restrained until Pinellas County deputies arrived, according to court documents.

A federal jury in Tampa found Leahy guilty of a hate crime on Aug. 24, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

After a driver tried forcing a family off the road, in what prosecutors say was a racially-motivated hate crime attack in Florida, the father fought back in self defense.

The roadway attack escalated at a red light where the man got out of his car, charged and tried punching the father, court documents show. But the incident ended when the dad, who is Black, got the man in a chokehold, according to officials.

What Jordan Patrick Leahy, 29, didn’t know was that the father is a martial artist who swiftly dodged his closed fist and kept Leahy restrained until Pinellas County deputies arrived, according to court documents.

A federal jury in Tampa found Leahy guilty of a hate crime on Aug. 24, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. He faces up to 10 years in prison.- ADVERTISEMENT -


When deputies arrived on the scene at the time, Leahy made comments showing “his bias motive, including telling the officers that Black people need to be kept ‘in their areas,’” a news release from the attorney’s office says.

McClatchy News contacted attorneys listed for Leahy for comment on Aug. 25 and was awaiting a response.

The attack goes back to when the father was driving his 4-year-old daughter and girlfriend home from a family dinner in Seminole on Aug. 8, 2021, court documents show.

They were driving southward in the left lane on Starkey Road when Leahy “zoomed up” with his car directly next to them and pretended to shoot at the family using gun hand gestures while shouting racial slurs, according to court documents.

Then, Leahy swerved into the family’s lane in trying to run their car off the road before tailgating them as the father tried to get away, prosecutors say.

Leahy’s “pursuit” of the family went on for roughly a mile and half until he sideswiped their car, causing the cars’ mirrors to collide, and then he sped off down the road, according to court documents and the release.

The father wanted to take a picture of Leahy’s car to report the attack to police, so he followed him down Starkey Road until they both came to a red light, court documents state.

This is when prosecutors say Leahy got out of his car and tried assaulting the father while hurling more racial slurs at him.

“No one should be targeted, threatened, intimidated or assaulted because of their race,” U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg said in a statement.

“The defendant in this case acted upon his bigoted beliefs and put an entire family and others’ safety at risk,” Handberg added.

Leahy previously pleaded guilty to battery and DUI charges in connection to the incident, according to court documents.

He is facing a fine up to $250,000 as part of this sentence, according to the release.

Pinellas County is on Florida’s Gulf Coast, just west of Tampa.

Originally reported by:
Julia Marnin for Yahoo! News

Father, son get life for hate crime in Ahmaud Arbery’s death.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — The white father and son convicted of murder in Ahmaud Arbery's fatal shooting after they chased the 25-year-old Black man through a Georgia neighborhood were sentenced Monday to life in prison for committing a federal hate crime.

U.S. District Court Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced Travis McMichael, 36, and his father Greg McMichael, 66, in Brunswick. Both were previously sentenced to life without parole in a state court for Arbery’s murder.

“A young man is dead. Ahmaud Arbery will be forever 25. And what happened a jury found happened because he’s Black,” Wood said.

In February, a federal jury convicted the McMichaels and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan of violating Arbery's civil rights, concluding they targeted him because of his race. All three were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels were convicted of using guns in the commission of a violent crime. The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and used a pickup truck to chase Arbery after he ran past their home on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery with a shotgun. The McMichaels told police they suspected Arbery was a burglar, but investigators determined he was unarmed and had committed no crimes.

Greg McMichael addressed the Arbery family, saying their loss was “beyond description.”

“I’m sure my words mean very little to you but I want to assure you I never wanted any of this to happen,” he said. “There was no malice in my heart or my son’s heart that day.”

Outside the courtroom, Cooper-Jones responded to his statement.

“I think he realizes that he made some horrible decisions. Unfortunately, his apology doesn’t bring back my son,” she said.

Travis McMichael declined to address the court, but his attorney, Amy Lee Copeland, said her client had no convictions before Arbery’s slaying and had served in the U.S. Coast Guard. She said a lighter sentence would be more consistent with what similarly charged defendants have received in other cases, noting that the officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, got 21 years in prison for violating Floyd’s civil rights, though he was not charged with targeting Floyd because of his race.

Greg McMichael’s attorney, A.J. Balbo, also cited the Chauvin sentence as well as his client’s age and health problems, which he said include a stroke and depression.

Prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein said Chauvin at least had some legitimate authority to engage Floyd initially.

“Greg McMichael had absolutely no legitimate reason to run inside and get a gun and chase after a young man who was doing nothing other than running down the road,” Bernstein said.

Arbery’s killing became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people including Floyd and Breonna Taylor and in Kentucky. Those two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges.

“The evidence we presented at trial proved ... what so many people felt in their hearts when they watched the video of Ahmaud’s tragic and unnecessary death: This would have never happened if he had been white,” Christopher Perras, another prosecutor, said Monday.

