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Hours after Joe Biden launched his 2020 campaign by attacking President Trump for his response to a deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, the president began to spin a yarn.The August 2017 demonstration was actually just a group of “neighborhood” folks from the local University of Virginia community who simply “wanted to protest the fact that they want to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said in an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin in late April.Trump himself had merely been supporting those same purportedly peaceful protesters when he said there were “very fine people on both sides,” he continued.In fact, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville — which left one woman dead and 19 injured — was explicitly organized by a group of white supremacists and neo-Nazis as a celebration of white nationalism. The official event was presaged by a nighttime parade in which rallygoers held tiki torches aloft while chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and soil,” a reference to a nationalist slogan used in Nazi Germany.“It is a misrepresentation of what was happening in Charlottesville to say it was a statue protest that went wrong,” said Nicole Hemmer, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center who lives in Charlottesville and attended the rally as an observer. “Anyone who was there that day would have walked into a park of people waving Nazi flags and people who were Klansmen. It was not a secret who put that rally on that day.” For Trump, his recasting of Charlottesville is just the latest version of a story he has been altering and embellishing over the past 21 months in defense of one of the lowest points of his presidency, when he attracted bipartisan opprobrium for his seeming reluctance to forcefully condemn white supremacy. Even in his revisionist retelling, the president’s decision to lavish praise on Lee — a slave owner who led Confederate troops in defense of human bondage — leaves in place a level of ambiguity for those in his political base sympathetic to alt-right causes.His approach to Charlottesville highlights a number of recurring themes in Trump’s responses to controversy: his refusal to apologize or admit error; his defiance in the face of critics; his willingness to view facts as malleable in the service of self-preservation; and his ability to speak abstrusely in a way that provides fodder for defenders and detractors alike. White House officials reject any suggestion that Trump has been equivocal on white supremacists.“President Trump and the entire Administration have and will continue to condemn racism, bigotry, and violence in all forms — and any claim to the contrary is false, disgusting, and a slanderous attempt to sow division in America,” spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement, citing the administration’s relationship with Israel and historically low unemployment rates for blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans.But Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, said Trump’s continued reticence to confront white supremacists “is not a dog whistle picked up by the alt-right — it’s a bullhorn the whole country can hear.”According to the ADL’s most recent annual report, white supremacists were responsible for 39 of the 50 extremist-related murders the group counted in 2018, an increase from the previous year, when 18 of 34 such crimes were committed by white supremacists.A report in February by the Southern Poverty Law Center identified a record 1,020 hate groups operating across the country in 2018. It also found that the number of deaths linked to the radical right had increased: In the United States and Canada, at least 40 people have been killed by white supremacists. “It has emboldened extremists,” Greenblatt said of Trump’s ambivalent posturing. “How do we know this? Because they say so. It’s spurred this new, nativistic nationalism that’s playing out on college campuses and social media and now cities across the country.”'Very fine people on both sides'The president’s response to the Charlottesville rally — three whiplash statements over four days — seemed to encapsulate his uncertainty over how strongly to condemn the white-supremacist groups behind the event.On Aug. 12, 2017, after an avowed neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, Trump offered a brief initial statement from his private golf resort in Bedminster, N.J. He denounced “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” — repeating “on many sides” a second time for emphasis. The statement was widely condemned as creating a false equivalency between the two groups and for not going far enough. Back at the White House two days later — urged on by worried aides — the president delivered a more forceful, scripted statement in a hastily arranged news conference. “Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups,” he said. Those remarks, however, left Trump frustrated. The president told aides in the stately Diplomatic Reception Room that his mea culpa was the “worst speech I’ve ever given” and “the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made,” according to accounts the journalist Bob Woodward provided in his book “Fear,” about the Trump presidency.The next day, during a news conference ostensibly about infrastructure at Trump Tower in New York, the president unleashed a freewheeling riff on the violence at the rally.In one breath, he said, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis or the white nationalists because they should be condemned totally” — a statement his allies have latched on to in defense of his handling of the issue to claim the president was always clear in his denunciations of bigotry and hate-fueled violence.Yet, in the next breath, Trump asserted, “there’s blame on both sides . . . very fine people on both sides.”The last of his three statements was classic Trump — raw, visceral, unfiltered — and, in the eyes of many, his most honest response. The tableau of Trump blaming both sides as John F. Kelly, his chief of staff at the time, stood by grim-faced, was a reflection of “a president who is very frustrated at being told what to say, and who reverts back to his genuine reaction, that there were very fine people on both sides,” Hemmer said.In his initial remarks about Charlottesville, and his recent ones praising Lee, Trump was relying on the rhetorical tools he frequently deploys during controversy — making contradictory or murky statements that allow him and his defenders to claim whatever benefits them in the moment. Despite his brief condemnation of neo-Nazis and white nationalists, for example, members of those same groups heard in Trump’s comments support for their ideology when he blamed both sides.“What he’s signaling to his base — including those that are explicitly racist or with implicit racial bias — is: ‘I’m your guy,’ ” said C. Shawn McGuffey, a sociology professor and the director of African diaspora studies at Boston College. “He can say all he wants that, ‘I’m not a racist, I’m not a white nationalist,’ but when white nationalists call you a white nationalist, you’re clearly signaling something.” David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, illustrates the president’s Rorschach messaging. The day of the rally, Duke praised Trump, enthusing that the march represented “a turning point for the people of this country.”“We are determined to take our country back,” he said. “We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”But after Trump disavowed hatred and violence in a tweet, Duke responded angrily on social media, writing, “I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.”An unsuccessful presidential candidate who endorsed Trump in 2016, Duke’s feelings toward the president now are mixed. “He’s still giving some decent rhetoric, but he’s not keeping his promises,” Duke said in an interview last week , citing Trump’s tough talk on immigration and his vow to enact middle-class tax relief. At the same time, Duke expressed an appreciation for some of Trump’s language on Charlottesville.