Where there’s smoke, there may be fire … or conspiracy theories. At least there were after a massive fire at a Texas chicken farm resurfaced a long-running notion that anonymous forces are destroying farms and food production facilities to limit the food supply.
“Here we go again,” read the sticker text on a Feb. 21 Instagram video that showed a chicken farm up in flames. “Chicken farm in Texas with 12 million chickens destroyed by fire.”
The post’s caption said, “Over the past two years, someone has destroyed hundreds of chicken, beef, egg, and dairy production facilities. I don’t know who is doing it but it is far from random. Is one reason that food is getting much more expensive in the US.”
The caption named a number of possible villains, from “big pharma companies wanting to make you sick” to “weird globalist climate people.”
The video came from a Feb. 17 Instagram post from MicstagesUK, a British news and entertainment website. We found numerous social media posts sharing the video or making similar claims.
PolitiFact has debunked multiple similar claims since 2022 and found that authorities did not deem most fires suspicious; most of the fires were likely accidental, caused by electrical or mechanical failures.
A Jan. 29 fire at Feather Crest Farms outside of Bryan, Texas, destroyed two chicken houses, including one full of chickens, news outlets reported. As with previous fires we’ve investigated, there was nothing intentional about the fire, authorities said.
(Instagram screenshot)
Authorities have not yet determined the chicken farm fire’s cause, but the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office determined it was a “noncriminal accident,” according to news reports.
Deputy Chris Searles told KBTX-TV that, “Somebody didn’t throw a match into the pile or anything. Sometimes it’s just we cannot figure out exactly what happened.”
Sam Krouse, CEO of MPS Egg Farms, which owns Feather Crest Farms, confirmed to PolitiFact in an email that authorities determined the fire was accidental, and said the cause is still under investigation.
Krouse said the company is not disclosing the number of chickens killed, “but it is far less than 12 million.”
That number “reflects our total number of laying hens nationwide, not the number in the one barn impacted by the fire,” he said.
Although how many chickens died in the fire is unclear, similar fires in recent years have killed tens of thousands of chickens. A 2022 fire that destroyed one chicken house at a Lebanon, Pennsylvania, farm killed about 250,000 chickens. A 2023 fire in a Bozrah, Connecticut, chicken coop killed about 100,000 chickens.
Fires at chicken farms and food processing plants are common. A 2022 National Fire Protection Association report found that from 2014 to 2018, there were about 930 structure fires annually at livestock or poultry storage facilities, which includes barns, stockyards and animal pens. Heating equipment or electrical equipment malfunctions were those fires’ leading causes, the report said.
Birgitte Messerschmidt, the association’s research director, told PolitiFact in 2022 that fires at food production sites are “nothing out of the ordinary.”
Animal Welfare Institute data shows that in 2023, more than 480,000 animals were killed in barn fires. That total includes about 300,000 chickens killed in fires at farms in Connecticut and Delaware. In 2020, 1.6 million animals died in barn fires, the institute said.
So far this year, more than 31,000 farm animals have died in fires, the institute said. Its data counted 10,000 chickens killed in the Texas fire but noted that the number is believed to be much higher.
The institute’s 2022 report on barn fires said “improper use of or malfunctioning heating devices and other electrical malfunctions” were suspected or determined to be what caused most of the fires.
Our ruling
An Instagram post claimed a Texas farm fire that killed 12 million chickens was part of a larger conspiracy to attack the nation’s food supply. The number of chickens killed, although undisclosed, was far fewer, said the farm’s CEO. And authorities have ruled the fire a “noncriminal accident.”
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Stepping into the batter’s box Monday afternoon for the first time with the San Francisco Giants, Jorge Soler cocked the two-toned Marucci bat over his right shoulder and, on the very first pitch he saw, unloaded with a fury.
The black barrel of 34-inch, 31.5-ounce piece of wood flew through strike zone. But all it connected with was air.
“That wasn’t the idea,” Soler, cracking a smile, said through Spanish-language interpreter Erwin Higueros. “But the pitcher threw a fastball right down the middle and the bat just slipped out of my hands.”
The big slugger came out swinging in his Giants debut, but the preview of what’s to come, they hope, was what followed.
