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Democratic Socialists of America ‘Liberation Caucus’ praises assassination of Israeli diplomats in DC

The Democratic Socialists of America’s Liberation Caucus has advocated for Elias Rodriguez, the “free Palestine” agitator who is the suspect in the shooting of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington, DC. The DSA Liberation Caucus referred to Rodriguez as a “political prisoner.” 

Rodriguez was arrested right after the killings and was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. He is alleged to have stood over Sara Milgrim, 26, and shot her repeatedly as she tried to crawl away, going as far as to reload just to keep shooting her. Rodriguez is also charged with the murder of Yaron Lischinsky, Milgrim’s soon-to-be fiance, who was gunned down outside the Jewish Museum at Milgrim’s side.

In addition to his activism against Israel, Rodriguez was revealed to be in favor of the “genocide of white people.” 

“Lol you probably would have to actually genocide white people to make this a normal country,” Rodriguez wrote to his friends. “Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens of millions of white people,” Rodriguez added.

The Liberation Caucus wrote, “Excellent statement that we are proud to add our name to. Free Elias Rodriguez and all political prisoners.” Rodriguez shouted “free, free Palestine” as he was led away in handcuffs after police were called to the scene of the murders.

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Trump’s Useful Idiots

The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise.

Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews.

The New York Times, where I worked for 15 years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.

The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers.

These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress.

Use the words “apartheid”’ and “genocide”’ and you are fired or excoriated.

Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protest the genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.

In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.

When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed  “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.

The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.

NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

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Trump Rightly Pardons 2 Florida Divers Who Became Federal Felons Because of an Honest Mistake

Here are some things you don’t do when you know you are committing a crime. You don’t do it in broad daylight in front of witnesses. You don’t enlist the help of those witnesses and invite them to record the event with their smartphones. You don’t report what happened to a law enforcement agency or leave evidence of the incident in plain view in a public place.

John Moore and Tanner Mansell, two Florida diving instructors, did all of those things on August 10, 2020, when they took Camryn Kuehl and her family on a snorkeling trip and came across a buoy-tethered fishing line that had caught 19 sharks. Moore and Mansell, who worked for a company that specializes in shark encounters, told the Kuehls the catch was “illegal.” Based on that assessment, they hauled in the line and freed the sharks, reported the incident to Florida Fish and Wildlife Officer Barry Partelow, and followed his instructions by leaving the fishing gear on the marina dock in Jupiter. But after it turned out that the shark catch had been authorized as part of a research project, both men were convicted of a federal felony, even though the evidence suggested they had made an honest mistake.

President Donald Trump reversed that injustice on Wednesday, when he granted pardons to Moore and Mansell. Unlike many of Trump’s clemency decisions, such as his pardons for violent Capitol rioters and corrupt public officials who abused their powers for personal gain, his intervention in this case epitomizes how “the benign prerogative of pardoning,” as Alexander Hamilton called it, should be used: to make “exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt,” overriding “cruel” criminal penalties in circumstances that “plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law.”

That certainly seems like an apt description of this case. Kuehl, who documented the shark release with photos that she posted on social media, testified that she “thought we were doing a great thing.” That was the impression she got from Moore and Mansell, whose conduct suggests they were sincere in that belief. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Watts-FitzGerald nevertheless obtained an indictment that charged them with violating 18 USC 661, which applies to someone who “takes and carries away, with intent to steal or purloin, any personal property of another” within “the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”

During their 2023 trial in the Southern District of Florida, Moore and Mansell asked Judge Donald Middlebrooks to instruct the jury that stealing property means wrongfully taking it “with intent to deprive the owner of the use or benefit permanently or temporarily and to convert it to one’s own use or the use of another.” After the prosecution objected to including a conversion element, Middlebrooks omitted it, although he did tell the jury that the defendants maintained they had “removed property without the bad purpose to disobey or disregard the law and therefore did not act with the intent to steal or purloin.”