A state Superior Court judge imposed life sentences for the McMichaels and Bryan in January for Arbery’s murder, with both McMichaels denied any chance of parole. Bryan had a sentencing hearing scheduled later Monday in the federal case.

All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, in the custody of U.S. marshals, while awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions in January.

Because they were first charged and convicted of murder in a state court, protocol would have them turned them over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life terms in a state prison.

In court filings last week, both Travis and Greg McMichael asked the judge to instead divert them to a federal prison, saying they won’t be safe in a Georgia prison system that’s the subject of a U.S. Justice Department investigation focused on violence between inmates.

Copeland said during Monday’s hearing for Travis McMichael that her client has received hundreds of threats that he will be killed as soon as he arrives at state prison and that his photo has been circulated there on illegal phones.

“I am concerned your honor that my client effectively faces a back door death penalty,” she said, adding that “retribution and revenge” were not sentencing factors, even for a defendant who is “publicly reviled.”

Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery Sr., said Travis McMichael had shown his son no mercy and deserved to “rot” in state prison.

“You killed him because he was a Black man and you hate Black people,” he said. “You deserve no mercy.”

Wood said she didn’t have the authority to order the state to relinquish custody of Travis McMichael to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but also wasn’t inclined to do so in his case. She also declined to keep Greg McMichael in federal custody.

During the February hate crimes trial, prosecutors fortified their case that Arbery’s killing was motivated by racism by showing the jury roughly two dozen text messages and social media posts in which Travis McMichael and Bryan used racist slurs and made disparaging comments about Black people.

Defense attorneys for the three men argued the McMichaels and Bryan didn’t pursue Arbery because of his race but acted on an earnest — though erroneous — suspicion that Arbery had committed crimes in their neighborhood.

By RUSS BYNUM for AP News

Advocates struggle with how much they can help with self-managed abortions.

At a rally in Nashville, Planned Parenthood organizer Julie Edwards looked out at some of the "back alley abortion" imagery on signs, including bloody coat hangers. But, Edwards told the crowd, driven into the streets by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on abortion rights, it's not like the old days before Roe v. Wade.

Nearly a decade ago, Edwards was a teenager and got medication from some older friends. Edwards said that may be the new normal in abortion-ban states like Tennessee.

"I'm standing in front of you having had a self-managed abortion, having gotten abortion pills from people in my community. And I'm safe," Edwards said to cheers. "It's going to take all of us to keep each other's secrets, to hold each other's hands, to keep each other safe."

Medications are now available for first trimester abortions. And it's become the primary way abortions are induced.

The regimen involves two prescription drugs that hit the market since Roe was decided in 1973. Mifepristone is taken first. It's the abortion drug that's fairly expensive and highly regulated. A day or two later, the patient takes misoprostol, which is much more widely available and can work on its own to induce an abortion. The drug was developed for treating ulcers in the 1970s but has several other off-label uses aside from abortions, such as alleviating arthritis. It's even prescribed for animals, so veterinary supply stores carry the medication. Misoprostol is even sold over-the-counter in Mexico.

"It's really based on what somebody can get. And in the self-managed context, the only way to get mifepristone plus Misoprostol is through the internet, so it takes time to wait for the delivery," said Susan Yanow, spokesperson for Women Help Women, a nonprofit based across four continents that works to increase access to abortion.

The international organization ships both medications all over the world — but not to the U.S. because laws vary so much state to state. Social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram have already started pulling down posts offering to send these drugs by mail. Many states that now ban abortion have recently strengthens their laws on mail-order abortion drugs.

"We still have the right to share information," Yanow said. "People use the internet. People use their phones. People will find ways to obtain these pills."

But it's more than finding the medications, which is why Yanow's organization has a detailed guide on how to use them safely. And she provides training for local reproductive rights groups, as do others.

Lynsey Bourke of Self-Guided Abortion, based in Montana, began producing video tutorials late last year and publishing them on Youtube, explaining how to use Misoprostol alone and offering ways to make the process more sacred by building an altar, burning incense and lighting candles. She even provides post-abortion yoga instruction.

With Misoprostol alone, multiple rounds are needed. Nausea is common. And the medicine induces cramping and bleeding that can be alarming for those who aren't prepared.

Even some OB-GYNs are quietly supportive of self-managed abortion.

"I'm more worried about people who can't get to one of these sources and are just so desperate that they take matters into their own hands," said Dr. Nikki Zite, an OB-GYN at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville.

She said clinical counseling before taking the pill combo is ideal. For example, some patients are anemic and could bleed enough to need emergency care. And some just don't do well with pain and lots of blood.

"Not every patient is a good candidate to miscarry at home," she said.