A few pitches later, Soler cracked a line-drive single into left field, recording a hit in his first exhibition at-bat with his new team. And when he stepped to the plate for his next at-bat, in the third inning, Wilmer Flores was standing on third base in a prime scoring opportunity for the club’s new RBI man.
Soler got another fastball — 98 mph — and didn’t miss this time, ripping a ground ball up the middle that snuck through the defense playing on the cut of the infield grass. Flores, who helped recruit Soler to San Francisco, trotted home.
It was the first time in three spring exhibitions the Giants had manufactured a run besides the four-spot they put up when down to their final out in the Cactus League opener.
The offense would eventually awaken, but the Giants (0-2-1) were left still searching for their first win of the exhibition schedule, falling to the Angels, 11-9.
“He’s a run producer,” said manager Bob Melvin. “Our situational hitting has not been good, and he goes up there with an approach not to just hit the ball out of the ballpark. … You watch him take batting practice. It’s not all about hitting homers. He knows how to get himself ready.”
A rude welcome
Potentially the Giants’ next pitching prospect to graduate to the majors, Mason Black got the nod in their third exhibition of the spring.
Immediately, Ehire Adrianza welcomed him to the big leagues.
The Angels shortstop unloaded on the first pitch out of Black’s hand, placing it on the berm beyond the left-field wall.
“It happens,” Black said. “I was just thinking, ‘First pitch, let’s just throw a fastball.’ It ended up middle-middle, and he kind of made me pay for it.”
The 24-year-old right-hander settled in for his second inning, retiring the side in order, with a little help from Logan Webb.
The staff ace, who’s growing into a clubhouse leader, approached Black on the bench between innings.
“He just say, ‘Hey, go out there and relax. You have more time than you think. Use all the time you need,’ ” Black recalled. “That kind of settled me down. I think that really helped me out. … I would say the first inning I wasn’t executing at as high of a level as I would have liked, but I was happy with the bounceback in the second inning. It’s a place to build on for the future.”
Luciano ‘few more days’ away
After being scratched from their spring opener, rookie shortstop Marco Luciano was supposed to make his debut Monday.
But the 22-year-old top prospect was again absent from the lineup, replaced by Tyler Fitzgerald, as he battles a nagging hamstring.
Melvin said that Luciano will need “a few more days” before he gets into game action. He attempted to run on it Sunday, “and it still wasn’t there,” Melvin said.
Potentially of more interest, on the day they brought veteran shortstop Nick Ahmed into camp, was Luciano getting in pregame work at second base.
“Shortstop’s his position,” Melvin reaffirmed afterward. “Guys tend to get different looks in the middle of the infield, regardless.”
MISSINGPERSONS: Hundreds of Chicago residents joined KOCO organizers at the 6th annual We Walk For Her march. June 7th, 2023. Photo by Sebastin Hidalgo for City Bureau Credit: Photo by Sebastin Hidalgo for City Bureau
by Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Invisible Institute, and Sarah Conway, City Bureau
This story is part two of Chicago Missing Persons, a two-year investigation by City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organizations. into how Chicago police handle missing person cases reveals the disproportionate impact on Black women and girls, how police have mistreated family members or delayed cases, and how poor police data is making the problem harder to solve.
For this investigation, City Bureau and the Invisible Institute requested the Chicago Police Department’s missing person reports from 2000 to 2021, analyzed them, and interviewed more than 40 sources. Police missing persons data was cross referenced with underlying investigative documents, Chicago Police Department homicide data, medical examiner death data, and news reports.
The analysis shows that of the approximately 340,000 cases in this time period, Black children make up 57% of cases. Black girls between the ages of 10 and 20 make up nearly one-third of all missing person cases in the city, according to police data, despite comprising only 2% of the city population as of 2020. This racial disparity has remained relatively constant over the past two decades, even as cases overall have fallen. (Since 2000, missing person cases have fallen by about 50%, and experts are unsure why.)
Hispanic people make up 15% of all cases, but experts believe this figure is underreported due to immigration enforcement concerns.
Despite this, media attention for white victims is still far more pervasive — so much so that “missing white woman syndrome” has become part of our lexicon. “A lot of families, they said, ‘Hey, we didn’t get any kind of attention. Nobody cared about my missing family members,’” says Damon Lamar Reed, a local artist who co-runs the Still Searching Project, a series of portraits of missing Black women and girls, with his wife, Nicole Reed.