The jurors, whose deliberations lasted longer than it took to present them with the evidence against Moore and Mansell, evidently were troubled by the facts of the case. They sent the judge several notes before telling him they were unable to reach a verdict. Middlebrooks then gave them an Allen charge, encouraging them to continue deliberating and saying they should be open to changing their positions, provided they could do so “without violating your individual judgment and conscience.”

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Texas Military Veterans Call On Governor To Veto Proposed Hemp THC Ban That Critics Say Would Harm Patients And Consumers

Veterans advocates in Texas are calling on Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to veto legislation that would outlaw all hemp-derived cannabinoid products containing any detectable THC, saying loss of access to the products would harm veterans, seniors, medical patients and everyday consumers.

“Banning legal hemp would cause irreversible harm to communities across the state,” the organization Texas Veterans of Foreign Wars said on social media on Wednesday, drawing attention to a petition urging Abbott to reject the measure that was sent to him early this week. “Stand up for your rights and livelihoods.”

The petition itself is from the Texas Hemp Business Council, a trade group representing the state’s roughly $8 billion hemp industry, which critics of the bill say would be decimated if the measure becomes law. Texas’s hemp industry employs 53,000 people, the group said.

“We, the undersigned citizens of Texas, call on Governor Abbott to reject SB 3 and any proposals banning products containing legal hemp,” the petition says. “Hemp is not a threat but a resource that helps countless Texans lead healthier, more fulfilling lives.”

“SB 3 would deprive Texans of natural alternatives for treating chronic pain, anxiety, and sleep disorders throughout the state,” it adds. “A hemp ban also threatens small businesses and farmers in Texas who depend on hemp production for their livelihoods.”

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Expect Trump’s Military Parade to Cost More Than the Army Says

President Donald Trump boasted on Monday that his hosting of a military parade in Washington, D.C., next month to honor the Army’s 250th anniversary — coincidentally the same date as his 79th birthday — was an act of divine intervention.

“We’re going to have a big, big celebration, as you know, 250 years,” he said during a Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery. “Can you imagine? I missed that four years, and now look what I have, I have everything. Amazing the way things work out. God did that.”

The massive military parade and related festivities planned for June 14 will cost an estimated $25 to $45 million, according to the Army. This is likely a significant underestimate due to many expenses that are unaccounted for – or will be billed later, such as damages to local infrastructure caused by armored vehicles. Members of Congress are already expressing outrage at what they see as a gross misuse of funds.

“Trump squandering $45 million in taxpayer dollars on a military parade for his birthday is the epitome of government waste,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “If the Trump Administration truly cared about celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Army, they would honor past and present soldiers and reinstate the thousands of veterans who they fired from the federal workforce — not throw away millions on an extravagant parade.”

The purpose of the parade is also seemingly up for interpretation. The White House now says the parade is a celebration of the Army’s semiquincentennial after, last month, denying reports that a parade would be held on the president’s birthday. Trump, for his part, has offered shifting explanations, stating that the parade is a celebration of Flag Day, the military writ large, or tanks and other weaponry.

The current plan, nonetheless, involves a martial spectacle reminiscent of the Soviet Union or North Korea in the heart of America’s capital, with armored vehicles rolling down Constitution Avenue. It is slated to involve more than 100 vehicles, including 28 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 28 Stryker armored personnel carriers, 28 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, four M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers, as well as military relics like World War II-era Sherman tanks, a B-25 bomber, and a P-51 Mustang single-seat fighter plane, according to Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith. She added that the parade will also feature 34 horses, two mules, one wagon, and one dog.

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Pregnant Women in Prison Aren’t Getting Care, and No One Is Keeping Track

Early in her second trimester, Linda Acoff was taken into custody for failing to complete court-ordered mental health treatment. After three weeks in the Cuyahoga County Jail in Columbus, Ohio, she began experiencing intensifying pressure, cramping, and bleeding. But despite her pleas for help, the nurse on duty offered only sanitary napkins and Tylenol. After banging on her cell door for hours, Acoff was eventually taken out of the jail’s pregnancy pod on a stretcher—leaving behind the remains of her 17-week-old fetus. 

