Killing, Supreme Court Etc.

Two years ago on May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old killed 19 children and two teachers in an Ulvalde (TX) school while 376 law enforcement officers waited 77 minutes to breach the door where he was shooting them. On May 24, 2024, 19 families of students and teachers killed or injured settled a lawsuit with the city for $2 million. They also announced they are suing 92 officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety, the school district, and individual employees.

In other lawsuits connected to the shooting, the family of a 10-year-old victim sued almost two dozen people and entities, including the gun manufacture, the store providing the rifle using for the killings, and law enforcement officials who waited to take action plus a $27 billion class action lawsuit by shooting survivors against several state law enforcement agencies. On the two-year anniversary, victims’ family members filed a lawsuit against California-based companies Meta, parent of Instagram and Facebook, and Activision, owner of the video game Call of Duty featuring the gun the shooter used. The lawsuits claim that these two companies and the gun manufacturer marketed semi-automatic weapons to the Uvalde killer before he was 18. He bought an AR-15 23 minutes after midnight on his birthday. Daniel Defense had emailed the shooter when he was 17, telling him the weapon was “ready” for him.

The families’ attorney, John Koskoff successfully helped victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting win a $73 million settlement in a lawsuit against the maker of the AR-15 style rifle used in that school shooting in a setback for the firearms industry. Koskoff worked around a 2005 congressional law shielding gun companies from liability by using a consumer protection state law, an exception to the federal law. Instagram from gun manufacturer Daniel Defense show videos of young men

Complaints maintain the three companies “groom … socially vulnerable” young men radicalized to live out violent video game fantasies in the real world with easily accessible weapons. A 2019 Instagram post from Daniel Defense states, “Call of Duty Modern Warfare launched today” and shows a videos of young men firing the type of rifle used in the Uvalde shooting and an image of someone taking a gun out of a car trunk with the words “refuse to be a victim.” A New York judge has permitted a case from families of victims in Tops supermarket shooting in Buffalo to move toward discovery in holding social media companies’ algorithms responsible for radicalizing the shooter.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson (R-LA) aren’t alone in high U.S. officials flying the insurrectionist “Appeal to Heaven” flag.  Leonard Leo, the man from the Federalist Society who succeeded in pushing far-right judges with little or no experience onto the federal bench in perpetuity, is part of the club. His excuse is that, as the “flag of the first navy of the U.S.,” it “symbolizes civic duty and philanthropy towards one country.” No one cared about the flag, however, until the last decade when Christian nationalist used it to represent insurrection and violence. Leo also claimed that “as a resident of Maine, the Pine-Tree-State, I like pine trees.” [Note: he doesn’t fly his Maine state flag although it has a pine tree.]

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Judiciary panel, wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, asking for a meeting to discuss his justices’ ethics and ensure that Alito recuses himself from cases dealing with the insurrection and DDT’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. On MSNBC, Whitehouse talked with Lawrence O’Donnell about how Leo, an operative of the Koch brothers and other billionaires, put “the agreeable” and corrupt Alito on the high court to replace Sandra Day O’Connor.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also proved he supports racial gerrymandering. During the 70^th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education blocking school segregation, Thomas used the pro-gerrymandering opinion to attack the 9-0 1954 decision declaring the unconstitutionality of the “separate but equal” doctrine as “extravagant uses of judicial power.”

In the Middle East, the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah,” a southeastern Gaza city, after the International Criminal Court charged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for genocide in Gaza. The ICJ also ordered Israel to open the southern border crossing from Egypt to humanitarian aid. Examining South Africa’s case on the Rafah’s offensive forcing the evacuation of 800,000 Gazans, the court’s judge, Nawaf Salam, called the humanitarian situation in Rafah “disastrous” and has “deteriorated further” since the ICJ issued its last order to Israel in March. The court, however, did not call for a ceasefire.

ICJ’s rulings are legally binding, but Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said his government “will not agree” to stopping its military assault. With no police force, the international court has difficulty carrying out orders, such as when Russian ignored a 2022 ruling to stop its invasion of Ukraine. In 1986, the ICJ ordered the U.S. to pay Nicaragua war reparations after violating international law. The U.S. refused and vetoed further attempts.

The court members voted 11-2 for Israel to halt its attack with only Israel and Uganda opposing the decision. The U.S. voted in favor of it. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the court to “go to hell” over the ruling. and said the order “will and should be ignored by Israel.”

Ukraine used U.S.-supplied missiles to destroy an $800 million Russian air defense system close to front lines at an airfield in Mospyne in the occupied Donetsky region. The attack came during the Russian push to seize more of eastern Ukraine before military aid could arrive. A day later, Ukrainians hit two Crimean targets during Russian drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, including air bombs, warheads for short-range missiles, and artillery munitions. French President Emmanuel Macron considers sending troops to Ukraine, and UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine can use British long-range weapons to strike targets inside Russia.

Another trial started on Friday, this one regarding 12 charges of fraud against exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui. Jurors are kept anonymous because of Guo’s former efforts to send his followers to protest outside homes of legal adversaries and members of their families. With DDT’s adviser Steve Bannon, convicted for contempt of Congress for not responding to a subpoena, Guo founded the “New Federal State of China” claiming to be a government-in-waiting to take over governance in Beijing. His defense will likely be fear of the Communist Party.

Norfolk Southern must pay a $15 million civil penalty and the costs of cleaning up the toxic disaster from a train derailment in East Palestine (OH) in early 2023 through a settlement of $310 million. The penalty is the highest amount permitted under the Clean Water Act. If a federal judge approves, the settlement resolves all federal claims and investigation except for the National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the derailment cause. Norfolk Southern also agreed to a $25 million program for medical exams and mental health services for community members and first responders for 20 years as well as $30 million to monitor groundwater, surface water, and drinking water for another 10 years. Last month, Norfolk Southern agreed to a separate $600 million settlement for 31 class-action lawsuits by reside3nts and businesses.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-AL) brain damage reemerged, this time about unemployment. In his support of DDT, he claimed that unemployment rates were very low under DDT but have skyrocketed since Joe Biden became president. Corrections for Tuberville: During the first three years of DDT’s term, when DDT said he had the greatest economy in history, the economy created almost 6.4 million jobs. Those jobs all disappeared before DDT left the white House. Since Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, the economy created almost 16 million jobs. By 2017, the annual jobless rate was 3.7 percent, but the onset of Covid in early 2020 increased unemployment to almost 15 percent in a recession, averaging an annual rate of 8.1 percent. The next year, Biden’s first, unemployment fell from 6.4 percent in January to 3.9 percent in December. The rate has been below 4 percent for 27 consecutive months, not seen since the 1960s.   

In proof that inflation was caused by price gouging, big retailers such as Target and Walmart are dropping their prices because they’re losing consumers. After McDonalds jacked up their prices, it plans to introduce a $5 meal deal. 

Religious people are now using another reason for block in vitro fertilization (IVG) other than life beginning at contraception: it requires the husband to use pornography, according to the Family Research Council (FRC). The claim is that IVF clinics employ this to get sperm. “It’s not good for a marriage,” said an FRC member in a video. The Catholic also considers IVF “immoral” because it “eliminates the marriage act as the means of achieving pregnancy” even if the sperm and egg come from husband and wife. Catholics also teach that masturbation, the method of obtaining sperm, is always wrong.