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While we already knew that House GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a big giant liar, the last couple days have never made it more clear. McCarthy trumpeted the trademark McCarthy dramatics to publicly deny a report that he planned to urge the insurrectionist president to resign over the Jan. 6 insurrection. But audio tapes showed McCarthy lied, and had in fact planned to do just that.

There was never any reason to believe the words coming out of McCarthy’s mouth before. There definitely isn’t any reason now. So what’s he up to the Monday back from being majorly exposed as a fraud? McCarthy “is set to lead a group of fellow Republican lawmakers to the southern border in Texas on Monday,” CNN reports. Because when in doubt, blame immigrants.

RELATED STORY: If it seems like Republicans sound like hate group, it’s because they are sounding like hate group

We know this is a very serious visit because accompanying him are very serious individuals like Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as noted southern border lawmakers Blake Moore of Utah and Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee. 

Listen to Jennifer Fernandez Ancona from Way to Win explain how Democrats must message to win on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld

Taylor Greene has also been in the news in the last couple days, facing a court challenge on her eligibility for reelection to her district due to her pro-insurrection stance. Like McCarthy, Taylor Greene is a prolific liar, but during the hearing she just couldn’t seem to remember many of her bold claims. There were lots of “I don’t recall” and “I don’t remember” statements, Rebekah Sager reported for Daily Kos. Perhaps Taylor Greene should see someone about that.

We have a feeling that none of these people will have trouble speaking at the border on Monday, where they’ll have nothing to offer when it comes to policy ideas, but plenty from the “wow, that’s some racist shit” department. But this is the GOP stance. The Washington Post’s James Downie noted that Texas’ Michael McCaul went onto Fox News Sunday this past weekend to compare asylum-seekers at the border to Russians invading Ukraine. “We have an invasion in my home state right on the border, every day,” he claimed.

“Invasion” is the same racist wording used by the white supremacist terrorist who shot up McCaul’s state in 2019, Downie notes. It is a fact that this awful anti-immigrant rhetoric is no longer solely a product of the fringe right-wing, it is the Republican mainstream, and McCarthy isn’t just leaning into it, he’s pinning his electoral hopes on it, Downie continues.

”McCarthy and his fellow Republicans aren’t holding political stunts outside gas stations or supermarkets. And they’re barely even gesturing at ideas for lowering prices. Yet they’re hammering border politics. Why? Because while immigration might not sway the electorate as a whole, it fires up the GOP base that McCarthy wants to keep on his side.” 

America’s Voice and Immigration Hub had earlier this year noted more than 700 anti-immigrant ads launched by Republicans. That’s likely much, much higher now. America’s Voice had late last year also noted racist ads from House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Rick Scott, who heads the National Republican Senate Committee. Even Lindsey Graham, once a Republican champion of comprehensive immigration reform, has echoed racist “invasion” rhetoric.

Downie said that “whether they admit it or not,” Republicans like McCarthy “recognize that the easiest way to protect their standing in the Republican Party is to embrace the hate and stoke the same bigoted fury that led a man to open fire in a store.”

Whether they actually believe in it or are just parroting it to win elections, it is their official stance. And anything to not talk about their lies and efforts to overturn American democracy. It’ll also be up to reporters to not parrot back whatever outlandish claims McCarthy makes at the border since he’s already on the record as lying to them, but knowing what we know, keep your expectations low.

RELATED STORIES: GOP officials use white supremacist rhetoric in pushing Arizona governor to attack asylum-seekers

There are lies about migrants and the border, and then there’s Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko

GOP teeing up racist ads going into midterms. Democrats can fight back by championing immigrants

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A warning was delivered to former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that threats of violence were swirling around Washington, D.C., in the days leading up to Jan. 6, a onetime aide to former President Donald Trump told investigators on the Jan. 6 committee. 

This testimony from Trump’s special assistant for legislative affairs, Cassidy Hutchinson, was tucked into the pages of a hefty 248-page court filing from the probe as it again pushes for Meadows to cooperate following a months-long stalemate. There is no indication yet that the Justice Department will charge Meadows with contempt of Congress four months after the House voted to advance the referral. 

Hutchinson told investigators she didn’t know if Meadows perceived the warning as genuine or speculative, but she recalled Anthony Ornato, the Secret Service agent-turned-Trump-White-House-political-adviser, approaching Meadows at least once with “intel reports saying that there could potentially be violence on the 6th.” 

What Meadows did with that information next was unclear to Hutchinson, she testified, but she remembered Meadows’ response to Ornato was, “All right, let’s talk about it,” before heading into Meadows’ office privately with Ornato for a few minutes. 