A recent exposé from The Marshall Project revealed that Acoff had contracted chorioamnionitis, an infection of the fluid and tissues inside the uterus. Although considered a serious pregnancy complication that can threaten both the fetus and the mother, there was hope that Acoff’s 17-week pregnancy could have been saved. “If there’s early appropriate diagnosis and intervention, that baby can absolutely survive if the patient is treated promptly,” Michael Baldonieri, an OB-GYN and assistant professor of reproductive biology at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, told The Marshall Project.

In the end, Acoff lost her baby, and while the nurse on duty was ultimately fired, the tragedy has not inspired change in the way that Ohio handles incarcerated pregnancies or collects data on them. Unfortunately for Acoff, and the estimated 55,000 pregnant women who enter the nation’s jails every year, little data exists on the impact incarceration has on pregnancy outcomes. 

A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that “comprehensive data on pregnant women incarcerated in state prisons and local jails do not exist” even though the U.S. has “one of the highest maternal mortality rates” and “incarcerates women at the highest rate in the world.”   

This number is trending upward: between 1980 and 2022, the female prison population in the U.S. grew by more than 585 percent, more than twice the growth rate of the male prison population. Much of this increase has been attributed to more expansive policing, post-conviction barriers, and stiffer drug sentencing laws. Women have seen drug-related arrests increase by 317 percent since 1980, while men have seen a 69 percent jump. Today, more than half of the incarcerated women are serving time for drug and property offenses. 

Sentencing for these offenses, which considers the nature of the crime and criminal histories, can disproportionately put pregnant women inmates in harm’s way. 

The Prison Policy Initiative estimates that in 2024, about 189,600 women and girls were held in state custody, and 93,000 were held in local jails across the country. Of this number, more than half of the women were held in jail while awaiting trial. Even after a conviction, women were more likely to be sentenced to jail, rather than to prison, compared to convicted men. 

This distribution can be problematic, particularly for pregnant women, because jails are poorly positioned to provide proper health care and often offer fewer services than prisons. This discrepancy, plus negligent care, is ultimately what cost Acoff her pregnancy. 

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Hawaii Governor Signs Bill Expanding Medical Marijuana Caregiver Rights

Hawaii’s governor has signed into law a bill to expand the rights of medical marijuana caregivers, allowing them to grow cannabis on behalf of up to five qualified patients rather than the current one, among other changes.

Gov. Josh Green (D) formally signed SB 1429 into law earlier this month. The purpose of the legislation, according to its introductory section, is to “maintain and clarify the multiple options currently available for qualifying patients to access a safe and legal supply of medical cannabis,” including from primary caregivers.

In addition to increasing the limit on how many patients a caregiver can cultivate cannabis for, the new law also extends a state allowance for caregivers to cultivate marijuana for patients in the first place—a right that technically expired at the beginning of this year after lawmakers failed to amend a sunset date in prior legislation.

The governor signed an executive order in late December that has since protected caregivers from “undue enforcement” as the legislature worked to hammer out the policy fix.

Only 55 percent of patients in a 2022 survey said they exclusively obtained medical marijuana at licensed dispensaries, the newly enacted measure notes. “This means that up to forty-five per cent of patients obtain their cannabis for medical use from other sources, including cultivation.”

Patients, it continues, “should continue to have multiple options for obtaining medical cannabis, including having a primary caregiver grow an adequate supply of cannabis for medical use on their behalf.”

Violations of the new caregiver law would be subject to a fine of “not more than $5,000 for each separate violation,” which would be imposed by the state Department of Health.

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States Have Generated Nearly $25 Billion In Marijuana Tax Revenue Since First Markets Opened, New Report Finds

States have generated nearly $25 billion in revenue from recreational cannabis since the first sales started over a decade ago, according to a new report from a leading advocacy group.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) also said that in 2024 alone, states collected $4.4 billion in recreational cannabis tax revenue—the most ever garnered in a single year. Seven states took in over $200 million each, with four of those seeing more than $500 million in revenue and one exceeding $1 billion.