“He was the only person in the entirety of the U.S. government who pointed out that all the fault was not with the people who came there to defend the Robert E. Lee statue, and those who came to defend the right and heritage of white people,” Duke said.'Concocting a phony story'The launch of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign on April 25 brought the white-supremacist rally back into the national discussion and immediately put Trump on the defensive. The president had largely avoided commentary on Charlottesville over the past year, save for an anniversary statement in August condemning the “riots,” which made no mention of white supremacists.Biden’s announcement video featured footage of the rallygoers, dressed in makeshift riot gear, as he described “their crazed faces illuminated by torches, veins bulging and bearing the fangs of racism.”Calling Charlottesville “a defining moment for this nation in the last few years,” Biden criticized Trump for praising the “very fine people on both sides” and portrayed his candidacy as part of a moral battle for the soul of the nation. Leon Panetta, a former secretary of defense, CIA director and White House chief of staff, said delving back into Charlottesville is perilous territory for the president. “It brings attention to probably one of his worst failings, which is his inability to acknowledge when he says something stupid,” Panetta said. “It’s probably one of the worst things he has said during his presidency.”But Trump couldn’t help but respond, and he did so by distorting his initial reaction. He repeatedly praised Lee — a line of defense largely absent from his rhetoric in the aftermath of the 2017 event. He said he was never condoning white supremacy but simply defending the rights of peaceful protesters who did not want the Lee statue taken down. The defense left many unconvinced. Biden accused Trump of “concocting a phony story.”“The very rally was advertised — advertised — as a white-supremacist rally,” Biden told a crowd April 30, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Anti-Semitic chants were clear. Hatred was on the march, and he knew it.”McGuffey said in an era of news micro-cycles, Trump is “trying to rewrite history, he’s trying to clean it up.” “He’s had almost two years now to do that, and this is his latest version,” he said. Trump’s defenders, however, argue the president has been consistent in his outspokenness about hatred since the beginning. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” on April 28, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Trump’s response to Charlottesville “was twisted for many years” and was “darn near perfection.”“I think anytime a president is willing to condemn people who hate other people based on their race of their religion it’s a great day for America, and that’s what he did,” Conway said.Another White House official also argued it is unfair to suggest Trump is sympathetic toward neo-Nazis or other extremists given his record on condemning anti-Semitism, including after the recent shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California.In focusing on Lee, Trump also managed to plunge the nation into a semi-academic debate about the legacy of the Confederate general while obscuring his original response. On ABC’s “This Week,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), a veteran civil rights activist, called Lee “a great tactician” before excoriating him as “a brutal slave master” and a “loser.”Greenblatt said the discussion about Lee allows Trump to defend himself while signaling to the alt-right members of his base that he tacitly agrees with them. “When you say you’re against white supremacy but then you praise Robert E. Lee, the general who led us in the war in favor of white supremacy, I think it’s safe to say these are contradictory messages,” he said. Trump’s latest remarks, Greenblatt added, should be viewed as part of a troubling broader arc, from Charlottesville to the white-supremacist shootings at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, and at the Poway, Calif., synagogue.“These aren’t outliers on a scatter plot,” Greenblatt said. “These are data points on a trend line.”
On Monday night, Dallas news station WFAA released new cellphone footage from the 2015 arrest of Sandra Bland that confirms what we all already knew: that the life of Texas state trooper Brian Encinia was never in danger and that Texas officials have withheld evidence of not only her controversial arrest, but very likely her death.In the 39-second video—a collaborative effort between WFAA and the Investigative Network—Encinia aggressively demands Bland, 28, get out of her car while she calmly questions the justification for doing so.//www.youtube.com/watch?v=hevRqm40RvM“Why am I being apprehended?” she asks, recording their interaction for her own safety.“Get out of the car now!” Encinia yells before pointing a taser at her. “I will light you up!”She is eventually removed from her car and arrested.Three days later she would be found dead in her Waller County jail cell near Houston, where her death would be ruled a suicide.The Washington Post reports that until the release of this video, the Encinia’s dashcam footage was believed to be the only existing recording of the infamous July 2015 traffic stop in which Bland was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change. During the investigation, Encinia maintained that he feared for his safety during the stop.“My safety was in jeopardy at more than one time,” Encinia told investigators.But as you can see for yourself, clearly that wasn’t the case.Bland’s family and attorney never saw this footage until now and believe it was intentionally withheld. As such, they’re demanding that Texas officials re-examine the criminal case against Encinia.“Open up the case, period,” Shante Needham, Bland’s sister, said after watching the video.She added, “We also know they have an extremely, extremely good cover-up system.”After declining an on-camera interview with WFAA, the Texas Department of Public Safety released the following statement maintaining that the footage wasn’t withheld:“The premise that the video was not produced as a part of the discovery process is wrong. A hard drive containing copies of 820 Gigabytes of data compiled by DPS from its investigation, including the dashcam videos, jail video footage and data from Sandra Bland’s cell phone, was part of discovery.”But Cannon Lambert, the attorney who represented the Bland family, calls bullshit.“I’ve not seen it,” said Lambert, when shown the video by Brian Collister, chief reporter with the Investigative Network. “If they had turned it over, I would have seen it, Brian. I’ve not seen that.”“He sees exactly what’s in her hand,” Lambert added, referencing the footage. “How can you tell me you don’t know what’s in her hand when you’re looking right dead at it? What did she do to make him feel his safety was in jeopardy? Nothing.”Of particular note, grand jury proceedings are secret, so whether Waller County grand jurors were shown the video remains unconfirmed.“[The video] not only shows that [Encinia] lied, but that he really had no business even stopping her, period,” Needham said. “And at the end of the day, he needs to go to jail.”State Rep. Garnet Coleman released the following statement upon the release of this new information:“It is troubling that a crucial piece of evidence was withheld from Sandra Bland’s family and legal team in their pursuit of justice. The illegal withholding of evidence by one side from the other destroys our legal system’s ability to produce fair and just outcomes. As Chair of the House Committee on County Affairs that looked into the death of Sandra Bland, I will make sure that the Committee will also look into how this happened.I am glad to see that the Sandra Bland Act is already making a difference in terms of better training for jailers and new officers. Additionally, through new data reporting requirements regarding traffic stops, the Act has already helped push local reforms and key legislative policies forward such as House Bill 2754 by Representative White, of which I am a Joint-Author of, that prevents arrests for nonjailable offenses. HB 2754's policy was part of the original Sandra Bland Act as filed last session. I am proud that the Act has had a positive impact and will continue to make a difference in the future.”Despite officials being elusive in providing Bland’s family with answers, the family settled a wrongful death suit against Waller County and Texas DPS in 2016 for $1.9 million.Additionally, there were no indictments handed down to Waller County lawmen in connection with Bland’s death.[/size][/b]
Family of Sandra Bland Demands Answers After New Footage of Her Arrest Surfaces
Donald Trump appeared before a raucous crowd of supporters for another one of his MAGA rallies in Panama City Beach, FL, on Wednesday. There, he joined the audience in laughing at an impromptu suggestion from the crowd: What if the U.S. just murdered undocumented immigrants?“When you have 15,000 people marching up, and you have hundreds and hundreds of people, and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great,” Trump said. “And don’t forget, we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons. We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?”At that point an as-of-yet unidentified member of the audience shouted “Shoot them!” Trump simply chuckled along with the crowd, noting, “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.