Data visualizations by Aïcha Camara and Trina Reynolds-Tyler
In 2017, the Chicago City Council questioned police officials about the racial disparity in missing person cases, with at least one alder pushing for solutions to protect Black women and girls. Instead, “CPD brass were short on answers. In fact they deny there’s a problem,” according to a report by the Chicago Reader. When Sgt. Jeffrey Coleman was asked by an alder if police needed more resources to work on missing person cases, Coleman said only that “it’s important to communicate to the city’s parents that they must stay aware of their children’s activities and whereabouts,” the Reader wrote.
Young people do make up a large portion of missing person cases, in Chicago and beyond, according to police and FBI data — and these cases are often referred to as “runaways,” assuming that runaway people do not want to be found. In fact, the term “runaway” has become synonymous with police putting less effort into searching for a missing child, according to a USA Today review of 50 police procedural manuals across the country. (This analysis did not include Chicago.)
Community advocates say when police dismiss runaway cases, parents of missing children and adults don’t get the services they deserve. This attitude ignores the fact that Black women and girls are at higher risk for violent crime. Black girls are more likely to be victims of sex trafficking, making up more than half of all child prostitution arrests nationwide, according to 2019 FBI crime reporting data. The number of Black female homicide victims in Cook County from 2017 to 2022 was three times more than white and Hispanic female victims combined, according to the medical examiner’s office. Black women make up more than half of all domestic violence survivors. Missingness is both a symptom and a cause of these risk factors.
“Redlining, racism — we literally create the landscape for murdering Black women and girls in Chicago,” says Beverly Reed-Scott, a former sex worker, journalist, and community organizer who advocates on behalf of victims of gender-based violence.
Six years ago, researcher and retired investigative journalist Thomas Hargrove identified 51 murdered women in Chicago as potential victims of a single serial killer. His theory led to a cascade of headlines and evening news stories, bringing the issue of missing persons to broader public attention and stepping up anxiety in Black neighborhoods where these cases were well known. Since then, police investigations have re-examined DNA evidence and determined it was unlikely all 51 women were murdered by the same person.
Local advocates close to the issue still believe there are multiple serial killers targeting Black women and girls. The victims identified by Hargrove were almost all Black women, often strangled or asphyxiated, their bodies discarded in South or West Side abandoned buildings, alleys, trash cans, lots, and parks. Many had histories of substance use and sex work.
Community members point out that the roots of the problem extend beyond violent individuals to complex societal problems like segregation and disinvestment, underfunded and inaccessible mental health services, intimate partner violence, and domestic violence.
That’s why the new Illinois Task Force on Missing and Murdered Chicago Women, which convened for the first time in May, will focus on root causes for missingness and violence, and police practices, such as data collection, that impede their ability to solve these cases.
The task force has no budget, but its impact may lie in its recommendations to the Illinois General Assembly and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, according to state Sen. Mattie Hunter, who, along with state Rep. Kam Buckner, is co-chairing the task force.
“Families keep asking for and waiting for answers, and they never receive answers from law enforcement,” says Hunter.
Chicago police data show clear racial discrepancies in missing person cases.
The task force hoped to rely on police data to help develop solutions. However, when City Bureau and the Invisible Institute analyzed CPD data from 2000 to 2021, it was difficult to come to definitive conclusions beyond looking at demographics.
For instance, police recorded 99.8% of all cases were closed and not criminal in nature, indicating the person was “likely found.” Missing person cases are not simply labeled “located” or “not located.” Interviews with multiple police sources indicated that even internally, it’s unclear if this means nearly every missing person in Chicago is found alive and well, and not the victim of any crime. CPD media affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
CPD data also claims that fewer than 300 missing person cases out of over 340,000 were reclassified as a crime, and only 10 were reclassified as homicides. But reporters found at least 11 additional cases where individuals who were reported missing were later the subject of a homicide investigation — and where the original case remains labeled “non-criminal.”
If it’s true that police are not linking missing person cases with criminal investigations, “Well, that’s obviously bad record-keeping,” says Hargrove, who first suggested a pattern between 51 murdered women in Chicago. “The mistakes that humans make with the data [are] the primary driver of this real problem everywhere. … You want those records to be linked [or] you can’t come up with meaningful analysis.”