But at this point, Zite can't afford to provide that consultation. In Tennessee, she would be risking a felony and prison time under a six-week ban now in effect, and an all-out abortion ban set to take effect in August. And it's unclear just how far law enforcement is willing to reach.

References to coat hangers have been used to protest the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Abortion rights activists say "self-managed abortions" are much safer today because of medications — but women still need guidance.

Tennessee's laws specifically exempts the pregnant person from prosecution. But a motivated prosecutor could find ways to press charges related to a self-managed abortion, said criminal defense attorney David Raybin in Nashville.

"I mean, that is fraught with peril," Raybin said. "I would strongly recommend against a woman using such quote-unquote underground methods to get medication like that."

He said it's best to get a legal abortion in another state. But abortion rights activists in Tennessee say they know travel will be difficult for many. And even for those who can, a self-managed abortion may be more convenient. To a degree, reproductive rights groups are willing to help navigate the legal gray area.

Healthy and Free Tennessee, an organization working to promote sexual health and reproductive freedom, has organized several training sessions through Women Help Women in recent weeks. Policy director Nina Gurak said their biggest worry isn't health complications — it's the legal risk.

"We recommend that if someone is self-managing an abortion that they have a supporter or friend. That supporter or friend may be at a higher legal risk than the actual person who is self-managing an abortion," she said. "And then you have to decide for yourself — is that something I'm comfortable with? Is that something I'm not comfortable with?"

Organizations in states with abortion bans have their own risk to assess. They feel confident the First Amendment protects sharing medical information endorsed by the World Health Organization.

But abortion rights advocates are torn between raising awareness and becoming a target for anti-abortion lawmakers — who are no longer limited by Roe v. Wade.

"We definitely are concerned about increasing criminalization of abortion or self-managed abortion and abortion pills," Gurak said. "We also want to balance that with the need for communities to have the information that they need to make the decision for themselves."

Originally reported by NPR on July 05, 2022 11:36 ET

Supreme Court conservatives flex muscle in sweeping rulings.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court’s sweeping rulings on guns and abortion sent an unmistakable message. Conservative justices hold the power and they are not afraid to use it to make transformative changes in the law, none more so than taking away a woman’s right to abortion that had stood for nearly 50 years.

No more half measures, they declared Friday in overturning Roe v. Wade and allowing states to outlaw abortion. And the day before, in ruling for the first time that Americans the right to carry handguns in public for self-defense, they said the Constitution is clear.

“A restless and newly constituted Court,” is how Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of three liberals on the nine-member court, described her colleagues earlier in June.

The abortion case in particular was a repudiation of the more incremental approach favored by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The decisions in the blockbuster cases on consecutive days were the latest and perhaps clearest manifestation of how the court has evolved over the past six years — a product of historical accident and Republican political brute force — from an institution that leaned right, but produced some notable liberal victories  to one with an aggressive, 6-3 conservative majority.

Originally published by: By MARK SHERMAN and JESSICA GRESKO on June 25/2022

Two White Men Arrested After Viral Vids Capture Terrifying Attack on Black Teen.

Two white men were arrested in Florida this week and accused of racial profiling after allegedly hurling a massive stone at a Black teen who was driving in the same town where Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012.

“I was racially profiled while driving through my friends neighborhood,” the victim, who identified himself as JJ, wrote on his Instagram Wednesday. “They didn’t like the way I was driving, so they felt the need to hit my car with a cone, and throw a rock through my window. All I wanted to do was de-escalate until police came, because I wasn’t about to get charges pressed on me for no reason.”

According to Seminole County records, Donald Eugene Corsi, 52, and Howard Oral Hughes, 61, were arrested Wednesday. They were first identified by social media sleuth @ThatDaneshGuy. Corsi faces felony charges for damage to property and launching a weapon into a vehicle. Hughes has been charged with felony property damage and a misdemeanor for battery. Both men have since been released from the Seminole jail on bond.

In a video initially posted on Facebook Tuesday, a man who identified himself as JJ’s father, CJ Jones, said, “This is the video my son took while calling 911. …And as you can see they [admit] to having guns.”

In the video, one man in a blue shirt stands with his hands on his hips, watching the person holding the camera, presumed to be JJ. Another man in sunglasses walks around a white Mercedes sedan with his phone pointed toward the license plate

“Right here! Tell me what you’ve done!” the man in sunglasses shouts.

The camera pans to the car, which has a broken window in the seat behind the driver.

“Burning out and racing through my fucking neighborhood!” the man in sunglasses yells in JJ’s face. The man in the blue shirt joins him in front of the camera.

“I’m not in your face,” the man in the blue shirt says after JJ tells him to move. “Get out of my neighborhood, you fuckwad!”

JJ asks the men if they have a gun, and one of them says he has a permit to carry.

After the two men trail JJ on the residential street, other people in the neighborhood come out to inspect what’s going on.

