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Kyle Rittenhouse pleads not guilty.

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Kyle Rittenhouse pleads not guilty.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — An Illinois teenager who fatally shot two people and wounded a third amidst sometimes violent summer protests on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges including intentional homicide.

Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, entered his plea in a brief hearing conducted by teleconference that came just as Kenosha was bracing for a charging decision in the event that brought Rittenhouse to the city in August — the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Prosecutors say Rittenhouse, who is white, left his home in Antioch, Illinois, and traveled to Kenosha after learning of a call to protect businesses after Blake, a Black man, was shot seven times in the back Aug. 23 and left paralyzed.

Rittenhouse opened fire with an assault-style rifle during protests two nights later, killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz. Rittenhouse has argued he fired in self-defense. Conservatives have rallied around Rittenhouse, describing him as a patriot who took up arms to protect people and property, and raised enough money to make his $2 million cash bail.

Others see him as a domestic terrorist whose presence with a rifle incited protesters.

The Blake shooting happened three months after George Floyd died while being restrained by police officers in Minneapolis, which also was captured on bystander video and which sparked outrage and protests that spread across the United States and beyond. The galvanized Black Lives Matter movement put a spotlight on inequitable policing and became a fault line in politics, with President Donald Trump criticizing protesters and aggressively pressing a law-and-order message that he sought to capitalize on in Wisconsin and other swing states.

In Kenosha, as the protests that followed damaged businesses in the city of 100,000 near the Wisconsin-Illinois border — authorities ultimately estimated some $50 million in damage — some people answered a call on social media to travel to Kenosha. That included Rittenhouse, who is charged with shooting three people, killing two of them, with an assault-style weapon during one of the demonstrations.

Conservatives have rallied to Rittenhouse’s legal defense, arguing that he was a patriot who took up arms to protect people and property. Others see him as a domestic terrorist whose presence with a rifle incited protesters. Rittenhouse, who is white, was 17 at the time of the shootings, and charges include illegal possession of a dangerous weapon by someone under age 18.

A pretrial conference for Rittenhouse was set for March 10, with a March 29 trial date, though his attorney Mark Richards indicated he would seek to delay that to allow more time to prepare.

Kenosha County District Attorney Michael Graveley hasn’t publicly announced the timing of a decision on whether to charge Sheskey. But the city began moving in recent days to prepare for the event, with some businesses boarding their windows and concrete barricades and oversized metal fencing surrounding the Kenosha County Courthouse. Fearing a repeat of the August protests, the Kenosha Common Council on Monday night unanimously approved an emergency resolution that goes into effect with the announcement and allows the mayor to set curfews.

Meanwhile, Gov. Tony Evers activated 500 National Guard troops to help Kenosha authorities when the decision is announced.

“Our members of the National Guard will be on hand to support local first responders, ensure Kenoshans are able to assemble safely, and to protect critical infrastructure as necessary,” Evers said in a statement.

Blake’s father led a march through the city Monday evening, calling on people to “make noise” and be “heard around the world.”

“(Sheskey) tried to kill my son and could have killed my grandchildren,” Jacob Blake Sr. said during a news conference before the march. “He shot him seven times in his back unjustifiably.”

The family said it’s taken too long for a charging decision, and the precautions suggest that Sheskey won’t be charged.

“What is the National Guard for?” Jacob Blake Sr. said. “They going to deliver mail? Deliver ice cream? What do you think they’re here for?”

Tanya McLean, executive director of the community organization Leaders of Kenosha and a friend of the Blake family, said as Monday evening’s march was kicking off that violence isn’t acceptable.

“No matter what the decision is, we are seeking nonviolence,” she said. “We want everybody to come out, make as much noise as you want, but we don’t want any destruction of property or businesses. We are for nonviolence. Anything else is not acceptable for this community.”

ORIGINAL STORY.

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Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, Has Been Diagnosed with Terminal Cancer

This follows his transfer to a medical facility in December

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The new comes from a letter he wrote:

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Foreign-born population soars to new record under Biden; highest rate of immigrants since 1910

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Foreign-born population soars to new record under Biden; highest rate of immigrants since 1910

The U.S. has had a massive surge in immigration this year, with as many as 1.5 million newcomers and a record 46.2 million foreign-born people, according to a report for the Center for Immigration Studies.

After a deep trough last year, likely because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel and migration restrictions imposed to control the spread, the flow of people rebounded around the time President Biden was elected.

In numbers never seen before, they are coming legally through airports and land border crossings and illegally across the Rio Grande and remote regions of Arizona and California.

“There was pent-up demand for legal immigration, and illegal immigration has exploded in one of the greatest surges, if not the greatest, we’ve ever seen,” said Steven A. Camarota, the demographer who was the chief author of the report. “It’s driving the numbers up and up and up.”

As it stands, 14.2% of the U.S. population is foreign-born, or 1 out of every 7 people. That is the highest rate of immigrants in the population since 1910, when the number was 14.7%. At current trends, the government says, the U.S. will break that record well before the end of this decade.

Those numbers are even starker given the reversal of trends.

The data showed a drop of 1.2 million immigrants from February to September 2020, likely the result of coronavirus restrictions blocking new entrants, even as outmigration continued. That left the population of the foreign-born — the Census Bureau’s term — at 43.8 million.

It was up to 45 million by January and marched steadily to the current 46.2 million total shown for last month.

In the year after President Trump’s election, the immigrant population flattened.

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Health

Biden Vaccine Mandate for Contractors Blocked Nationwide

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Biden Vaccine Mandate for Contractors Blocked Nationwide
  • Mandate one of a set of Biden vaccine initiatives
  • States say contractor requirement violates Constitution

The Biden administration’s mandate for federal contractors’ employees to be vaccinated will be halted nationwide, amid a slew of challenges from states that say the president overstepped his authority in requiring the Covid-19 shots.

Led by Georgia, the seven states that challenged the mandate set to take effect on Jan. 4 are likely to succeed in their lawsuits against the administration’s order, U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker of the Southern District of Georgia said in an order issued Tuesday.

The Biden administration mandate applies to roughly a quarter of the U.S. workforce and affects companies that do business with the federal government, including Lockheed Martin Corp., Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.‘s Google, and General Motors Co.

Baker’s order follows a Kentucky federal judge’s grant last week of a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit involving Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. Baker echoed what his Kentucky counterpart said, that blocking the mandate didn’t indicate that the vaccine wouldn’t be effective to stopping the spread of Covid-19, but rather that Biden didn’t have the power to issue such an executive order.

Representatives from Georgia universities testified during an injunction hearing earlier this month, arguing that implementation of the mandate would be expensive, onerous, and cost them valuable employees who haven’t yet presented proof of vaccination. Those schools receive millions from the federal government.

The court found that the states could likely prove that Congress didn’t clearly authorize the president to issue the mandate, and that it “goes far beyond addressing administrative and management issues in order to promote efficiency and economy in procurement and contracting.” The 2017 nominee of President Donald Trump said, instead, the executive order works as a “regulation of public health.”

Neither the lawyers representing the state coalition nor the U.S. government immediately responded to emailed requests for comment.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little cheered Tuesday’s ruling in a statement. The state is part of the Georgia-led contractor mandate challenge, as well as lawsuits against the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration’s shot-or-test emergency regulation for large U.S. businesses, and another inoculation rule for healthcare workers.

“Yet another one of President Biden’s vaccine mandates have been temporarily shut down because the states—including Idaho—took a stand against his unprecedented government overreach into Americans’ lives and businesses,” Little said in the statement. “All three mandates are now completely stalled. We will continue to press forward in our fight against the federal government’s bad policies.”

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