It was an iconic baseball celebration: Boston Red Sox catcher Christian Vázquez leaping into the arms of pitcher Chris Sale after the final out of the World Series last fall, teammates in perfect unison.But on Thursday, the star players were far apart. Sale was at the White House where the 2018 champions were honored by President Trump. Vázquez was home in Boston, one of at least 10 players, all Latino or African American, who elected not to attend.“It’s personal, bro,” Vázquez, who is from Bayamón, Puerto Rico, said in a brief interview before a game against the Orioles here Wednesday. Of the more than a dozen players who attended, only one — outfielder J.D. Martinez, who is of Cuban descent — is a minority. Manager Alex Cora, who is from Puerto Rico, also was absent.“Everybody has personal opinions,” Vázquez said. “I don’t like to talk about those thoughts.”The Red Sox have sought to play down the split, but the cleaving of the team along racial lines has symbolized an era in which Trump — who has sowed, and exploited, deep divisions in American society — has forced the nation to confront fundamental questions of identity, transforming what had once been feel-good ceremonies at the White House into pitched moments of cultural reckoning.From famous sports heroes to lesser known Olympians to the stars of the performing arts, the toxicity of the Trump era has led once apolitical entertainers to pick a side, and, in doing so, render a judgment on the president himself.“It really shows the divide and the place we’re in in our country,” said the retired figure skater Adam Rippon, who won bronze at the Winter Olympics last year but did not participate in Team USA’s visit to the White House. On Twitter, Rippon, who is gay, declared he would “not stand with” an administration he said is willing to “discriminate against those that they perceive as different.”In an interview this week, Rippon said the racial split among the Red Sox is more evidence that minorities are “excluded” from Trump’s governing agenda and feel compelled to take a stand.“It’s amazing to win the World Series and go the White House, and it’s incredible,” he said. “But the flip side of that is I feel as an athlete you have this incredible platform and you have a choice to be that role model for your younger self.”A White House spokeswoman declined to comment and instead referred to Trump’s public comments. At the South Lawn ceremony, Trump regaled the players and coaches and promised to give them a tour of the Lincoln Bedroom. He recounted Sale’s clutch performance in the clinching World Series game, but made no mention of Vázquez or Cora.In brief remarks, Sale called the visit a “very high honor,” and Martinez said it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, thanking Trump for his hospitality.On rare occasions, athletes boycotted White House visits under previous presidents for political reasons. But Trump has directly and eagerly engaged the dissenters, aggravating the disputes and fanning racial and social tensions.Entire teams, such as the University of Virginia men’s basketball squad this month, have declined invitations, while the White House has not extended offers to some women’s teams, including two WNBA champions, which have typically been on the list.Trump angrily rescinded invitations to the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and the Philadelphia Eagles last year after black players announced publicly they would not come.“I have never, ever, ever voiced my opinions that way before, because I’m not a political person,” said Carmen de Lavallade, 88, a black Creole actress, dancer and choreographer, who was among the first to spurn Trump.In August 2017, she announced she would not attend a traditional White House reception for performers honored annually by the Kennedy Center. That prompted Trump and the first lady to respond by skipping the awards event.“It’s like he opened Pandora’s box,” said de Lavallade, who had performed for President Lyndon B. Johnson. She cited Trump’s equivocations in denouncing the marchers in a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville for prompting her decision.Some black athletes have visited the Trump White House, most prominently golfer Tiger Woods, a business partner of Trump’s whom the president awarded the Medal of Freedom this week.But the highly publicized snubs have raised the stakes for others. In January, Trump treated the Clemson University football team to a spread of fast food in the East Room during the partial government shutdown.More than 70 players showed up, but 42 of the team’s 57 African American players did not, according to a report in The Root, which quoted three players, speaking anonymously, as citing Trump’s “divisive politics” and “racism.”In an interview Wednesday, Red Sox President Sam Kennedy said the organization decided after winning the 2004 World Series that it would adopt an “apolitical” position and accept invitations to the White House based on respect for the institution. Most players showed up in 2005 and 2008 to meet President George W. Bush and in 2014 to meet President Barack Obama.Amid the controversy this year, the players have said they respect each other’s decisions and called it a private matter.But Cora has been outspoken that it would be inappropriate for him to visit the White House when his native Puerto Rico is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Maria, which led to more than 3,000 deaths on the island two years ago.The sentiment has been interpreted as an implicit rebuke of Trump, who has angrily rejected criticism of his administration’s response. The president has blamed local officials for poor management and vastly inflated the amount of federal aid money that has been dispensed to the island. A broader disaster relief package has been stalled in Congress, with Trump opposing a Democratic push for more money for Puerto Rico.Cora has been dogged by questions, and he said before the game Wednesday that he was done addressing the matter. The players “know how I feel,” he told reporters. “We just put it to rest.”While current Red Sox players have played down or tried to avoid discussing any tensions over the White House visit, former star player David Ortiz this week said he supported those skipping the event and condemned Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants.“You don’t want to go and shake hands with a guy who is treating immigrants like [expletive] because I’m an immigrant,” Ortiz, who was born in the Dominican Republic, told radio station WEEI earlier this week.The discomfort in the clubhouse was apparent after the team’s 2-1 victory Wednesday when a Red Sox staffer blocked a Washington Post reporter from reentering the clubhouse with other journalists, saying no more questions about the White House would be permitted.In Boston, the racial division has threatened to erode some of the good feeling from last year and serve as a reminder of the team’s troubled history with segregation. The Red Sox were the last Major League franchise to desegregate, in 1959, under their longtime owner Tom Yawkey.Kennedy noted that the organization has taken a stand on some sensitive cultural issues, including successfully petitioning a city commission to rename a roadway near Fenway Park from Yawkey Way to Jersey Street.“I’ve talked to a lot of players,” said Kennedy, who attended along with Red Sox owner John Henry. “It’s important to let the guys know that we respect and support their individual decisions.”Still, it is hard to miss the symbolism that the team split apart after Wednesday night’s game and players took different flights home to Boston, said Dianne Pinderhughes, a professor of political science and Africana studies at the University of Notre Dame, who focuses on race, gender and politics.“It’s an unintended consequence in the way in which the team is dividing,” she said. “It leads to sensitive outcomes.”In the clubhouse Wednesday, some players sat at their lockers absorbed on their cellphones and others huddled around a television to watch another game.At times, players drifted into small groups. Four white players began a card game, while Vázquez and Eduardo Rodriguez, a Venezuelan native who also will not visit the White House, conversed in Spanish.Though he declined to discuss his decision, Vázquez, like Cora, expressed pain over the slow recovery of Puerto Rico, where he said some of his relatives lost power and had the roofs blown of their homes. Members of the team, including white and Latino players, visited the U.S. territory last year, once on a relief mission to deliver supplies and again after the World Series for a parade in Cora’s honor.Asked whether his decision would affect how he is viewed by the public, Vázquez responded: “It’s tough . . . The kids see us every day on the TV no mater what happens, if I go or not. It’s nothing personal. I’m ‘bueno’ in my home, with Puerto Rico.”