Leader of right-wing militia arrested by FBI 'for detaining migrant families at gunpoint in New Mexico'

Independent.co.uk

The FBI on Saturday arrested the leader of a right-wing militia that was detaining migrant families at gunpoint near the border in southern New Mexico, as the group faced a torrent of criticism for its tactics.

Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general, said federal agents had arrested the leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, who had been operating under the alias Johnny Horton Jr. Mr Balderas said in a statement that Hopkins was arrested on charges of firearms possession by a felon.

“This is a dangerous felon who should not have weapons around children and families,” Mr Balderas said. “Today’s arrest by the FBI indicates clearly that the rule of law should be in the hands of trained law enforcement officials, not armed vigilantes.”

Still, such denunciations were far from unanimous in the state. A prominent New Mexico Republican, Gavin Clarkson, a former Trump administration official who is now running for US Senate, met with masked members of the group in March and praised their efforts, according to a video of the encounter uploaded to Facebook.

Ukraine election: Poroshenko concedes as exit polls show landslide victory for Zelenskiy

israelnationalnews

Jewish actor elected Ukrainian president, exit polls show

FOX NEWS HOST CHRIS WALLACE ASKS DONALD TRUMP'S LAWYER RUDY GIULIANI 'WHO MADE YOU GOD?' IN HEATED MUELLER REPORT INTERVIEW

Newsweek

Fox News host Chris Wallace pushed back hard in a Sunday interview with President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference, confronting him head-on as he tried to shift the interview to attack his client’s former political opponent Hillary Clinton.

When Attorney General William Barr revealed that his office would not pursue obstruction of justice charges against Trump, in part, because Mueller had determined that the president had not committed any underlying crime to be covered up. But on his show Sunday, Wallace challenged Giuliani on this concept.

“Mueller says the injury to the justice system is just as great, it doesn’t matter if there was an underlying crime, it’s still obstruction,” Wallace pointed out in his Fox News Sunday interview with Giuliani.

The president’s personal lawyer, who formerly served as the mayor of New York City, asked: “Well, when did Mueller become God?”

NY judge strikes down regulations ordering more secular studies in yeshivas

Timesofisrael

A New York State Supreme Court judge has struck down regulations announced by the state’s education commissioner, which would have ordered increased hours of secular study in non-public schools.

Judge Christina Ryba in an April 17 decision said that the Education Department did not follow proper procedure under the State Administrative Procedure Act when enacting the guidelines.

The decision was a response to several lawsuits brought by Jewish, Catholic and independent organizations.

Sri Lanka bombings: Death toll jumps to 290 in Easter Sunday explosions

cbsnews.

A series of nine bombings in Sri Lanka targeted Christian churches and hotels in three cities. The death toll has risen to at least 290 people and wounded more than 500 others on Easter Sunday, according to officials. Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardene described the coordinated blasts as a terrorist attack by religious extremists.

Defense Minister Ruwan Wijewardena described the blasts as a terrorist attack by religious extremists, and police said at least 24 suspects were arrested, though there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Wijewardena said most of the bombings were believed to have been suicide attacks. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he feared the violence could trigger instability in the country and its economy.

Her Credibility is Shot!’ CNN Panel SHREDDED Sarah Sanders for ‘PROPAGANDA’ Assault on Jim

Jewish nurses debunk anti-vaxxer misinformation as measles spreads in NYC ultra-Orthodox community

cnbc

Rebecca Feldman would like you to get a few facts straight about measles.

The vaccine is safe, for starters, said the emergency room nurse practitioner. It doesn’t cause autism, and Vitamin A doesn’t protect you from the disease, she said.

Feldman and 14 other Orthodox Jewish nurses are going line by line through a 40-page handbook that New York City health officials have identified as propaganda that’s helping to fuel a measles outbreak in the region. Written by an anonymous group that calls itself Peach — Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health — the document laces largely unproven anti-vaccination theories with passages from Jewish religious texts.

Toobin: This sentence is an invitation to impeach Trump

How 3 legal experts interpret the Mueller report

The Attorney General Said There Was 'No Collusion.' But Trump Associates Still Interacted With Russians More Than 100 Times

Time

Attorney General William Barr’s message at a press conference Thursday morning was crystal clear: There was “no collusion” between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

While Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found that Russia interfered in the election in an effort to undermine the Clinton campaign, no one in Trump’s orbit — or “any American” for that matter, Barr added — knowingly assisted Russia in that effort.