Tracy Siska, founder of the Chicago Justice Project, adds that errors in CPD data collection are common. He has found similar issues with data on how police officers respond to 911 calls. “It is an institutionalized problem,” he says. In 2022, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation revealed how half of murders considered “solved” by CPD did not result in an arrest, despite police officials publicly touting the high “clearance” number.
Chicago police data show clear racial discrepancies in missing person cases — but to understand why people go missing and how they are treated by police when they do, reporters dug much deeper to speak with current and former police officers, families of the missing, and nationwide experts.
This story is part of the Chicago Missing Persons project by City Bureau and Invisible Institute, two Chicago-based nonprofit journalism organizations. Read the full investigation and see resources for families at chicagomissingpersons.com
Economist Kirk Elliott sounds the alarm as the elites flock to precious metals ahead of a looming catastrophic market event thanks to inflation and years of out-of-control government spending.
Economist Kirk Elliott joins Alex Jones live in-studio to issue an emergency warning to those who wish to preserve their wealth with precious metals, a time-tested hedge against the collapsing dollar.
BREAKING: Globalists Buying Gold And Silver As Fast As They Can Ahead Of Market Event pic.twitter.com/W44TKt1sRu
The Academic Staff Union of Universities(ASUU) on Monday accused the federal government of constantly unleashing hardship on the university system.
ASUU Akure Zonal Coordinator, Dr. Adeola Egbedokun, made this accusation while addressing journalists ahead of the zonal meeting of the union held in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.
He also accused the government of disregarding the agreement tailored towards the welfare of the lecturers and the universities, despite the good intention of the union.
Egbedokun disclosed that the federal government had reneged on its promise to discard Integrated Personnel Payroll and Information System for paying university lecturers.
He noted that the use of IPPIS to pay part of the withheld salary of ASUU members was against the agreement reached with the union, adding that many of its members are still being owed several months of promotion arrears, ranging from 6 to 36 months.
The ASUU Coordinator, while demanding the immediate release of promotion arrears of ASUU members, urged Nigerians not blame the union for the continuous industrial unrest on campus.
He also blamed the rising wave of violent crimes, especially kidnapping in the country to the poor funding of education by the government.
“The government is insincere about funding education. They are insincere because how can successive administrations arrange several meetings where agreements were signed and such agreements would not be implemented? What has taken us to this particular quagmire is that the government failed to own up to the agreements signed with ASUU.
“At this point again, we have to talk about the 26 per cent budgetary allocation which of course is the yardstick set by UNESCO. If the government is sincere, definitely government will definitely know that it is the only solution to the present problem that we find ourselves in.
“Most of these people that are creating insecurity, the hoodlums, perhaps it was because they didn’t have sufficient education. If education had been properly funded, definitely there wouldn’t have been any need for agitation from members of staff because they would have been paid.
“Presently as we talk some people are hiding in the bush looking for who to kidnap because the government has surreptitiously removed them from having education. Education happens to be the only saving grace for people to live a good life.
“If this continues, we are talking about economic hardship, it won’t be a case of what ASUU is going to get, but it is going to be the case of what is going to be the next accident for the nation,” he said.
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FG Causing Hardship On University System-ASUU is first published on The Whistler Newspaper
Some social media posts claim Disney World is changing its theme park bathrooms to be more inclusive. But don’t get flushed — this claim originated on a satirical website.
A Feb. 25 Instagram reel’s narrator said, “Disney World is adding urinals to the women’s restrooms.”
The video showed footage of the entrance to Disney World’s Rapunzel-themed restroom, followed by footage of a bathroom with urinals.
The video claims to quote a Disney spokesperson who said, “Adding urinals to the women’s restrooms provides a safer and more inclusive atmosphere for everyone.”
Commenters on the Instagram post said, “Yet another reason to BOYCOTT DISNEY,” and “Making a large amount of people uncomfortable to make a small amount of people comfortable is insane.”
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
(Screengrab from Instagram)
Walt Disney Co. spokesperson Melissa Britt told PolitiFact this claim is “not accurate.”