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 warnings held back by officials at DHS, watchdog finds

This detail is just another part of what is pushing investigators to get Meadows on the record about Jan. 6. 

Meadows insists he is protected by executive privilege. The committee insists he is applying that theory falsely and too broadly. In the meantime, public hearings are coming in June. Investigators say the evidence keeps stacking up that Trump was actively engaged in an attempted coup against the former vice president and Congress in order to install himself into the White House for another four years.

RELATED STORY: ‘Prepare to be mesmerized’: An interview with Jan. 6 probe investigator Jamie Raskin

The committee wants a judge to compel Meadows’ testimony now on seven discrete categories of questions. They acknowledge they are tailoring their request despite the fact that Trump himself has not invoked privilege over his former chief of staff. 

20220422 Motion for Summary… by Daily Kos

The proposed categories would cover questions about his correspondence with members of Congress like Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, among others. Both Jordan and Perry received requests for voluntary compliance. Both have so far refused to cooperate.

When Hutchinson testified before the panel, she also told them that during a planning call before Congress met to certify the electoral votes, Perry verbally supported the idea of “sending people to the capitol” on Jan. 6.

She also named Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado as some of the chief proponents inside Congress pushing the unconstitutional theory that Pence had the authority to stop the count on Jan. 6.

“I’m sure there were other individuals involved, but those are ones that I remember specifically being involved that Mr. Meadows had outreach to,” Hutchinson told the probe. 

RELATED STORY: Witness: Meadows and Jan. 6 rally organizers had deliberate scheme in place

In that same vein, if the committee gets its way, Meadows could also face questions about a Dec. 21, 2020 meeting hosted by the White House. 

At that meeting, members of the ultra right-wing House Freedom Caucus and other Republicans met to discuss their plan for “alternate electors.”

The safe harbor deadline for the Electoral College to finalize its count had passed at this point and a whole host of courts had already ruled against Trump’s claims of rampant election fraud. 

But Hutchinson told the committee that lawmakers like Jordan, Greene, and others—including Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar and Debbie Lesko of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Jody Hice of Georgia—were still all in. 

“They felt that he had the authority to, pardon me if my phrasing isn’t correct on this, but, send votes back to the States or the electors back to the States, more along the lines of the [John] Eastman theory,” Hutchinson testified. 

Investigators said in their subpoena to Hutchinson last November that she reportedly traveled with Trump to the Ellipse for the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 and may have accompanied Meadows for a Dec. 30 trip to Georgia for an election audit. 

Under questioning, Hutchinson said she did not go with Meadows to Georgia in late December, a partial transcript included with Friday’s filing shows. 

Investigators also want the judge to compel Meadows to answer questions about the scheme that unfolded at the Justice Department involving Jeffrey Clark.

Clark was held in contempt of Congress after refusing to cooperate with the probe. Notably, it was Perry who introduced Trump to Clark.

Just after Christmas Eve, Clark reportedly met with Trump in secret. After the meeting, Clark launched a pressure campaign to have then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Rosen’s then-deputy, Richard Donoghue, tell key swing state legislatures they should install alternate electors.

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 committee approves criminal referral for Trump DOJ official

Within days of speaking to Rosen about the alternate electors scheme, Clark drafted a letter for Rosen to approve instructing Georgia state officials to say publicly that the Department of Justice was aware of election fraud and that a special legislative session was required.

When Hutchinson was asked if she could remember any times in which Meadows, Trump, or Clark met to discuss “alternate” electors, her memory was fuzzy. 

“I remember the ideas—that concept being discussed, broadly speaking. I remember Mr. Meadows mentioning it in meetings and once or twice in passerby conversation with me, but nothing that would indicate his opinion on it, just as something that, you know, was outlined in this letter and, you know, was the topic of conversation at the time,” she said.

When asked whether Trump advocated for the Justice Department to get involved, Hutchinson said she wasn’t sure.

The committee would also compel Meadows to cough up information related to Trump instructing, directing, or trying to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally refuse to count the votes on Jan. 6, especially in light of Ornato’s warning.

“But despite this and other warnings, President Trump urged the attendees at the January 6th rally to march to the Capitol to ‘take back your country,’” the motion states.

A Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General report published on March 10 noted that several warnings about impending violence heading to D.C. for Jan. 6 were often kept internal. 

The agency said in its report that happened frequently because staff were poorly trained and inexperienced and worried that overreporting threats would put them under the magnifying glass following a tumultuous summer of protests throughout the country in the response to the police killing of George Floyd.