But while Mueller may not have found any evidence that Trump associates conspired with Russia to interfere in the election, they nonetheless had a lot of contact with Russians leading up to Election Day. In fact, investigators have found that Trump and at least 17 of his campaign officials and advisors had more than 100 contacts between Trump associates and Russians, belying the campaign’s November 2016 claim that “there was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” According to reporting, many others associated with Trump were told about contacts with Russian-linked individuals.

TWO MILLION ISRAELIS UNVACCINATED OR PARTIALLY VACCINATED FOR MEASLES

.jpost

More than two million Israelis are either unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated for the measles, according to a Channel 13 report.

An outbreak of the measles has been worrying Israelis for months as it spread throughout the country, as well as in the rest of the world. But Israeli media reports on Tuesday night exposed the severity of the situation and the difficulty in solving the crisis.

The Health Ministry claims that it has only 115,000 doses of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine available and 100,000 additional doses of the MMRV vaccine, which combines the diminished measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) vaccine, according to Channel 13.

State Comptroller Yosef Shapira has considered examining the Health Ministry’s handling of the recent measles outbreak, according to a report released in January.

The comptroller’s office contacted infectious disease and public health experts, and is working on compiling data about past efforts regarding the measles outbreak, examining if they were sufficient.

However, no formal decision has been made so far over the next steps to take in combating the outbreak.

The ministry released a statements in the past warning the general public about the dangers of measles, including that one out of every ten patients requires hospitalization after contracting the virus.

Mueller report unable to conclude 'no criminal conduct occurred' on obstruction

cnn

The 448-page report, which includes two volumes and appendixes, paints a starkly different picture than the one laid out by Attorney General William Barr. On Thursday morning, before the report was released, Barr said that Mueller's investigation did not establish a conspiracy with the Russian government and that Mueller did not make a decision on obstruction. But the full report lays out a significantly more complicated picture as Mueller's team weighed whether to prosecute cases.

The report includes multiple episodes that were previously unknown, stemming from both the collusion and obstruction investigations, which are likely to fuel investigations in Congress into Trump. It's also likely to add to the wave of criticism Barr has faced from Democrats, who were infuriated that he held a press conference Thursday morning.

Mueller wrote he accepted the Justice Department opinion that a sitting President cannot be indicted. But the special counsel report rejected the Trump team's legal argument that a President cannot commit obstruction of justice, leaving the door open for Congress to continue to investigate Trump.

"With respect to whether the President can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article II of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice," the report says.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, whose committee is investigating Trump, told reporters he thought it was "probably written with the intent of providing Congress a roadmap."

Sarah Sanders keeps digging herself in deeper after Mueller showed she lied

vox

Press secretary Sarah Sanders was caught lying several times in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and now she’s defending herself with more misdirections.

During a string of media appearances following the release of the Mueller report on Thursday, Sanders has faced questions about a claim she made during a May 2017 press briefing that she later admitted was false during testimony to Mueller’s team. In an attempt to justify President Donald Trump’s decision to fire then FBI director James Comey, Sanders told reporters that “countless members of the FBI” had contacted her to say they had lost confidence in Comey, when in fact that wasn’t the case.

On Thursday evening and Friday morning, Sanders repeatedly downplayed that lie as a mere “slip of the tongue.” But as ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pointed out to her in an interview on Friday morning, she used the line about “countless members of the FBI” multiple times in the days following Comey’s firing — a revelation undercutting her claim that she merely misspoke.

“You said it was a ‘slip of the tongue’ when you talked about ‘countless FBI members,’ yet you repeated it twice the very next day,” Stephanopoulos said. “That’s not a slip of the tongue, Sarah, that’s a deliberate false statement.”

Sanders, however, refused to own it, and bizarrely blamed her lie on Democrats.

Mueller had everything he needed to charge Trump with obstruction, but didn't

cnn

Mueller's report Thursday walked through excruciating detail of evidence in the obstruction of justice investigation and legal analysis, hitting over and over again how prosecutors had enough to meet the legal threshold for a case against Trump.

The special counsel examined multiple incidents for potential obstruction. It showed how Trump's actions crossed the threshold for a case when Trump confronted former FBI Director James Comey to "let" national security adviser Michael Flynn go; when Trump fired Comey; when Trump directed his former White House counsel Don McGahn to shut down Mueller; and when Trump tweeted about his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort's charges as he headed to trial.

In each of these situations, Mueller found evidence that Trump took steps to harm an investigation, had the ability to harm an investigation and had a personal motivation to harm the investigation.