At the end of the Instagram video, the narrator says to visit “mousetrapnews.com” for more information. What the narrator doesn’t say is that Mouse Trap News describes itself as “the world’s best satire and parody site” and says it writes “fake stories” about Disney.
The same video in the Instagram post was shared on Mouse Trap News’ TikTok and Instagram accounts. The satirical website also wrote a Feb. 8 story about the supposed bathroom change.
We rate the claim that “Disney World is adding urinals to the women’s restrooms” Pants on Fire!
CHICO — A forecast of heavy snow — with a potential to cause tree, roof and power line damage — is expected to begin Thursday through the weekend in the north state’s mountains and foothills, according to National Weather Service Sacramento.
The service is citing extreme snow impacts Friday and major snow impacts Thursday and Saturday, with snow rates of up to 2 inches per hour in the mountains. A winter storm watch is scheduled to begin at 4 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 29 through 10 a.m. Sunday, March 3.
Predicted snow elevations start at 4,500 to 5,500 feet Thursday, lowering to 2,000 to 4,000 feet Friday, then to at least 1,500 to 3,000 feet Saturday and Sunday, according to the service.
Meteorologist Robert Baruffaldi said the Paradise foothills hold a likely chance for significant snow Friday night into Saturday morning with a total precipitation of 3.5 inches Thursday through Saturday.
“It’s still a bit away, but there’s certainly potential for several inches of snow” in Paradise, with even more possible than forecast, Baruffaldi said. “It all depends on the snow levels and how fast they come down.”
Freezing temperatures forecast Sunday are shown in a map of northern California cities published Monday, Feb. 26, 2024 by National Weather Service, Sacramento. (National Weather Service, Sacramento-Contributed)
Valley cities may see more than one inch of rain including Chico at 1.5 to 2 inches and Red Bluff at 1 to 1.5 inches.
Baruffaldi said the year has brought a good amount of storms, but this event may be one of the strongest in the mountains for the water year.
Flooding concerns are not likely to rise because of low snow elevations — minor urban flooding at worst, he said. Elevations above 5,000 feet are forecast with a 30-75% chance to see at least 7 feet of snow.
Between 1,500 and 3,000 feet elevation, a 20-80% chance of at least 4 inches of snow is forecast.
A potential for windy conditions may also start Thursday, he said.
Winds forecast Thursday in the valley measure at 35 to 40 mph in Chico and Red Bluff dropping Friday to 30 to 35 in Chico and 25 to 30 in Red Bluff.
Freezing low temperatures in the north valley will not be likely until after the storm passes, Baruffaldi said.
In combo of undated selfie images provided courtesy of the Dime Doe family, show Dime Doe, a Black transgender woman. Doe’s August 2019 death is now the subject of a first-of-its-kind federal hate crimes trial that began this week in Columbia, S.C. (Courtesy Dime Doe Family via AP)
By JAMES POLLARD Associated Press/Report for America
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man was found guilty Friday of killing a Black transgender woman after the exposure of their secret sexual relationship in the nation’s first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity.
After deliberating for roughly four hours, jurors convicted Daqua Lameek Ritter of a hate crime for the murder of Dime Doe in 2019. Ritter was also found guilty of using a firearm in connection with the fatal shooting and obstructing justice. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled. Ritter faces a maximum of life imprisonment without parole.
“This case stands as a testament to our committed effort to fight violence that is targeted against those who may identify as a member of the opposite sex, for their sexual orientation or for any other protected characteristics,” Brook Andrews, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of South Carolina, told reporters after the verdict.
The four-day trial over Doe’s killing centered on the clandestine relationship between her and Ritter, the latter of whom had grown agitated by the exposure of their affair in the small town of Allendale, according to witness testimony and text messages obtained by the FBI. Prosecutors accused Ritter of shooting Doe three times with a .22 caliber handgun to prevent further revelation of his involvement with a transgender woman.
Doe’s close friends testified that it was no secret in Allendale that she had begun her social transition as a woman shortly after graduating high school. She started dressing in skirts, getting her nails done and wearing extensions. She and her friends discussed boys they were seeing — including Ritter, whom she met during one of his many summertime visits from New York to stay with family.
But text messages obtained by the FBI suggested that Ritter sought to keep their relationship under wraps as much as possible, prosecutors said. He reminded her to delete their communications from her phone, and hundreds of texts sent in the month before her death were removed.