According to the watchdog report, on Dec. 21, 2020—the same day that Republicans and House Freedom Caucus members were strategizing how to overturn Trump’s loss—a field agent shared a tip with fellow analysts at the Department of Homeland Security.

It was open source and warned of a person who threatened to shoot and kill protesters at upcoming rallies tied to the presidential election. It wasn’t reported to higher ups however, the inspector general found, because it “slipped away” from the analyst after she had trouble locating follow up information.

She did not write up a report about the incident. 

But, the inspector general said, those Department of Homeland Security officials never took their concerns any higher because they considered “true threats of incitement because they thought storming the U.S. Capitol and other threats were unlikely or not possible.”

Meadows provided the committee with some 2,319 text messages before ending his cooperation last year. Some of those texts have been made public but the batch newly obtained by CNN on Monday reveal new insights into the inner workings of Trump’s White House before Jan. 6.

(This story is developing.)

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Donald Trump has been held in civil contempt and will be fined $10,000 per day until he complies with a subpoena from the New York attorney general’s office and hands over documents.  

New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking documents from Trump relating to her civil investigation into Trump’s business practices, including whether he valued his properties differently according to what helped him financially at any given moment, inflating their values when he wanted a bank loan, and depressing them when it came time to pay taxes. Trump’s attorneys had insisted that the documents James is seeking are held by the Trump Organization, which faced a different deadline for turning them over, but James sought the contempt order and New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron agreed, saying, “Mr. Trump, I know you take your business seriously and I take mine seriously. I hereby hold you in civil contempt and fine you $10,000 per day until you purge that contempt.”

RELATED STORY: New York AG Letitia James asks judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court

Engoron said Trump’s attorneys did not show the court that they had searched for the documents, though Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers, claimed to have searched his calendars and interviewed Trump himself at Mar-a-Lago. 

“President Trump does not email. He does not text message. And he has no work computer at home or anywhere else,” Habba insisted. She could have added, “and he tears up paper documents or flushes them down the toilet once he’s read them,” but the judge might not have found that compelling. “I took it upon myself to get on a plane and flew down and asked him one by one if there was anything that he had on his person that he had not given me I would need that. And he did not,” Habba said, pretending that Trump’s word is worth anything. Habba said Trump would sign an affidavit swearing that he had complied with the subpoena.

The New York Times reports that James has reason to believe Trump has more documents than he’s admitting to: “In one filing, her lawyers mentioned a filing cabinet at the company that contained the former president’s files, and noted that he used Post-it notes to pass messages to employees.”

James also noted that Trump’s lawyer said at least one file wasn’t searched because the Trump Organization said Trump wasn’t involved in preparing his own financial statements, a direct contradiction of the line on those very same financial statements saying, “Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation” of their information.

Trump’s lawyer said they would appeal the judgment, as Trump has appealed and countersued at every other point in James’ investigation. Nonetheless, longtime Trump observers say this is unprecedented:

At the same time as the attorney general’s office carries out a civil investigation, the Manhattan district attorney’s office is running a parallel criminal investigation into the same business practices.

RELATED STORIES:

Trump’s accounting firm says they can no longer represent his organization, calls data ‘unreliable’

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Letitia James must have Trump scared: He’s suing to kill New York attorney general’s investigation

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Pregnant people face structural oppression and discrimination at just about every turn when it comes to employment and, extra disturbingly, health care. This point is especially true for pregnant folks who live with more than one marginalized identity, like pregnant people of color and trans pregnant folks. Black women, for example, are routinely disbelieved when it comes to health concerns and pain management and are over three times more likely to die during pregnancy or postpartum than white women.

This context is important to keep in mind when thinking about Maye Quade, the 36-year-old openly gay progressive Black woman running for state senate in Minnesota, who had a big speech to deliver over the weekend. The purpose of the speech was to get an endorsement from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in order to get her party’s nomination. (For reference, the DFL is basically the state’s version of the Democratic Party). Quade started going into labor at about 2 in the morning prior to the speech but did her best to push through contractions in order to give her speech and participate in question and answer rounds. Ultimately, she had to withdraw from the convention because she had to go to the hospital and her opponent, Justin Emmerich, won.

Why didn’t anyone stop the convention? Why did people expect a pregnant person, and especially a Black woman, at that, to (ahem) push through the pain? Videos of Quade from the convention are inspiring to be sure, but as many folks on Twitter are pointing out, we can’t ignore these deeper questions.

RELATED: Just when you think Republicans can’t get more transphobic, Tom Barrett’s texts appear

Here is a short clip, which is currently going viral on Twitter.