A woman in the street with a striped towel wrapped around her waist and a cross hanging from her neck accuses JJ of possessing a gun.

“Get out of this neighborhood!” she shouts. “You don’t belong here!”

JJ walks back to his car and films glass shards all over the backseat and a dent on the car door.

In a follow-up Facebook Live video Jones posted Tuesday, he mentioned that the incident happened in the Forest Lake neighborhood of Sanford.

“Not too far where Trayvon Martin got killed,” he wrote.

The video shows police arriving on the scene as residents stood outside their homes. Jones said that he wanted to go live “just so we have evidence, in case something happens to me out here today.”

He then turned the camera toward the house where his son was supposed to visit a friend.

“Even when I was coming into this neighborhood, I had a couple yell at me,” Jones says. “Black people cannot stay around here.”

The Daily Beast was unable to reach Corsi and Hughes on Thursday.

Originally reported by Brooke Leigh Howard

Thu, June 16, 2022, 12:59 PM

Enough is enough... again!

MIAMI-DADE, FL - One of the most, or maybe THE most, cherished treasure a human being can have, is their offspring. It is a well-known fact that in the animal kingdom, when a mother of virtually any species, feels her offspring is being threatened in any way, “momma” gets really upset and she becomes very dangerous. In a very similar way, human mothers are the same.

We as “rational” beings can accept the fact that even fathers (males) get sometimes violent when his descendants are somehow threatened  in any way. Said this, it’s important to point out that our children, in general, are the most precious thing we have; not only that, they are, literally, the future of society and therefore the future of the world itself. That’s why any incident when children are hurt is so disturbing to all of us or at least the ones with a spine.

This time, it was one school shooting, unfortunately one more (so far in the year 2022 there have been 21 school shootings in the US) Uvalde, Texas was the unfortunate scenario of the latest one, where 19 of our precious descendants die in a very violent and unnecessary death.

Now, is it appropriate to start the conversation, again, of gun control? or are we going to fly with the right-wing narrative of “it’s not about guns, it’s about mental health”? It’s obvious that in order to go outside with the intention of killing a lot of innocent people, you have to be somehow mentally unstable, but take that as an excuse to not talk about gun regulations when in fact, a 2018 report of the FBI on the characteristics of active shooters found that only 25% of shooters from 2000-2013 had confirmed mental illness, is unacceptable.

At this point, let’s say the same old quote that has been repeated over and over again for quite a while now: enough is enough!

It’s clear to all of us that the NRA and the rest of the weaponry industry have been buying consciousness of politicians through lobbies forever, they fund and flood their campaigns with millions of dollars and therefore they don’t even care to consider legislate against them; which is not true, by the way, another talking-point from the right. Nobody wants to “get rid of your arms”, they want to regulate their acquisition, that’s it, make it a little harder so we won’t see another derailed teenager easily and legally buying two AR-15's or any other assault weapon or semi-automatic machine gun the moment he turns 18 in order to kill us all or our children.

Is it that hard to understand? Really that hard? Or, as many of us suspect, is it a matter of money? Unfortunately paid with the blood of our children, families or our own.

Written by Ricardo Martinez

In Wake of Massacres, the Supreme Court Is Poised to Expand Gun Rights

WASHINGTON — In the coming weeks, with the nation reeling from mass shootings in New York and Texas, the Supreme Court is set to issue a major decision on what states may do to limit carrying guns in public. Based on the justices’ questions when the case was argued in November, they are likely to strike down a New York law that requires people seeking a license to carry a handgun in public to show a “proper cause.”

The decision will be the court’s first significant statement on the scope of Second Amendment rights outside the home. In 2008, in ruling that the amendment protects an individual right untied to militia service, the court said only that law-abiding citizens have a constitutional right to keep guns in their homes for self-defense.

The new case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, is a test of constitutionality laws requiring licenses for carrying guns in public. California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island have laws similar to the one in New York.

At the argument, several justices said the New York law imposes an intolerable burden on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

“You don’t have to say, when you’re looking for a permit to speak on a street corner or whatever, that, you know, your speech is particularly important,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “So why do you have to show in this case, convince somebody, that you’re entitled to exercise your Second Amendment right?”

But several justices seemed open to allowing the state to exclude guns from crowded public settings or other sensitive places.

Indeed, the 2008 decision, District of Columbia v. Heller, indicated that the court would be prepared to sustain at least some gun control laws, including ones banning guns in schools.

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, wrote for the majority.