“We need help to get back to the beautiful Puerto Rico we had before,” he said. “That’s all we ask.”Across the room, Mitch Moreland, a first baseman from Amory, Miss., arrived at his locker sporting American flag shorts — a gift, he said, from teammate Andrew Benintendi, of Cincinnati. Moreland called the White House visit “very special.”“Everybody’s got their choice. We respect each other,” Moreland said. Of his own decision, he offered a patriotic response: “I was born in America, and I’m probably going to be buried here, so I’m excited about the opportunity.”Pitcher David Price of Murfreesboro, Tenn., was digging into a newspaper crossword puzzle in front of his locker. Price, who is black, had caused an uproar last week when he retweeted to his 1.8 million followers a Boston sportswriter’s observation that the racial divide on the team means only the “white Sox” were visiting the White House. Price later clarified that he found the tweet insensitive and was seeking to admonish the writer.Of the fraught politics, Price said: “That’s just the moment we’re in.” But he said he respected those teammates who are going: “Absolutely. That’s America — right? Right?”Price declined to explain his decision and said he was not monitoring public reaction. But he appeared acutely aware of the nuances of the debate. Overhearing a reporter tell another player the Golden State Warriors had turned down a visit with Trump, Price felt compelled to interject.“The invitation got rescinded,” he said with emphasis. “Make sure you say that.”
resident Trump has not shied away from proposing harsh strategies to keep migrants out. He was willing to support a shutdown of the government to have U.S. taxpayers pay for a wall between the United States and Mexico. Trump has complained that the troops at the border aren’t allowed to be as “rough” as he would like. And he has vowed to close the border altogether, thus threatening multiple economies, to curtail both illegal and legal immigration.At a rally Wednesday, he seemed to condone straight-up violence to deal with “the border crisis.”The Washington Post’s Antonia Noori Farzan wrote:A roar rose from the crowd of thousands of Trump supporters in Panama City Beach on Wednesday night, as President Trump noted yet again that Border Patrol agents can’t use weapons to deter migrants. “How do you stop these people?” he asked.“Shoot them!” someone yelled from the crowd, according to reporters on the scene and attendees.The audience cheered. Supporters seated behind Trump and clad in white baseball caps bearing the letters “USA” laughed and applauded.“That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement,” Trump replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Only in the Panhandle.”Trump’s support for violence against those hoping to immigrate to the United States isn’t an isolated incident.Last year, Trump defended U.S. agents using tear gas against Central American migrants, including children, at the border crossing in San Ysidro, a neighborhood in San Diego. And while discussing gang violence believed to be tied to illegal immigration, Trump encouraged police officers to be violent with those they suspect of committing a crime.He said:“When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”Many found the remark alarming, given that some of the migrants arriving at the U.S. border were fleeing the type of violence Trump and his supporters joked about.Trump’s language echoes the violence called for by some of his supporters. According to an April police report, a former member of a New Mexico militia group told police that fellow members had made “terroristic threats.” While reflecting on some migrants the group had been monitoring, a militia member said, according to the Young Turks:“Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them? We have to go back to Hitler days and put them all in a gas chamber.”And after Trump’s election where he often painted immigrants as threats to American life, researchers found that bullying in middle schools was up 18 percent in Republican districts, compared with Democratic districts, according to the Hechinger Report, and was especially directed to immigrants. And nearly 1 in 5 middle school students in Republican regions reported being bullied.A Defense Department report released documents to Newsweek claiming that:“Estimated 200 unregulated armed militia members currently operating along the southwest border. Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments. They operate under the guise of citizen patrols supporting CBP [Customs and Border Protection] primarily between POEs [Points of Entry]."While not all Trump supporters have taken this approach, the president has done nothing to discourage those who back him from entertaining these ideas. At worst, his jovial remarks could lead some to conclude that he thinks these responses are socially acceptable.Taking a hard line to immigration has been a central component of Trump’s politics since he launched his presidential campaign and was attractive to those who were unsatisfied with existing approaches to immigration. It is one of the main issues that led voters to support him over other conservatives who also had tough approaches.The boundaries of acceptable treatment have not always been clear and, some would argue, are now nonexistent. And that appears to be the way that Trump and some of his most loyal supporters like it when it comes to immigration.#Resist
With Ramadan underway, the Diyanet Mosque of New Haven was a daily gathering place for Muslims to be among friends and family as they broke their fast.But on Sunday, worshipers received devastating news: A fire had broken out just before 4 p.m., rendering the mosque uninhabitable.And on Monday, New Haven officials delivered another blow: They announced that they believed that the fire had been set intentionally.“We’re just kind of shocked,” said Haydar Elevli, the president of the Connecticut branch of the Turkish-American Religious Foundation, which owns the mosque. “Everybody’s sad right now.”The specific motive for the arson was unclear. There have been no arrests and the investigation is continuing, the authorities said.Nobody was hurt in the blaze, and Mr. Elevli said in an interview on Monday night that the damage was “not too bad.” The New Haven Fire Department did not respond to further requests for comment.At a news conference earlier Monday, while standing in front of the charred three-story building, Chief John Alston of the Fire Department said federal law enforcement officials were helping with the investigation into the arson.“I found an attack like this is especially hurtful and hateful when you attack an institution for what people believe,” Gov. Ned Lamont said at the news conference.The arson came at a time when places of worship have been frequent targets.In March, 51 people were killed in attacks at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the suspect published a hate-filled manifesto, the authorities said. A week later, someone set a fire outside an Islamic Center mosque in Escondido, Calif., and anti-Muslim graffiti referring to the New Zealand attacks was found, officials said.Editors’ PicksThe Best Green Salad in the WorldOlivia Wilde, Director: ‘Too Old to Play Dumb Anymore’From ‘Smallville’ to a Sex Cult: The Fall of the Actress Allison MackAlso that month, the Muhammad Islamic Center of Greater Hartford received a phone call from someone who threatened to burn it down, the authorities said. The person used racial slurs in the call, according to an imam at the center.In April, three predominantly black churches were set on fire in Louisiana, and a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, Calif., during a service on the last day of Passover. The authorities were investigating whether the suspect in the shooting was the author of an anti-Semitic manifesto, in which the writer also claimed responsibility for the mosque fire in Escondido.“Given recent attacks on houses of worship in this country and around the world, it is incumbent on law enforcement authorities to investigate the possibility of a bias motive for this arson,” Tark Aouadi, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Connecticut said in a statement about the New Haven fire.Mr. Elevli said he had not heard of any threats targeting the mosque or its members before the fire. He said it had not crossed his mind that the mosque could have been targeted.