Mitchell Walstad, who serves as Quade’s campaign manager, talked to the HuffPost in an interview about what went down at the convention. According to Walstad, there were points where Quade went into a private room to have her contractions and then estimated she had between 15 and 20 minutes to go talk to delegates before the next set came. 

“There were points where it was her turn to answer,” Walstad recalled to the outlet. “And they had to switch the order and have the other candidate answer because she could not speak because she was having a contraction in front of everyone.”

According to Walstad, the team did not directly ask the convention to stop because Quade had to go to the hospital. But of course, it’s more than fair to wonder why organizers didn’t simply make the call themselves. 

Walstad fairly pointed out that if a candidate was having another sort of medical emergency, like a heart attack, they would have stopped balloting. It’s also important to point out that while some medical emergencies can appear (at least to outsiders) as out of nowhere, something like labor is generally ongoing and a deeply emotional and vulnerable experience. Having to keep yourself together in an effort to appear professional is frankly outrageous. Add to that the additional pressures Black women may feel thanks to white supremacy and structural racism, it’s pretty clear that Quade is an absolute icon and that convention organizers should have stepped in and done the right thing. 

In speaking to local outlet KSTP, Walstad said the campaign was “frustrated” at the way the convention went and said it was “discouraging” that the endorsement wasn’t suspended given the circumstances.

If you’re curious about how balloting goes, Quade was present for the first round but made the call to go to the hospital before she felt able to do more work with delegates to get enough votes for the second round. Justin Emmerich, her. opponent, got more votes in the first round, coming in at 55% compared to Quade’s 45%, but the 55% was not enough to actually win, which is why Quade hypothetically had the chance to speak directly with delegates and convince them to get their vote.

But because she was in labor, and had been for hours at that point, she made the reasonable decision to go to the hospital and thus had to withdraw from the convention. According to local outlet FOX 9, Quade’s contractions started at around 2 in the morning, and candidates gave their first speeches at 11 in the morning, followed by the question and answer sessions. And she was in labor that entire time. 

Ultimately, this means Emmerich won the final round by default (because he was at that point unopposed) and secured the party’s endorsement for the upcoming primary in August.

Quade’s wife, Alyse Maye Quade, told the outlet Quade ultimately gave birth to their child at 2 am the following morning, about 24 hours after labor began. She told the outlet that both Quade and the baby were healthy and resting.

You can watch a video of Quade at the convention below. (Labor aside, this speech is truly great and well worth a watch, but Quade’s strength and dedication are truly something to behold.)

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The Senate returns to work after a two-week recess Monday and the House will come back on Tuesday to all the same fights they were having before leaving town. The Biden administration still needs billions for COVID-19 measures, and Republicans (with help from a few Democrats) don’t want to allow that without continuing the racist immigration policies of the previous administration. That could complicate Senate passage of the other big Biden ask: more funding for Ukraine military and humanitarian aid. With the House scheduled, as of now, to be working in the Capitol just four days out of the next two weeks, the Senate is where stuff has to happen, and as usual, prospects of that happening are uncertain.

Last week, President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. is sending another $800 million of military aid and $500 million in economic assistance to Ukraine. He said that the administration will request more funding for Ukraine from Congress, probably this week. The $14 billion authorized in the big government funding package that passed in early March is nearing depletion, and Ukraine’s need is only increasing. Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko is in Washington now to meet with U.S. officials, requesting $2 billion a month in economic aid for April to June, and is asking for another $3 billion a month from other international partners.

That request will be part of the package the White House presents to Congress in its ask this week. The House is planning to pass the Senate’s Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022 on Thursday, a bill that makes it quicker and easier for Biden to use existing authority to enter into lend-lease agreements for military equipment with Ukraine. The administration has already been using the law to provide equipment; this will just make it quicker and easier. But it doesn’t preclude the need for a lot more money and weapons.

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Last week, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he intends to couple that Ukraine aid request with the stalled $10 billion the administration is seeking for COVID-19. The administration has actually asked for more than double that amount, but Congress—including Democratic leadership—has insisted that funding has to be clawed back from already apportioned COVID funds, which has posed a problem for other Democrats whose home states would be losing that money. A better solution, if Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer are looking for one, would be to get that money from the private companies that stole an estimated $76 billion or so in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan. Not fraudulently.)

This is where immigration policy comes in. Senate Republicans already derailed a COVID-19 package just before Congress left for the Easter recess, refusing to allow a vote on the aid unless they get an amendment vote to force Biden to reinstate the Trump-era public health order known Title 42, restricting migrants’ entry into the country, including asylum-seekers. That order is set to expire on May 23. Republicans and a handful of Democrats are trying to keep it. As of now, there’s no resolution to that dispute in sight, largely because of the five Democratic senators who are in a position to help Republicans win.