Reported by: Adam Liptak on Wed, May 25, 2022,

© 2022 The New York Times Company

The tragedy of being sick is not even the sickness

MIAMI-DADE, FL - When a family member or a dear friend gets sick is not an experience recommended for anybody. When that time arrives, it’s time to run, getting fewer hours of sleep, more stress than usual and of course, the money issue, which curiously is the source of many, if not all, the aforementioned consequences of having our loved one sick. Now comes the trip to the hospital and then the real stress kicks in, not necessarily at the beginning of the hospital journey but rather close to the discharge process. Why? You may ask, well, unfortunately in our country we don’t have what other developed countries have: “Free & Universal Health Care System” or translated for us who don’t speak “medicine”: Free Health Care for everybody. (Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, among many other developed and some underdeveloped countries, have Universal Health Care). Not only that, the cost of the health treatment of any kind in the United Sates is ridiculously high, not affordable for the majority of people and the network of businesses around that health system have flourished exponentially, precisely because of that fertile ground for money, money and more money. The fact that an insurance company is the one with the final answer in a situation where your health is in jeopardy and you don’t have the financial resources to take care of the most precious gift we all have, which is our health or our family’s, is disheartening given that we all know for a fact what is the most important factor in the decision, and that is money and its ramifications. Having the consciousness that a bunch of executives from a private company are the ones deciding the future of our health is terrifying; the ones responsible for my health or literally my death, in any case my well-being is at risk because of the policies of a private company. I don’t even want to visit the fact that they’ve been advised by a medical advisory board, who responds to the money interest of their bosses. Do you see the problem here?

This is common practice in the insurance realm.

10 Bad Faith Insurance Claim Practices:

1. Unjustified delay of settlement. Insurance companies may delay your claim for no valid reason. They do this in hopes that if they take too long, you will just forget about it.

2. Lack of communication. In some cases, the insurance company may not notify you of its decision in a timely manner or may fail to respond to correspondence.

3. Lack of proper investigative techniques. When investigating your claim, the insurance company may use illegal or unethical methods to obtain information regarding your claim. In some cases, the company may refuse to investigate your claim at all and simply deny it.

4. Unreasonable demands. In order to delay the process or find a way to deny the claim, the company may ask for an unreasonable amount of documents in order to start the process. It may ask for items unrelated to the case and deny your claim if you cannot provide them.

5. Lowball offers. In this case, the insurance company may offer an unreasonably low settlement. Do not accept any offer before consulting your attorney.

6. Use of threats. The company may threaten the victim by ordering him or her to do something or to not do something or else the company will refuse to pay the claim.

7. Changing the policy. A company may change the terms of the policy after a claim is filed, and use its new terms to deny the claim.

8. Cancelling the policy. The company may cancel the policy after a person makes a claim.

9. Not disclosing the policy limits. If the adjusters will not reveal aspects of the policy, you may be dealing with a bad faith insurance claim practice.

10. Conflict of interest. An insurance adjuster may attempt to handle your claim and the claim of the other party.

One thing of paramount importance to consider in this complex and entangled situation is empathy. How much empathy those executives have for us? Do they have the same conditions if they need some health care for them or their family than any regular person that their company insured? Or do they have special treatment and therefore they simply don’t care? Those are very interesting question that not only need to be answered in an honest way, but those answers should indicate many things, one of them would be: are the insurance companies treating the insured properly, compassionately, empathetically? If there’s a no in one of those answers, which I’m pretty sure is the case, it has to be changed, the system is flawed and even though it sounds like a typical cliché, we as a developed country can’t continue giving such a deficient though expensive health care, to a community with no resources not only to afford financially but to fight back for their rights. It’s not fair, it has to be changed and it has to be now, too many lives in danger, too many families in distress, too many human beings in suffering, because a bunch of executives think about their income and their company’s more than the happiness of the same people paying their premiums. The irony!

Written by Ricardo Martinez

Hospitals and options

MIAMI-DADE, FL - When a family member or a dear friend is sick, even worse, when it's an emergency and you have to rush to the hospital with said family member or friend, stress and despair start to reign your life, hopefully for a few days, unfortunately it usually lasts a lot more, directly proportionate with the age and previous health conditions of the patient.

It's disheartening enough being in such position when you have to take care of your elderly, injured, family member or friend; but if on top of that the personnel at the hospital, the bureaucracy, the irregularities of different departments of the health center flourish during that time, things get really disturbing.

Not only the fact that your family member is suffering, but for you having to endure poor performance of some of the nurses, or directors, or chiefs of department, or any other people involved in the recovering of your loved one, the situation tends to be, at times, unbearable.

My experience has been every time I have spent some time either on the hospital bed or being company of someone else, that we're going to find people from every part of the spectrum: great professional, others than suck, great facilities, other things not that great; amazing organization, other times, not that much.

The point I try to make is no matter where or when you get to a health center, you have two options: one, pick a fight with every other person you encounter, no matter if that person is a janitor or a neurosurgeon; a nurse, or a physical therapist.

The other option would be to focus on the good people (that you indeed will find) and work things around if you find them uncomfortable or even in detriment, according to your assessment of the circumstances, of the health of either you or the person you're taking care of.