“At a time when federal funding cuts are putting pressure on states’ budgets, adult-use cannabis taxes are bringing billions of dollars into states’ coffers,” Lauren Daly, interim executive director at MPP, said in a press release.

“Legal adult-use markets have also contributed to significant job growth, creating thousands of new employment and small business opportunities,” she said. “While economic growth isn’t the primary reason for legalizing adult-use cannabis, it is undeniably a great benefit.”

The new adult-use-focused analysis does not account for additional revenue that states have collected from medical marijuana sales.

MPP has been consistently tracking state cannabis tax data, and this latest report shows that states generated about $200 million more in 2024 compared to 2023.

“Cannabis prohibition destroys lives by tearing apart families and creating life-altering criminal records that stand in the way of jobs, housing, and an education,” Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies at MPP, said. “Cannabis legalization dramatically reduces the number of arrests and wasted law enforcement resources, while generating billions of dollars in new revenue that can improve residents’ wellbeing.”

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Medical Marijuana Helps Most Patients Effectively Treat Chronic Pain, New Study Shows

A new study on cannabis and chronic pain finds that more than 8 in 10 patients who used medical marijuana reported it to be a useful tool for pain management.

“This points to the possibility that cannabis could serve as a safer alternative or complement to standard pain management approaches, potentially helping to address the ongoing opioid crisis,” the study’s senior author—Ari Greis, an orthopedic surgery professor at Drexel University College of Medicine and a board member of the Rothman Institute Foundation for Opioid Research & Education—said in a statement about the findings.

Published this month in the journal Cureus, the report stems from a survey of 129 people who were medical marijuana patients in Pennsylvania between October 2022 and December 2024. It says it “provides important insights into the real-world patterns, perceived efficacy, and cognitive effects of medical cannabis use among individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain who employ cannabis regularly over extended periods.”

“Over 80 percent of patients who turned to medical cannabis found it effective for managing their pain,” co-author Mohammad Khak, a researcher at the Rothman Opioid Foundation, said in a press release about the study.

“Many participants also noted improvements in associated symptoms such as sleep disturbances and anxiety,” Khak added, “suggesting that cannabis may offer a broader range of relief than conventional pain medications alone.”

The report says that the “majority of respondents expressed positive views on the effectiveness of cannabis in improving their main symptom, with 66 (51.1%) strongly agreeing and 55 (42.6%) agreeing with the statement.”

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Audit finds dozens of police custody deaths in Maryland should have been ruled homicides

An audit of past rulings by a controversial medical examiner found that 36 cases of police custody deaths deemed accidents should have instead been classified as homicides. 

The comprehensive review of 87 determinations regarding deaths resulting from police use of force stretched back 16 years from 2003 to 2019. It highlights the often questionable conclusions the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) used to determine that police were not culpable.  

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose agency managed the audit of former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. David Fowler, said the audit was disturbing and that the reclassified cases warranted further scrutiny. 

“These findings are of great concern and demand further review,” Brown wrote in the preface of the report. 

The report is simply an audit. It does not formally reclassify any of the cases that have been reviewed. Normally, changing an autopsy determination requires a hearing in front of a judge.

The push to examine Fowler’s past rulings came after he testified at the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was charged with murder after video surfaced of him sitting on George Floyd’s neck for roughly nine minutes. Floyd later died at a nearby hospital.  

The case sparked outrage and nationwide protests.  

Fowler testified that Floyd did not die from positional asphyxiation, the result of the downward pressure of Chauvin’s knee. Instead, he attributed carbon monoxide poisoning from a nearby tailpipe to be the primary cause. 

The testimony sent shockwaves through the medical community. An open letter penned by roughly 450 medical experts called for a review of Fowler’s rulings in light of his testimony. The pushback prompted the state to undertake a comprehensive audit, the findings of which were released in a 90-page report. 

But prior to Fowler’s testimony and the subsequent review of his rulings, family members of victims and activists had been calling attention to his determinations. TRNN also consulted an independent pathologist to review Fowler’s cases. 

Among them is the death of a 19-year-old Eastern Shore resident, Anton Black. 

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