Meanwhile, the administration just struck a deal with Pfizer to make its COVID-19 pill available at all pharmacies nationwide. The treatment would be available to people testing positive for COVID-19 who would likely face a serious case of the disease. The government has ordered 20 million courses of the drug, but can’t close the deal until Congress pays for it.

For now, though, the Senate is easing into the work with convening Monday at 3 PM ET with nomination of Lael Brainard to be vice chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. At 5:30 PM ET, the Senate will vote to invoke cloture on the nomination. While negotiations are happening on all the other stuff, the Senate will spend much of the floor time on the rest of the Federal Reserve nominees, including current Chair Jerome Powell, Philip Jefferson, and Lisa Cook, who will be the first Black woman on the board.

Also ongoing, according to the White House, are discussions with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on what they can possibly salvage from Biden’s would-be signature domestic package to fight climate change and provide a more level economic playing field with a fairer tax code, more funding for education and child care, expanded health insurance, and a repaired social safety net. Manchin scuttled all that last winter in a fit of pique and ego. Democrats want to try to salvage something by July 4 so they can head into campaign season with it. Manchin is being Manchin—while the White House is saying they’re negotiating with him, he’ll likely as not deny it.

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While 2020 will forever be remembered as the year a pandemic was declared in the U.S., a new report published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that gun violence was the leading cause of death among children and teens in that same year.

According to a letter from researchers at the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention (IFIP), this is the first time guns have been the leading cause of death in this age group. The “change was driven largely by firearm homicides, which saw a 33.4% increase,” the report reads.  Gun-related suicides were up 1.1% during the same period.

In addition to an increase in gun deaths, “drug overdoses and poisoning were up by 83.6% from 2019 to 2020” in youths, making it the “third leading cause of death in that age group.”

RELATED STORY: FBI sends flawed email in response to media inquiry about the status of Leonard Peltier’s clemency

Dr. Jason Goldstick, a researcher with IFIP  and co-author of the letter, told The Guardian, “We knew gun violence had increased, but I was surprised by the level of increase for just one year… I can’t remember ever seeing that before.”

Listen to Jennifer Fernandez Ancona from Way to Win explain how Democrats must message to win on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld

For more than six decades, car accidents have been the leading cause of the death of children; now they’re second to gun-related deaths.

But as child safety has gotten better in cars, “firearm deaths haven’t made much progress. … We have had a decrease in moto vehicle deaths,” Patrick Carter, one of the authors of the research letter, told NPR. “We can do the same thing with firearms. We just haven’t been able to do that in the same amount of years yet. … It takes time to figure out what the underlying issues are with the problem and then finding the solutions.”

The Guardian reports that for Black teen boys over 15, gun violence has been the No. 1 cause of death for nearly the last ten years.

Samantha Walton, a 17-year-old from San Francisco, told The Guardian, “We have to see that violence every day. We can’t go outside and have fun without knowing that somebody just died out there. I just wonder, ‘Damn, who’s next?’”

The report acknowledges that it is “unclear” why there’s been an increase in gun deaths among kids.

A study published in February showed an increase in new gun ownership by adults in the U.S. from Jan. 2019 to Apr. 2021. Another, published in Jul. 2021, showed an increase in “new firearm ownership” within the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic—resulting in a​​ “surge in firearm injuries in young children.”

“Kids don’t buy firearms, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible for kids to get access,” Goldstick told NBC News.

The researchers urge more funding for the “prevention of community violence.”

“The increasing firearm-related mortality reflects a longer-term trend and shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death shows that we continue to fail to protect our youth from a preventable cause of death,” the authors wrote.

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The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles will by Monday afternoon issue a recommendation to Gov. Greg Abbott in the case of Melissa Lucio, the mother facing execution for the accidental death of her 2-year-old baby, Mariah. As Houston-based KHOU notes, time is running out for Lucio: She is set to be killed by the state on Wednesday.

Supporters held more than a dozen rallies over the weekend urging officials halt her execution. KHOU reports that one of Lucio’s children, 22-year-old Robert Alvarez, was among attendees at the Austin rally. He told the outlet he was heartened by the public support for his mother. 

RELATED STORY: Melissa Lucio, Texas mom facing execution for baby’s accidental death, asks court to spare her life

“I just think that’s so amazing,” he told KHOU. He was just 7 when his mom was convicted for Mariah’s 2007 death. “The fact that people are just there, to support my mom and help her with anything that she needs.” He told the outlet he has tried to not think of the worst. “I’ve been thinking the best possible.” He told the outlet he planned to spend Monday with her, when she’s set to hear the decision from the board.