In the meantime, do something useful, read a book or do some research online, while waiting in the cafeteria. After that, entertain yourself with some fun and don't forget to be happy!

Written by Ricardo Martinez

The judge who tossed mask mandate misunderstood public health law, legal experts say

When U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle tossed out the federal government's transportation mask mandate on Monday, she relied in part on her interpretation of the term "sanitation."

The 10-letter word can be found in the Public Health Service Act, a sprawling 1944 law that gave the federal government certain powers to respond to public health emergencies.

The Biden administration relied on a piece of the Public Health Service Act to defend its COVID-19 mask mandate on airplanes and other forms of mass transit.

Specifically, the law says that if the government is trying to prevent the spread of communicable diseases, it can "provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary."

The administration argued that masks qualified as "sanitation" under the law, but Mizelle disagreed, opting for a much narrower definition of the term that would exclude measures like face coverings. Legal experts say her interpretation missed the mark.

"If one of my students turned in this opinion as their final exam, I don't know if I would agree that they had gotten the analysis correct," said Erin Fuse Brown, a law professor at Georgia State University.

"It reads like someone who had decided the case and then tried to dress it up as legal reasoning without actually doing the legal reasoning," she added.

What counts as 'sanitation'?

In her opinion, Mizelle says that a common way judges decide the meaning of words in laws is to look up dictionary definitions that were contemporaneous with the passage of the law. In this instance, that's 1944.

Mizelle says "sanitation" could have been taken to mean either actively cleaning something or measures to keep something clean, but ultimately settles on the former definition.

"Wearing a mask cleans nothing. At most, it traps virus droplets," Mizelle wrote. "But it neither 'sanitizes' the person wearing the mask nor 'sanitizes' the conveyances."

Mizelle says her reading is bolstered by the fact that other words listed alongside "sanitation" in the 1944 law — such as "fumigation" or "pest extermination" — refer specifically to cleaning something or trying to wipe out a disease.

But Fuse Brown says that while this understanding of "sanitation" may be true for lay people, it's not how the term is used in the public health field or understood by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the mandate.

"Sanitation was just the old way in public health parlance of taking traditional public health steps to prevent the spread of disease," she said.

She suggested the opinion will make it harder for the Biden administration to control the spread of COVID-19.Fuse Brown points to the widespread mask-wearing during the 1918 influenza outbreak, which came roughly two and a half decades before the passage of the Public Health Service Act.

"The reasoning is poor, but it also has really drastic and dire consequences for public health, which is the part that makes it not just a joke, but it actually makes it really frightening," she said.

The opinion could have lasting effects on the CDC's authority

Mizelle's opinion also restricts the CDC's ability to respond to public health emergencies in ways it deems appropriate, and if the opinion is upheld by a federal appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts warn it could hobble the government's ability to control future outbreaks.

"If this particular type of opinion took on greater precedential value as it rises up through the court system, if that happens, it's big trouble for CDC down the road," said James Hodge, a law professor at Arizona State University.

Mizelle also criticized the agency for not following standard rule-making procedures before instituting the mandate. Hodge said she misunderstood how the federal government operates during a national public health emergency. Mizelle substituted her own definition of "sanitation," Hodge said, brushing aside a legal norm known as "agency deference" that compels judges to yield to the interpretation of federal agencies when a law's language is unclear.

"This is really a serious deviation from not just what we're trying to do to protect the public's health, but a misstatement of federal authority in emergencies to a great degree," Hodge said.

Fuse Brown agreed, suggesting the opinion amounted to a "breathtaking amount of political judicial activism" that "should chill us all."

"Even if we're skeptical about agencies or even about Congress's ability to make good judgments in this ... time, we certainly do not want these decisions to be in the hands of a single unelected judge," she said.

NPR's Pien Huang contributed reporting to this story.

Is it posible to be dumber than this?

MIAMI, FL - Being an alumnus from Harvard University, being a seasoned debater since his teen years, proudly a Supreme Court contender and not less important and relevant, a US Senator, there is no reason or  explanation in the whole wide world to be so dumb.

Wait, could it be a posible explanation a political interest? Or political gain? Maybe money interest somehow?

The Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz said that Biden announcement of his pick for SCOTUS, a black woman, is "offensive" to the rest of the population. He argues that only 6% of the US population is "black women" therefore, the "offense" is for the rest 94% of the population.

There is so much to unpack here that I don't even know where to begin. First of all, offensive for whom? The white privileged men that have been the picked options almost since the beginning of the SCOTUS? or is Senator Cruz pretending to compare the social representation that white men have had against black people or more specifically black women? or he's not aware of the significance of having a minority represented in such a high platform as the SCOTUS? or he just forgot that he, himself, is part of a minority taking into consideration that his own father was cuban, meaning he is latino by heritage?

