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Crowd confronts Cruz at LAX with 'free the children' chants -
Cruz can be seen in video posted to Twitter smiling, shaking a few hands and even taking pictures with some fellow travelers as the group chanted.
The Hill has reached out to Cruz’s office for comment.
Cruz has been a staunch supporter of President Trump’s policies to increase security along the U.S.-Mexico border, which has included an increasing number of migrants, including thousands of children, held in government detention.
The two-term senator has also had some outside-the-box immigration ideas of his own, such as using the assets seized from Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán, commonly known as “El Chapo,” to fund a southern border wall.
The incident at LAX is not the first time Cruz has been confronted in public.
He was run out of a restaurant in Washington, D.C., last year over his support of now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
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Democrats introduce constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United -
A group of Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and progressive activists rallied outside the Supreme Court to unveil the amendment, which faces an unlikely path to being ratified.
“Few decisions in the 200 and some odd years of this republic have threatened our democracy like Citizens United. People say they want to get rid of the swamp. Citizens United is the embodiment of the swamp,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at the rally.
Schumer added that “overturning Citizens United is probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy.“
Democrats pledged that if they took control of the Senate during the 2020 election, they would bring legislation overturning Citizens United up for a vote.
“We reported this amendment to the floor [in 2014]. What happened to it? A [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell [R-Ky.] filibuster happened to it. … With a new leader by the name of Schumer in the Senate, we can be sure that it won’t be a filibuster stopping us,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat.
The 2010 Supreme Court ruling prohibited the government from limiting spending by companies, nonprofit organizations and unions on political campaign advertisements. The court’s majority wrote that such provisions would inhibit freedom of speech.
The Senate Democratic amendment would let Congress and states set rules on spending and money in elections.
But to be added as an amendment to the Constitution, the Democratic proposal would need to be approved by two-thirds of both the House and Senate and be approved by three-fourths of the states.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) introduced his own amendment to nix Citizens United in May.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United overturned decades of legal precedent and has enabled billions in dark money to pour into our elections,” Schiff said in a statement.
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Hundreds of reindeer starve to death on Arctic islands ‘due to climate change’ -
More than 200 reindeer have died of starvation on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, with scientists blaming their deaths on climate change.
The wild deer carcasses were found on the Arctic islands this summer by researchers from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI), which said it had never logged so many deaths at once in 40 years of monitoring the animals’ population level.
“It’s scary to find so many dead animals,” project leader Ashild Onvik Pedersen told state broadcaster NRK. “This is an example of how climate change affects nature. It is just sad.”
Svalbard’s capital Longyearbyen, the northernmost town on earth, is thought to be warming quicker than any other settlement on the planet, climate scientists warned earlier this year.
The milder temperatures in the region led to unusually heavy rainfall in December, leaving a thick layer of ice when the precipitation froze. This meant the reindeer could not dig through the hardened tundra to reach the vegetation they graze on in their usual pastures, the NPI said.
Svalbard’s reindeer have been observed eating seaweed and kelp when food is scarce, but these are less nutritious and cause them stomach problems.
A relatively high number of calves born last year increased the death toll, as the youngest and weakest are often the first to die in harsh conditions.
“Some of the mortality is natural because there were so many calves last year. But the large number we see now is due to heavy rain, which is due to global warming,” said Ms Onvik Pedersen.
A team of three scientists spent 10 weeks investigating population of the Svalbard reindeer earlier this year.
Researchers warned the decline of reindeer would cause unwanted plant species, currently kept in check by the animals’ grazing, to spread across Arctic ecosystems in Europe, Asia and North America.
Arctic reindeer and caribou populations have declined 56 per cent in the last two decades, a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last year. The report said food security was partly to blame for was partly to blame for falling herd numbers, while warmer summers also could also put the animals at greater risk of diseases spread by flies and parasites.
The average temperature in Longyearbyen has risen by 3.7C since 1900, more than three times the global average increase of about 1C.
In 2016, the entrance to the town’s “Doomsday” seed vault – which stores specimens of almost all the world’s seeds – was flooded following heavy rainfall.
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Ilhan Omar’s challenger accused of stealing 279 items from Target -
A Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is accused of shoplifting 279 items from a suburban Target earlier this year.
A criminal complaint says Danielle Stella stole items valued at more than $2,000 from Target during one visit on January 8. She allegedly told police she doesn’t remember anything after arriving at Target, due to post-traumatic stress disorder.
The Star Tribune reported that Stella was arrested again in April after allegedly stealing $40 in cat food from a Cub grocery store. A police report says she told an officer she forgot to pay.
In a text to the Guardian, a British newspaper, Stella said she’s innocent until proven guilty, and if she were guilty, she would never run for public office.
Stella is a 31-year-old special education teacher and supporter of President Donald Trump. She has gained attention for social media posts referencing QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory. Last week InfoWars broadcast an interview in which she described Minneapolis as the “crime capital” of America.
Meanwhile, a Minneapolis police officer says he plans to challenge Omar.
Chris Kelley says he will officially launch his campaign for the Independence Party endorsement in the 5th Congressional District on Monday.
Kelley told KSTP-TV he was first motivated to run for Omar’s seat after comments she made in April at a meeting of the Council on American-Islamic Relations when some thought she diminished the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Kelley, an Army veteran, sought Republican endorsement for a state Senate seat in 2016.
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'Prank' sent teacher to hospital fighting for her life after allergic reaction -
“That could be attempted murder,” a Columbus City Schools (CCS) security officer is heard telling Columbus Police officers in a body camera video. The call about the attack came from Starling K-8 school last November. On the video, the security officer is seen escorting police to the art teacher’s door where signs stating “Banana Free Zone” are posted. Another sign instructs students to wash their hands if they’ve eaten a banana that day.
“All of the kids know she’s deathly allergic to bananas,” the security officer told the police. “If it touches her, she will go into anaphylactic shock.”
During lunch, the security staffer said three seventh-graders smeared banana on the teacher’s door, doorknob, and threw them at her while she was inside her classroom. She went into anaphylactic shock within 15 minutes.
“She starts to change colors,” said the security staffer. “They gave her one epipen; It wasn’t working. They gave her another epipen (and) her throat was starting to close up.”
The art teacher was rushed to the hospital where she did recover.
“They’re definitely going down for expulsion,” said CCS security on the bodycam video.
The so-called prank was uncovered by the ABC 6’s Scoring Our Schools team as they continue looking into the fight for better working conditions for Columbus City School teachers, and educator complaints about safety at schools.
The team pulled the police reports of the assault case and went to each address for the three young offenders, who were all sentenced to probation through juvenile court. One address turned out to be a foster home. When asked if teachers should be fearful going into work, the mother of another student responded that she knows conditions are tough, but also feels some teachers don’t care about the students.
Columbus Police say felonious assaults on teachers have increased in 2019 with more than 30 cases since January. In 2017, officers responded to 65 felonious assaults on city school campuses, which was nearly triple the number from the year before. The teacher’s union, Columbus Education Association, has yet to reach a new contract with Columbus City Schools administration. Teachers say they are fighting for better working conditions and alternative plans to discipline or wrap-around services for troubled kids.
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