Innocence Project and other advocates have escalated calls to the governor’s office as Lucio’s execution date has approached. San Antonio-based KSAT reports that when Abbott was asked about Lucio’s case last week, he said he was waiting for the board’s recommendation. “That’s a requirement for the governor to receive that before any action is taken,” he said. “When I receive that, I’ll consider it and take whatever action I think is appropriate.” But ultimately, the fact is he can intervene.

Lucio’s advocates in recent days have also made an urgent plea to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, presenting ”new scientific and expert evidence showing that Melissa’s conviction was based on an unreliable, coerced ‘confession’ and unscientific false evidence that misled the jury.” Lucio, a childhood sexual abuse and domestic abuse survivor, was berated by detectives for hours on the night Mariah died.

“The police officers used the Reid method, a controversial interrogation technique that manipulates a suspect’s emotions by abruptly switching tones—yelling at them to raise their anxiety, and then gently reassuring them that their discomfort can end if they simply take responsibility for the crime,” Mother Jones reported. The petition to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals noted this harsh technique has contributed “to nearly one-third of all known wrongful convictions underlying the nation’s DNA exonerations.”

Lucio has received support from a number of other women who were also wrongly convicted for their children’s deaths. “Melissa experienced a mother’s worst nightmare,” the “Moms for Melissa” video states. “Now, time is running out.”

At least 90 state House members and at least 20 state senators have also urged a halt to Lucio’s execution. KSAT reports that the Death Penalty Action Group plans a prayer vigil outside the state capitol on Monday, as advocates including Innocence Project urge the public to continue calls to Abbott’s office. “Melissa Lucio is still scheduled to be executed in two days,” the organization tweeted. “This is an all out sprint to save her life.”

Call Texas Gov. Greg Abbott today at (956) 446-2866 and urge him to spare Melissa Lucio’s life and prevent an irreversible injustice.

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A Connecticut state trooper was arrested on Tuesday after he fired seven times into the driver’s side window of a car reported stolen, shooting and killing a 19-year-old community college student during what his family says was a mental health crisis. Brian North turned himself into Bethany state police. He was placed on paid administrative leave and his police powers were suspended, Connecticut state police said in a statement emailed to Daily Kos. Inspector General Robert Devli Jr. announced on Wednesday that North was released on a $50,000 bond and he is facing a manslaughter charge in the death of Mubarak Soulemane more than two years ago in West Haven on Jan. 15, 2020.

North is expected to appear in Milford Superior Court on May 3. The details of the high-speed chase that ended in Soulemane’s death were spelled out in a 133-page report released by the inspector general’s office. But if one thing is clear in this case, it is that Soulemane’s death is not only on the hands of North. This Black man’s death is further evidence of a systematic failure leaving those who suffer mental health crises vulnerable.

RELATED STORY: City tries defunding police, and people in mental health crises are actually treated like people

Let’s start with the events that immediately led up to Soulemane’s death.

The inspector general’s office reported a dispute at an AT&T store. Soulemane had reportedly accused a clerk at the store of disabling his phone after a worker told him that he would need a $548 deposit to purchase the iPhone 11 he inquired about. The clerk noticed that Soulemane was holding a knife, although he did not point it at her, according to the investigation report. He was then accused of attempting to steal an iPhone 11, but a store manager reportedly grabbed the phone and escorted Soulemane out of the store, which also called 911.

The inspector general’s office determined that Soulemane took a car from a Lyft driver scheduled to pick him up from the store. That driver, Daniel Green, drove a 2012 Hyundai Sonata, and investigators determined that when Green picked Soulemane up, he asked for the driver’s phone. When Green refused to turn it over, Soulemane allegedly slapped the man in the head. Green reportedly pulled into a gas station, saw police approaching, and tried to get their attention. Investigators wrote in their report that “Soulemane quickly moved into the driver’s seat,” and “Norwalk police pursued.”

Warning: The videos in this story contain body camera footage of the police shooting that may be triggering for viewers.

An officer could be heard on police audio trying to get authorization to chase the vehicle, but a state police representative initially told Norwalk police that a “no pursuit policy” regarding stolen vehicles prevented state police from authorizing a chase. The Norwalk officer said this wasn’t just a case of a stolen vehicle. Soulemane had “displayed a knife” and “was threatening” inside of an AT&T store before he “either got into a vehicle with a cohort or carjacked somebody and took their car,” the officer said in statements CBS-affiliated WFSB reported.