I really don't know what to think other that the confusion or ill-intention or ignorance or pure evil of this Senator is something worthy of deep psychological analysis or I would say, simply enough reason to vote him out because he seems to be really mentally unstable.

Reported by Ricardo Martinez

A witness corroborated the claim that Rep. Matt Gaetz was told in 2017 he'd had sex with a minor

A witness has confirmed to federal prosecutors that Rep. Matt Gaetz was informed in 2017 that he'd had sex with a minor, sources told The Daily Beast.

In a letter obtained by The Daily Beast in April 2021, Gaetz's associate Joel Greenberg said he discovered a girl he and the congressman had engaged in "sexual activities" with was 17 at the time.

"Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage," Greenberg wrote, according to the outlet. He added Gaetz was "equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation" and that "there was no further contact with this individual until after her 18th birthday."

According to The Daily Beast, someone else was in the room when Greenberg called Gaetz to convey that information: Joe Ellicott, Greenberg's close friend and a former employee at the Seminole County tax office. Both men are now cooperating with federal investigators in the sex-crimes probe into Gaetz.

Ellicott's decision to cooperate is likely bad news for the embattled Florida congressman, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection to the sex-trafficking probe.

"After nearly a year of false rumors, not a shred of evidence has implicated Congressman Gaetz in wrongdoing," his chief of staff told Insider on Thursday. "We remain focused on our work representing Floridians."

Among other things, Ellicott and Greenberg reportedly exchanged text messages via the encrypted messaging app Signal, in which Ellicott disclosed that a woman they both were associated with "knew [the minor] was underage the whole time, had sex with her, and they both went to see other guys."

Greenberg pleaded guilty to sex trafficking in May and agreed to cooperate fully with the government on other investigations. Ellicott agreed to cooperate this week and will plead guilty to two federal crimes — conspiracy to commit wire fraud and distribution of a controlled substance — in a case separate from the Gaetz investigation, ABC News reported.

No charges have been brought against Gaetz, but several recent developments indicate the investigation is heating up. Among other things, Gaetz's ex-girlfriend testified before a federal grand jury earlier this month. NBC News reported that the ex, whose name Insider is withholding to protect her privacy, has been talking to prosecutors for months and was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony.

NBC also said prosecutors are investigating whether Gaetz sex-trafficked the 17-year-old; if he violated the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of "any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose" across state lines; or if he obstructed justice. Gaetz has denied all three claims.

With respect to the obstruction probe, investigators are said to be scrutinizing a three-way call after the investigation started between Gaetz, his ex, and another woman who was cooperating with federal authorities and who was reportedly recording the phone call. NBC reported that authorities suspect Gaetz of obstructing justice during that conversation; he's denied the allegation.

An attorney for Ellicott declined to comment on reporting about his client's cooperation deal. A spokesperson for Gaetz and a lawyer representing Greenberg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Novak Djokovic and being above the law

MIAMI, FL - In times of a world pandemic still going on and a very strong polarization and politization of trivial topics, being anti-vaxxer is definitely a concept I not only don’t understand, but ultimately, I don’t agree upon and most importantly, one which I’m actively against to.

At this point into the pandemic, I don’t want to fall into the temptation of explaining what experts in the field of science, biology, virology, immunology, etc, have said during all this time regarding the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine against COVID-19 but, well, here I go: it is safe and it is highly effective. For details, go to the experts’ platforms all over the specialized Internet portals.

Said that, to me is absolutely unthinkable that a professional athlete, a number one in his sport, an example for the youth, a role model in all what the word entails, is so vocal about his position against science. As a matter of fact, it’s sad, very sad.

Fortunately, he doesn’t represent the majority of the top athletes in the world; unfortunately, he is the top athlete in his sport.

Now, Australia has shown a principle that, directly or indirectly we break more than it should be broken and that is: nobody is above the law, period. You can be good in what you do, or you can be the best in what you do, or you can be even be the cream of the top in what you do, which is the case with Djokovic, with lots of fame and fortune, but, you’re not above the law and Australia has shown that’s the case.

Thanks, Australia, for leading by example, for letting everybody know that the law is the law no matter who you are.

Kudos for the land of kangaroos!

Originally reported by Ricardo Martinez

Three Georgia men sentenced to life in prison for 'chilling' Arbery murder

Jan 7 (Reuters) - A Georgia judge sentenced Travis McMichael and his father Gregory McMichael on Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for what he called the "chilling" 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man running through their mostly white neighborhood in the southern U.S. state.

Judge Timothy Walmsley also gave a life sentence to their neighbor William "Roddie" Bryan but ruled that he could seek parole after 30 years in prison, the minimum sentence allowed for murder under Georgia law.

Echoing comments made by Arbery's anguished relatives earlier in the hearing at Glynn County Superior Court, the judge condemned the three men for what he described as their mistake of failing to see Arbery as just another neighbor.