“This comes from nowhere,” he said. “It’s terrible for everybody.”The mosque, at 531 Middletown Avenue, near Foxon Boulevard, has classrooms and apartments and opened in 2010, Mr. Elevli said. The mosque was under construction, and the building was largely empty when the fire occurred.The mosque’s parent organization, the Diyanet Center of America, is a Maryland-based nonprofit that provides “religious, social and educational services to Turkish immigrants and Muslims,” according to the organization’s website.Over the years, the New Haven mosque had become a place for families to gather, with educational programs for children on the weekends.Sign Up for Summer in the CityThe best things to do in N.Y.C. during the hottest season of the year. This limited-edition newsletter will launch before Memorial Day and run through Labor Day.SIGN UPMr. Elevli said he got a call Sunday afternoon from an imam saying that the mosque was on fire. He said a visiting imam from Turkey was inside reading a book when he walked outside and noticed the building was on fire.“I dropped everything and ran there,” Mr. Elevli said.The roads close to the building were blocked, but he parked his car and walked closer to the building in heavy rain. He said many bystanders were crying.Mr. Elevli said he was not sure when people will be able to re-enter the building. It will depend in part on the criminal investigation and a review of the damage for insurance purposes, he said. He is considering whether to erect a tent for people to gather under during Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar.Mr. Elevli said he had received numerous calls from nearby religious groups offering to help.“Thank God all the churches and synagogues are calling us, willing to help, willing to share their space,” he said.
For months, a Democratic senator has been asking Trump judicial nominees what appears to be a straightforward question: Was Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that ended legalized school segregation, properly decided?Legal scholars across the ideological spectrum say the answer is clearly yes. Still, more than two dozen nominees have declined to answer the question at a time when many schools remain segregated by race.The standoff has come to resemble a serious game of chicken. If the nominees say Brown was correctly decided, are they obligated to opine on more controversial precedents, in particular Roe v. Wade, which established a woman’s right to abortion? Some nominees say the Democratic senators are not content with statements calling segregation immoral.The other side says the refusal to engage undermines the national consensus around equal protection under the law that underlies Brown.That decision, announced 65 years ago Friday, is widely seen as one of the Supreme Court’s greatest moments, with the court’s unanimity sending a powerful message to a segregated nation.The matter was especially pronounced in the nomination of Wendy Vitter, who was confirmed Thursday as a federal district judge in Louisiana without the vote of a single Democratic senator.“I don’t mean to be coy, but I think I get into a difficult, difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisions — which are correctly decided and which I may disagree with,” Vitter said during her confirmation hearing. “If I start commenting on, ‘I agree with this case,’ or ‘don’t agree with this case,’ I think we get into a slippery slope.”“I was stunned by her answer,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who posed the question, said this week on the Senate floor. “Brown is woven into the fabric of our nation. How could anyone suggest disagreeing with Brown, as she did?”Blumenthal, who regularly asks Trump district and circuit court nominees about Brown, said he assumes they are acting on orders from the White House not to give an opinion about any case on the books.A Justice Department spokesman replied: “Nominees are not instructed on how to answer any question.”Some conservatives say judicial nominees are right to avoid the question, suspecting that Democrats are trying to force nominees down a politically dangerous path.“If they say yes, the next question is, what do you think of Roe v. Wade?” said John O. McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University’s law school. Indeed, Blumenthal typically asks about a variety of controversial cases along with Brown.“Brown is widely regarded as a landmark decision implementing the equal protection guarantee. I think the left is playing games with it precisely because it does have this stature,” said Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank.Civil rights activists are appalled by the nominees’ refusal to answer the question, saying their reluctance to engage on bedrock civil rights law undermines national consensus that has developed against school segregation.The NAACP opposed Vitter and other nominees who refuse to affirm Brown. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights sent a letter to senators urging them to vote no on the 27 nominees it counts who have declined to answer the question. The group identified four nominees who endorsed the decision.“The Brown decision ended legalized apartheid in America’s school system, and it set the stage for African-American integration into all facets of American life,” wrote Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference.Brown v. Board of Education had a sweeping effect on U.S. schools, as the system of school segregation was dismantled and black and white students in some cities were bused to schools under court orders to achieve integration. The decision ushered in significantly more racial integration in other aspects of American life, too.Now, some of that progress has been reversed. The busing that resulted from the decision was widely unpopular in some cities and triggered significant white flight to the suburbs. A study by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles finds that progress made in educating black children with white children eroded after courts released school systems from desegregation orders.The Supreme Court has been torn over the proper interpretation of Brown: whether it is a mandate for colorblind decision-making or a tool for integrating schools.In considering cases from Seattle and Louisville in 2007, the court voted 5 to 4 to invalidate programs that used race as a factor in assigning students to schools. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that classifying children by race for desegregation was constitutionally no different from classification by race for segregation.“Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin,” Roberts wrote. “The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again — even for very different reasons.”He then delivered one of his most memorable lines in his tenure as chief justice: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”If well-known, it was not universally well-received. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined the majority to invalidate the specific plans, but said he could not go along with Roberts’s broader pronouncements. “Fifty years of experience since Brown v. Board of Education should teach us that the problem before us defies so easy a solution,” Kennedy wrote.The court’s liberals said that Roberts’s reading stood the intent of Brown on its head and that its work was not done.“The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in his dissent. “To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown.”Justice John Paul Stevens declared: “The chief justice rewrites the history of one of this court’s most important decisions.”In a recent interview, Stevens repeated what he wrote in his dissent: that no member of the Supreme Court he joined in 1975 would have agreed with Roberts.But during his own confirmation hearing in 2005, Roberts did not hesitate to endorse Brown. And he has repeatedly praised the “genius” of the spare decision that could be embraced unanimously by the court.Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, at his confirmation hearing, called the decision “inspirational” and the “single greatest moment in Supreme Court history,” although Justice Neil M. Gorsuch resisted efforts during his confirmation hearing to pin him down on any Supreme Court precedents.Beyond confirmation questioning, Brown has proven to be a tricky question in the past for conservative jurists. That’s especially so for “originalists” such as the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who argue that the Constitution should be interpreted based on how its words and amendments were understood at the time they were enacted.It is difficult to argue under an originalist approach that the promise of equal protection in the 14th Amendment required desegregation because it was adopted during a time of strict, state-sponsored segregation.Scalia said he would have voted in dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision that upheld racial segregation and the policy of “separate but equal,” but he hated the question.“Waving the bloody shirt of Brown again!” was Scalia’s common response when asked about it.