State police didn’t authorize the chase until a witness observed Soulemane driving 100 mph and called 911 to report that he was driving dangerously. During the chase that followed, Soulemane hit North’s vehicle and another vehicle before officers were able to block Soulemane’s car in, North’s body camera video showed.

Investigators determined that Soulemane did have a knife with him when troopers blocked in the Sonata but when North fired his weapon, neither he “nor any other person was in imminent danger of serious injury or death from a knife attack at the hands of Soulemane.”

Executive Director of the Connecticut State Police Union Andrew Matthews said during a news conference that he’s disappointed with the inspector general’s report.

“When a trooper or a police officer in Connecticut or anywhere in the country is forced to make a split-second decision that others can analyze and reanalyze and find subject matter experts that give different opinions and that one individual person appointed by the legislature can make a decision on whether a police officer should be prosecuted criminally for that, that’s concerning to us,” Matthews said, “but that’s the process and we’ll respect it.”

Mark Arons, Soulemane’s family attorney, said in a statement Atlanta Black Star obtained that the family is happy with the decision to arrest North. “It’s a long road ahead. But this is a good day,” the attorney said. He called Soulemane’s death “yet another horrendous act of violence against a young man of color that was totally unnecessary.” It was a sentiment Rev. Al Sharpton also expressed at Soulemane’s memorial, when the civil rights activist said something didn’t “smell right” about the information officials were presenting as facts.

“You don’t have a right to take away his life, and if you do, we have an obligation to stand up and question what happened,” Sharpton said in remarks the New Haven Register reported.

Omo Mohammed, Soulemane’s mother, said during a CBS New York interview that she would like to see North “held accountable” for killing her son, who was dealing with mental health issues.

Investigators wrote in their report:

As part of their investigation, Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) Inspectors interviewed Omo Mohammed, mother of Mubarak Soulemane. She stated that Soulemane was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age fourteen. He took medicine morning and night for this condition. He regularly saw doctors at Yale. At some point, a nurse would come daily to their home to administer his medicine.

Mohammed could not recall the names of Soulemane’s doctors nor the names of the medications that he was supposed to take. She stated that if he did not take his medication, he would become combative and scream, but would not become physical. He would just yell and become argumentative. Omo Mohammed further stated that she never knew Soulemane to carry weapons and she could remember no instance where he had a weapon. On January 15, 2020, Omo Mohammed was out of the country. She believed, however, that Mubarak was not taking his medication because her other son, Saeed, called her and told her that they had gotten into an argument.

His sister, Mariyann, told the journalism nonprofit the Connecticut Mirror in 2020 that “it was a constant battle: Mubarak versus schizophrenia.”

“State police should have been notified,” she said, “‘This is a missing person with underlying mental health issues,’ so they can then know how to proceed.”

Soulemane’s death is illuminating an overarching issue of how resources should be used to respond to mental health crises. 

Connecticut Mirror Reporter Kelan Lyons said Soulemane’s family had spent a lot of time calling local police to respond when Soulemane left home in mental health crises. The New Haven Police Department would routinely pick him up and take him to a psychiatric emergency department, but Soulemane wasn’t in New Haven at the time of his death. His death isn’t simply indicative of what journalist John Dankosky called a “patchwork” of local police forces rendering neighboring authorities ignorant of the mental health histories long documented in other areas. It also goes beyond the thought process that police just need better training to deal with those who are experiencing mental health crises, Lyons said.

“Having somebody show up in a police officer’s uniform who is armed can escalate a situation or it can re-traumatize somebody who has been traumatized because of gun violence in the past or has had a poor interaction with police officers in the past,” Lyons said. “It really questions whether there is a space for them to respond to these crises or whether or not we should be taking money from departments and investing it into community mental health resources.”

Lorenzo Boyd, a former sheriff’s deputy and director of the Center of Advanced Policing at the University of New Haven, told Lyons: “The police know how to do two things really well: detain and use force. So that’s the prism through which they view all the problems they deal with: can we arrest, or can we detain?”

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Twitter’s board is close to a deal allowing Elon Musk to buy the company and take it private, in alarming news for anyone who doesn’t want a major social media platform controlled by an egomaniacal billionaire ranting about free speech while his signature company is being sued for racial discrimination.

Musk’s initial offer/threat to buy Twitter drew skepticism, but talks turned serious after he made progress in lining up financing, though it’s not yet a done deal and could—especially given who we’re talking about here—fall apart, perhaps in spectacular fashion.

RELATED STORY: Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter, attaching something he insists is ‘not a threat’

According to The New York Times, “An agreement is not yet final and may still apart, but what had initially seemed to be a highly improbable deal appeared to be nearing an endgame. The situation involving Twitter and Mr. Musk remains fluid and fast-moving, the people with knowledge of the situation said.”