He said he gave the McMichaels the harshest sentence available in part because of their "callous" words and actions captured on a cellphone video that sparked national outrage when it became public in the summer of 2020.

"It was a chilling, truly disturbing scene," the judge said of the frame in the video where McMichael begins to lift his shotgun at Arbery while the 25-year-old is about 20 feet away. "I kept coming back to the terror that must have been in the mind of the young man running through Satilla Shores."

In November, a jury found Gregory McMichael, 66, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor Bryan, 52, guilty of murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal intent to commit a felony.

The judge agreed with prosecutors and Arbery's relatives that the three men, who are white, had "assumed the worst" about Arbery, who he said was "hunted down and shot, and he was killed because individuals here in this courtroom took the law into their own hands."

Earlier, Arbery's family told the court they believed that racial stereotyping led to the killing of the avid jogger, who grew up and still lived across the highway from the Satilla Shores neighborhood where he died. Defense lawyers had pleaded leniency, saying none of the three men ever intended for Arbery to be killed, and that the maximum punishment should be reserved only for the "worst of the worst" offenders.

Before the judge's ruling, Jasmine Arbery addressed the court in a quavering voice to offer a poetic celebration of her younger brother's Blackness, which she said was mistaken for something frightening by his attackers.

"He had dark skin that glistened in the sunlight like gold. He had curly hair; he would often like to twist it. Ahmaud had a broad nose and the color of his eyes was filled with melanin," she said. "These are the qualities that made these men assume Ahmaud was a dangerous criminal. To me, those qualities reflected a young man full of life and energy who looked like me and the people I love."

JUDGE QUOTES ARBERY'S MOTHER

Linda Dunikoski, the lead prosecutor, had argued for the maximum sentence for just the two McMichaels for what she called "a demonstrated pattern of vigilantism." Pointing to Gregory McMichael's former work as an investigator in the local prosecutor's office, she said father and son acted as if they were above the law.

Defense lawyer Kevin Gough had argued for leniency for Bryan because he was the only one of the three who was unarmed when he pursued Arbery.

Attorneys for the three men have said they will appeal the convictions. The men also face a federal trial in February on hate-crime charges, accused of violating Arbery's civil rights by attacking him because of his "race and color."

The state case hinged on whether the defendants, under a now-repealed Georgia law permitting citizen arrests, had a right to confront Arbery on a hunch he was fleeing after committing a crime. In the end the jury was not swayed by tearful testimony from Travis McMichael, the only defendant to take the stand, that he shot only in self-defense.

Arbery was jogging through the leafy Satilla Shores neighborhood on the afternoon of Feb. 23 when the McMichaels decided to grab their guns, jump in a pickup truck and give chase.

Bryan joined the chase in his own pickup truck after it passed his driveway, and pulled out his cellphone to record Travis McMichael firing a shotgun at Arbery at close range. Arbery had nothing on him besides his running clothes and sneakers.

The video fueled national protests against racism in the criminal justice system when it emerged months later and it became clear that none of the men involved had yet been arrested after a local prosecutor concluded the killing was justified.

"They chose to target my son because they didn't want him in their community," Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery's mother, told the court on Friday. "When they couldn't sufficiently scare him or intimidate him, they killed him."

In his sentencing, the judge quoted the mother's remarks, saying they struck him as "very true."

"At minimum, Ahmaud Arbery should force us to consider expanding our definition of what a neighbor may be and how we treat them," the judge said.

Originally reported by Jonathan Allen in New York for Reuters®; Additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Alistair Bell and Daniel Wallis

Judge resigns over racist home video capturing N-word use

Lafayette City Court Judge Michelle Odinet resigned Friday, weeks after a video surfaced that depicted her using racist remarks as she and her family watched security footage of an attempted burglary at their home.

“I take full responsibility for the hurtful words used to describe the individual who burglarized the vehicles at my home. I am sorry for the pain that I have caused my community and ask for your forgiveness, as my words did not foster the public’s confidence and integrity for the judiciary,” Odinet said in a letter submitted to the Louisiana Supreme Court filed by her attorney Dane Ciolino.

Ciolino told HuffPost Odinet “understands that this is the end of her public service, but only the beginning of what she must to do to earn the forgiveness of the community.”

Odinet confirmed the video, published by The Current on Dec. 13, was shot in her home. It depicts a television showing security footage of a burglary as several voices laugh and recap the incident while repeatedly using the N-word. Ciolino told The New York Times Odinet was one of the voices heard using a slur in the video.

After the video surfaced, Odinet asked for "forgiveness and understanding", claiming she had taken a sedative at the time of the video and had “zero recollection” of the incident. She requested an unpaid leave ob absence before being temporarily disqualified from the bench.

Ciolino told HuffPost Odinet, who has four adult children, is “humiliated, embarrassed and sorry for what she has done and the trouble that she has caused to her community.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.