LONDON — Russians who were linked to interference in the 2016 U.S. election discussed ambitious plans to stoke unrest and even violence inside the U.S. as recently as 2018, according to documents reviewed by NBC News.The documents — communications between associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked oligarch indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for previous influence operations against the U.S. — laid out a new plot to manipulate and radicalize African Americans. The plans show that Prigozhin’s circle has sought to exploit racial tensions well beyond Russia’s social media and misinformation efforts tied to the 2016 election.The documents were obtained through the Dossier Center, a London-based investigative project funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. NBC News has not independently verified the materials, but forensic analysis by the Dossier Center appeared to substantiate the communications.One document said that President Donald Trump’s election had “deepened conflicts in American society” and suggested that, if successful, the influence project would “undermine the country’s territorial integrity and military and economic potential.”The revelations come as U.S. intelligence agencies have warned of probable Russian meddling in the 2020 election.The documents contained proposals for several ways to further exacerbate racial discord in the future, including a suggestion to recruit African Americans and transport them to camps in Africa “for combat prep and training in sabotage.” Those recruits would then be sent back to America to foment violence and work to establish a pan-African state in the South, particularly in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.There is no indication that the plan — which is light on details — was ever put into action, but it offers a fresh example of the mindset around Russian efforts to sow discord in the U.S.The blueprint, entitled “Development Strategy of a Pan-African State on U.S. Territory,” floated the idea of enlisting poor, formerly incarcerated African Americans “who have experience in organized crime groups” as well as members of “radical black movements for participation in civil disobedience actions.”The goal was to “destabilize the internal situation in the U.S.”Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI and an NBC News contributor, who reviewed the documents, said that they offer a warning to the U.S.“Regardless of whether or not these plans are an amateurish thought experiment, the fact that these people are talking about doing this should disturb Americans of all stripes,” Figliuzzi said.“The unfortunate reality is that we’re seeing an adversary that will consider virtually anything to get what it wants, and if it means violence or splitting America along racial lines or eroding our trust in institutions, they’ll do it.”Some of the documents appear to have been sent by Dzheykhun “Jay” Aslanov, an employee of the Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based troll farm that played a key role in the 2016 Russian meddling campaign. Aslanov was one of 13 Russians indicted by Mueller in February 2018 for his role with the IRA.The plan was shared with Mikhail Potepkin, a Russian businessman, who then circulated it more widely, according to communications reviewed by NBC News.Both Aslanov and Potepkin have been linked to Prigozhin, a Russian catering magnate often described as “Putin’s chef.” Prigozhin was also indicted by Mueller for funding the IRA. Widely perceived as a Kremlin operative, he has been connected to a shadowy mercenary outfit known as the Wagner Group, whose guns-for-hire are reported to have been involved in Russian military operations in Syria and Eastern Ukraine, according to U.S. military officials.The Mueller report exposed how Russian trolls, employed by associates of Prigozhin, deliberately inflamed racial tensions by spreading false and incendiary stories to African Americans via social media. Among the objectives was to suppress black turnout in the 2016 U.S. election.Another of the newly obtained documents is a map of the U.S. overlaid with information about African American population size in seven southern states. Also included are the number of subscribers to websites and social media accounts that were set up by Russian trolls at the IRA to spread race-baiting rhetoric, the latter of which were later removed by the social media companies.Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., who was briefed on the documents, said they highlight how ongoing racial issues in the U.S. can be used in misinformation efforts.“Russia understands how critical the African American vote is to determining the outcome of elections,” said Demings, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. “And because we have not effectively dealt with racism as a country ourselves, I believe we've made ourselves vulnerable to foreign powers like Russia to continue to try to undermine.”The documents also discuss how to expand Russia’s clout on the African continent and win business there, from arms sales to mining contracts. They outline propaganda efforts to target Africans and stir up negative opinions about Europe and the U.S.Cooking up elaborate interference schemes is standard practice within Prigozhin’s circle, according to Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russian intelligence and author of “The Red Web,” a book on Russian information warfare.“This is typical of the way Prigozhin and his team operate,” Soldatov said. “They come up with pitches, some of them very ambitious. They discuss many possible ideas and then send the pitches to the Kremlin to be authorized or rejected. It’s their modus operandi.”The idea of African American statehood has an intellectual precedent in Russia. During the early 20th century, communists in America proposed forming a “black-belt nation” in the South. Some party members traveled to the Soviet Union for training.“Even though these kinds of initiatives from the Russians aren’t new to us, what is new is the rapidity with which they can get this message out on social media and saturate the American consumer with these kinds of thoughts,” said Figliuzzi, the former FBI official. “That puts the Russian initiative on steroids and should scare all of us.”
Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley — a man who answers the question "What if a soft-boiled egg could feel hate?" — is at it again. The Ocala lawmaker is famous for two things: writing Florida's Stand Your Ground law and defending the Confederate States of America from critics. And, wouldn't you know it, during an appearance Sunday on Miami's NPR station, WLRN, Baxley said some more gobsmackingly racist nonsense.Baxley went on WLRN to talk about abortion, since Georgia, Alabama, and other states recently passed nightmarish anti-abortion restrictions and Baxley himself had sponsored a similar anti-choice bill this year that died before becoming law. But Baxley, for some bizarre and entirely in-character reason, justified his anti-abortion stance by echoing straight-up white-supremacist talking points about Western European birthrates.WLRN's recap states:“When you get a birth rate less than 2 percent, that society is disappearing,” he said of Western Europe. “And it’s being replaced by folks that come behind them and immigrate, don’t wish to assimilate into that society and they do believe in having children. So you see that there are long range impacts to your society when the answer is to exterminate.”As Orlando Weekly's Colin Wolf noted yesterday, this is factual nonsense in addition to being racist nonsense. Abortion rates don't have any correlation with birth rates — birth rates in the United States are dropping, sure, but they are dropping while rates of abortion are also falling.But the bigger issue here is the racism. A key component of white-supremacist ideology is the notion that the white, Western European "race" will ultimately be "replaced" by immigrants of color who will take over and essentially exterminate white people. White nationalists refer to this as "replacement theory" or "white genocide."This is basically the defining creed linking most white supremacists — everyone from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to the 2017 neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia, to this year's mass murderer in New Zealand echoed a version of it. But the idea is outright nonsense — it's a paranoid theory popularized by a racist French philosopher who is demonstrably terrified of immigrants. And, moreover, the basic precepts of "Western culture" or "Judeo-Christian values" are recent historical inventions that promote the false idea that white Christian Europeans solely created things such as democracy, rational inquiry, and modern science. Iowa Rep. Steve King, who is essentially an outright white nationalist, has been lambasted for repeating many of the same points.It's all hogwash, which is why a rube like Baxley seems to have fallen for it. Baxley simply does not like facts or history — he's the descendant of Confederate soldiers and infamously continues defending the Confederacy as something that should be honored rather than the racist, traitorous slave society it was. Mere days after a white supremacist killed a woman at the 2017 Charlottesville rally, Baxley refused to cancel a speech he was scheduled to give to a local pro-Confederate group.In addition to being racist, Baxley also got pretty misogynistic in his interview. He told WLRN he believes fetuses “are independent lives separate from the mother who’s carrying the child," an idea as sexist as it is scientifically stupid.
Harriet Tubman — former slave, abolitionist, “conductor” on the Underground Railroad — will not become the face of the $20 bill until after President Trump leaves office, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday.Plans to unveil the Tubman bill in 2020, an Obama administration initiative, would be postponed until at least 2026, Mr. Mnuchin said, and the bill itself would not likely be in circulation until 2028.Until then, bills with former President Andrew Jackson’s face will continue to pour out of A.T.M.s and fill Americans’ wallets.Mr. Mnuchin, concerned that the president might create an uproar by canceling the new bill altogether, was eager to delay its redesign until Mr. Trump was out of office, some senior Treasury Department officials have said. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Mr. Trump criticized the Obama administration’s plans for the bill.That April, Mr. Trump called the change “pure political correctness” and suggested that Tubman, whom he praised, could be added to a far less common denomination, like the $2 bill. “Andrew Jackson had a great history, and I think it’s very rough when you take somebody off the bill,” Mr. Trump said at the time.Mr. Trump has frequently described Jackson, whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office, as a populist hero who reminds him of himself. Two months into his presidency, Mr. Trump stopped to lay a wreath at Jackson’s tomb at the Hermitage, his plantation in Nashville. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Mr. Trump told a crowd gathered there. “Does that sound familiar?”The delay comes three years after Mr. Mnuchin’s predecessor, Jacob J. Lew, announced plans for a sweeping and symbolic redrawing of the currency that would see Tubman replace the slaveholding Jackson on the face of the note.Treasury Department officials did not say whether Mr. Trump had a hand in the decision, and Mr. Mnuchin would not say whether he himself believes that Tubman should be on the bill’s face. “I’ve made no decision as it relates to that,” Mr. Mnuchin said Wednesday at a congressional hearing in response to a question from Representative Ayanna S. Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts.Editors’ PicksEmma Thompson Gets a Shock at 60How Much Alcohol Can You Drink Safely?How ‘The View’ Became the Most Important Political TV Show in AmericaDuring the hearing, Mr. Mnuchin said that he was now focused on enhancing the anti-counterfeiting security features of the currency, focusing first on the $10 and $50 bills. Designing new imagery is on the back burner.“It is my responsibility now to focus on what is the issue of counterfeiting and the security features,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “The ultimate decision on the redesign will most likely be another secretary down the road.”Replacing Jackson with Tubman was both filled with symbolism and marred by controversy.Tubman was born into slavery, escaped and then returned to the South, where she led other slaves to freedom. She was a Union scout during the Civil War and later advocated women’s voting rights. Jackson orchestrated the removal of Native Americans from lands to the east of the Mississippi River and sent them marching west on the so-called Trail of Tears.In 2017, speculation began that Mr. Trump might scrap Mr. Lew’s plan for the $20 bill when mentions of it were scrubbed from the Treasury Department’s website during a redesign.Then, that August, Mr. Mnuchin made clear that Tubman’s future on the bill was in doubt.“People have been on the bills for a long period of time,” he told CNBC. “This is something we’ll consider. Right now, we’ve got a lot more important issues to focus on.”Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, recently introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act and called on the Treasury Department to offer clarity on the status of the $20 bill. The legislation, if passed, would direct the department to place the likeness of Tubman on $20 Federal Reserve notes printed after Dec. 31, 2020.“There is no excuse for the administration’s failure to make this redesign a priority,” Ms. Shaheen said. “Sadly, this delay sends an unmistakable message to women and girls, and communities of color, who were promised they’d see Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.”Supporters of the tribute act in the House — including Representatives Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, and John Katko, Republican of New York — also expressed frustration with the Trump administration over the delay.“The administration’s decision to drag their feet and delay the redesign of the $20 until 2028 is unacceptable,” Mr. Cummings said in a statement. “Our currency must reflect the important role women, and especially women of color, have played in our nation’s history.”Former Obama administration officials have been quiet about Tubman during the past two years, hopeful that Mr. Trump would forget about the plan and allow it to proceed.Mr. Lew, through a spokeswoman, had no comment on Wednesday. But Gene Sperling, the former director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, assailed Mr. Mnuchin on Twitter for embracing Mr. Trump’s divisiveness.“Today Mnuchin pathetically announces that Tubman on $20 will be delayed till 2028 — meaning their goal is never,” he tweeted.Women have appeared on United States currency a handful of times, often on seldom-used $1 coins. In the 19th century, Pocahontas and Martha Washington were the first women to make it onto American currency — and the last to make it onto paper.Pocahontas appeared among a group of men on the $10 bill and the $20 bill in the late 19th century. Washington was on $1 silver certificates in 1886, 1891 and 1896.The suffragist Susan B. Anthony was the first woman to appear on an American coin: a dollar produced from 1979-81 and again, briefly, in 1999. But originally, the Treasury Department planned to depict the allegorical Lady Liberty. It was not until legislators and activists objected that the department agreed to honor a real-life woman.In 2015, Mr. Lew started a 10-month process to develop a plan that was initially intended to honor a female historical figure on the $10 bill, replacing Alexander Hamilton. After much controversy, consternation and public debate — in part because of the popularity of the musical “Hamilton,” which is based on the secretary’s life — Mr. Lew changed course and instead made plans for a vignette of suffragists to be put on the back of the $10 and for Tubman to become the face of the $20 bill.On Wednesday, activists from the group Women on 20s, which helped push Tubman to the prominence of the $20 bill, were disappointed but hopeful that the delay would avoid meddling from Mr. Trump.“At Women On 20s, we’re not surprised that Secretary Mnuchin may be kicking the design reveal of the $20 bill to sometime beyond the potential interference of a Trump presidency,” the group said in a statement calling on Congress to pass legislation to add Tubman to the currency. “As we’ve been saying for years, symbols do matter.”