Musk has claimed he wants to turn Twitter into a “platform for free speech around the globe,” but basically every expert on social media and speech says he has no clue what he’s talking about. The major social media companies, including Twitter, have invested a lot of time and money into figuring out what works, and while no one’s saying they’ve perfected it, the likelihood that Elon Musk can manifest a better answer directly from his ego is low.

”What Musk seemingly fails to recognize is that to truly have free speech today, you need moderation,” Katie Harbath, a former Facebook executive, told The Washington Post. “Otherwise, just those who bully and harass will be left as they will drive others away.”

”A platform that allows people to spam misogynist and racist abuse is unsafe for pretty much anyone else and would lose advertisers, corporate partners and sponsors rapidly, leaving it a commercially unviable husk within months,” said the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate’s Imran Ahmed.

Speaking of racist abuse, Musk’s signature company, Tesla, lost one racism discrimination lawsuit, with an initial judgment of $137 million recently reduced to $15 million. Other Black employees describe a horrifyingly, overtly racist environment at Tesla’s California plant, spurring a major discrimination lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. That’s important context for Musk’s “free speech” talk. This is someone who presided over a company at which Black employees are assigned particularly difficult work in a section of the factory referred to as “the plantation,” a Black worker was fired after complaining that a supervisor called him and other Black workers “monkeys,” and use of the N-word was “the norm. It was Tesla’s tradition.”

Another interesting piece of context for Musk’s effort to buy Twitter is that in 2018, he had to step down as Tesla’s chair and paid $40 million in penalties ($20 million from himself and $20 million from Tesla) after—in a fascinating precursor to his current effort—he used tweets to claim he was taking Tesla private, causing “significant market disruption.”

Over the weekend, Musk continued to use his own high-profile Twitter account to show the kind of chaos he likes to bring to the platform, attacking Bill Gates with a crude, fat-shaming graphic, and suggesting that his hyperloop would work better than other forms of transportation because “Underground tunnels are immune to surface weather conditions (subways are a good example), so it wouldn’t matter to Hyperloop if a hurricane was raging on the surface. You wouldn’t even notice.” This howler drew a flood of responses with pictures of subway stations flooded after hurricanes or even just major rainstorms. The guy never lets not knowing what he’s talking about stop him from saying it through a huge megaphone. 

Twitter may announce a deal with Musk as soon as Monday, though it could fall apart even after a public announcement.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren was quite clear on Sunday when she appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and addressed The New York Times report that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy lied when he said he would urge former President Donald Trump to resign following the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Audio published by the Times revealed on Thursday that he did intend to.

“Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor,” Warren said. “This is outrageous, and that is really the illness that pervades the Republican leadership right now.”

RELATED STORY: Awkward recording of Kevin McCarthy emerges hours after his denial. What else do reporters have?

She continued:

“That they say one thing to the American public and something else in private. They understand that it is wrong what happened, an attempt to overthrow our government. And that the Republicans instead want to continue to try to figure out how to make 2020 election different instead of spending their energy on how it is that we go forward in order to build an economy, in order to make this country work better for the people who sent us to Washington. Shame on Kevin McCarthy.”

In the audio in question, Rep. Liz Cheney asked McCarthy if there any reason he thinks Trump might resign.  

“I’ve had a few discussions. My gut tells me no,” McCarthy responded. “I am seriously thinking about having that conversation with him tonight. I haven’t talked to him in a couple days.”

He went on to say: “Again, the only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”

McCarthy told reporters in remarks covered by CBS News on Friday that he “just walked through different scenarios” and that he “never thought that he should resign.”

He tried to lay blame with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

”I think the phone call was overblown,” McCarthy said, “because as we worked through this and we learned days later that Nancy Pelosi has denied the National Guard there to be able to protect that Capitol. That made people much more upset.”

The Associated Press revealed in its investigation that the claim earlier tweeted by Indiana Rep. Jim Banks is false. Pelosi doesn’t decide when to use the National Guard. That decision is made by the Capitol Police Board, a body composed of sergeants at arms in the House and Senate and the architect of the Capitol, the AP reported.

“The Speaker believes security officials should make security decisions,” Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Pelosi, told the Associated Press in an emailed statement. “The Speaker immediately signaled her support for the deployment of the National Guard when she was presented with that recommendation on the afternoon of January 6th. Public testimony confirms the fact that the Speaker was not made aware of any request for such a deployment prior to then.”

Another day, another McCarthy lie.