https://tubmanstamp.com/I think it would be difficult to make payment with, the cashier might reject it. But it works in machines that accept money. I go through self check out at my grocery stores all the time. But I normally use my c.c.
Franklin and Jessica Richardson had planned for a relaxing Memorial Day weekend. They would spend Sunday picnicking on the sandy shores of Oktibbeha County Lake, a popular fishing destination on the outskirts of Starkville, Miss., and maybe even rent a cabin for the night.Instead, within minutes of their arrival, the young black couple were facing down a white campground manager who pulled out a gun and told them to leave.A spokesman for Kampgrounds of America, a chain that oversees hundreds of commercial campgrounds nationwide, told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the property manager for the Starkville location had been fired. But for the Richardsons, the experience was made all the more harrowing — and somewhat ironic — by the fact that Franklin, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, had recently returned from a nine-month deployment in the Middle East, according to WCBI.“It’s kind of crazy,” he told the station. “You go over there and don’t have a gun pointed at you, and you come back home and the first thing that happens is you have a gun pointed at you.”The incident appears to have stemmed from confusion over whether the picnic spots by the lakefront were public or private property. To Jessica Richardson, who documented a snippet of the confrontation in a 39-second video that had been viewed more than 500,000 times on Facebook as of early Wednesday, the manager’s response proved that racism was “alive and well.”“You can feel the intent behind it,” she told WCBI. “I felt it. I felt the heat from it. I felt it in her eyes. I knew exactly what it was.”After waking up to beautiful weather on Sunday, the couple researched lakes where they could have a picnic with their 2-year-old dog, she wrote on Facebook. They settled on Oktibbeha County Lake, which is located roughly 10 miles from Starkville, the home of Mississippi State University.Less than five minutes after they arrived, Richardson wrote, “a truck pulls up and a white lady screams at us.”The woman, who identified herself as the property manager, jumped out of the black Dodge Ram and kept one finger on the trigger as she pointed a gun at them, Richardson told WCBI.“She was just like, ‘Get, get, you don’t belong here, you don’t belong here, you don’t belong here,'” Richardson said.Richardson pulled out her cellphone and began filming. In the video that she posted to Facebook on Sunday afternoon, a woman with short white hair and a yellow Kampgrounds of America T-shirt can be seen approaching the couple with her gun drawn and pointed at the ground.“This lady literally just pulled a gun because we’re out here and didn’t have reservations, for a lake that we didn’t even know we had to have reservations for,” Richardson narrates as the woman walks closer, a stern expression pressed on her face. “The only thing you had to do was tell us.”The woman can be heard telling the couple that they should have checked in with the campground’s office.“We didn’t know,” Richardson said in the video. “The only thing you had to tell us was to leave, we would have left. You did not have to pull a gun.”The woman tucked the gun back into the pocket of her denim shorts.“Well, I’m just telling you, you need to leave because it’s under private ownership,” the property manager replied. “Y’all just can’t be out here. KOA won’t let you.”The couple left, Richardson wrote. On their way out, they stopped by the campground’s office. There, they met another property manager, who happened to be the woman’s husband. Confusingly, he contradicted what his wife had told them.“I get out and start talking to him,” Franklin Richardson told WCBI. “The first thing he says is, ‘Oh, you don’t need a reservation for the lake.’ Then, she pulls up flying, hops out of the car, then proceeded to yell at my wife, ‘Get in the car, you need to get back in the car,’ just cussing her out and she’s not even saying anything.”In a statement shared with The Post, Kampgrounds of America spokesman Mike Gast said that the company “does not condone the use of a firearm in any manner on our properties or those owned and operated by our franchisees.”“The employee involved in the incident has been relieved of her duties at the Starkville KOA,” he added.It’s unclear whether the Richardsons were inadvertently trespassing when the incident took place. Gast said that the couple had been “seeking to access a lake via the campground’s private property.” But Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors President Orlando Trainer told the Commercial Dispatch that he wasn’t sure if the area where they were picnicking would actually be considered private property, because the KOA in Starkville is located on land that belongs to the local school district.The lake itself is public, and online reviews suggest the Richardsons aren’t the first to be confused: Fishermen and photographers have previously reported that the campground’s manager screamed at them for trespassing on private property when they showed up without a reservation.The incident is the latest to call attention to the way that black people engaging in everyday activities are treated with suspicion, resulting in aggressive questioning or phone calls to the police. Parks and outdoor recreation areas, in particular, have a long history of racial discrimination: In the early 20th century, the administrators of national parks discouraged African Americans from visiting, and camping facilities were strictly segregated. Visitors to those parks remain predominantly white, despite the efforts of groups that aim to encourage more people of color to explore the outdoors.Researchers have found that parks are still widely perceived as places where African Americans will face unwelcoming, or downright hostile, treatment. The experience that the Richardsons described would seem to confirm that. To Jessica, the most shocking part of Sunday’s confrontation was hearing the campground manager say, “Get, get” to her and her husband, making her feel that they were being treated like animals.“You say ‘Get, get’ to a stray dog that’s on your porch,” she told WCBI. “That ‘Get, get’ got to me more than ‘You don’t belong here.’ ”