Shortly before Doe’s death, their exchanges grew tense. In one message from July 29, 2019, she complained that Ritter did not reciprocate her generosity. He replied that he thought they had an understanding that she didn’t need the “extra stuff.”
He also told her that Delasia Green, his main girlfriend at the time, had insulted him with a homophobic slur after learning of the affair. In a July 31 text, Doe said she felt used and Ritter should never have let Green find out about them.
Ritter’s defense attorneys said the sampling represented only a “snapshot” of their messages. They pointed to other exchanges where Doe encouraged Ritter, or where he thanked her for one of her many kindnesses.
Prosecutors presented police interviews in which Ritter said he did not see Doe the day she died. But body camera video from a traffic stop of Doe showed Ritter’s distinctive left wrist tattoo on a person in the passenger seat hours before police found her slumped in the car, parked in a driveway.
Defense lawyer Lindsey Vann argued at trial that no physical evidence pointed to Ritter. State law enforcement never processed a gunshot residue test that he took voluntarily, she said, and the pair’s intimate relationship and frequent car rides made it no surprise that Ritter would have been with her.
Witnesses offered other damaging testimony.
On the day Doe died, a group of friends saw Ritter ride away in a silver car with tinted windows — a vehicle that Ritter’s acquaintance Kordell Jenkins said he had seen Doe drive previously. When Ritter returned several hours later, Jenkins said, he wore a new outfit and appeared “on edge.”
The friends built a fire in a barrel to smoke out the mosquitoes on that buggy summer day, and Ritter emptied his book bag into it, Jenkins testified. He said he couldn’t see the contents but assumed they were items Ritter no longer wanted, possibly the clothes he wore earlier.
The two ran into ran into each other the following day, Jenkins said, and he could see the silver handle of a small firearm sticking out from Ritter’s waistline. He said Ritter asked him to “get it gone.”
Defense attorneys suggested that Jenkins fabricated the story to please prosecutors and argued it was preposterous to think Ritter would ask someone he barely knew to dispose of a murder weapon. They said Ritter’s friends gave conflicting accounts about details like the purported burning of his clothes while facing the threat of prosecution if they failed to cooperate.
With Allendale abuzz with rumors that Ritter killed Doe, he began behaving uncharacteristically, according to witness testimony.
Green said that when he showed up days later at her cousin’s house in Columbia, he was dirty, smelly and couldn’t stop pacing. Her cousin’s boyfriend gave Ritter a ride to the bus stop. Before he left, Green asked him if he had killed Doe.
“He dropped his head and gave me a little smirk,” Green said.
Ritter monitored the fallout from New York, FBI Special Agent Clay Trippi said, citing Facebook messages with another friend, Xavier Pinckney. On Aug. 11, Pinckney told Ritter that nobody was “really talking.” But by Aug. 14, Pinckney was warning Ritter to stay away from Allendale because he had been visited by state police. Somebody was “snitching,” he later said.
Pinckney faces charges of obstructing justice. Federal officials allege he gave false and misleading statements to investigators.
Although federal officials have previously prosecuted hate crimes based on gender identity, the cases never reached trial. A Mississippi man received a 49-year prison sentence in 2017 as part of a plea deal after he admitted to killing a 17-year-old transgender woman.
___
Pollard is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
About 50 pro-Palestine protesters were arrested at NBC headquarters in New York City on Monday protesting President Biden’s appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” according to protest group Jewish Voice for Peace.
The group said hundreds of its members took over the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center, where the show is filmed. Photos show protesters donned in black shirts reading “cease fire now” alongside signs calling for a cease fire. One sign reads, “Jews to Biden: Stop Arming Genocide.”
“President Biden’s deadly foreign policy has expedited weapons sales to Israel, ignored the World Court’s determination that Israel is committing genocide, suspended funding to UNRWA, and vetoed three UN ceasefire resolutions,” the group wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“The President needs to start answering to the American people – not the far-Right Israeli government indiscriminately bombing the people of Gaza, destroying 70% of infrastructure, including hospitals, universities and the electricity and water grids,” the group continued.
Pressure has mounted on President Biden to back a full cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, which he has so far refused. Biden has instead pursued short-term pauses in the conflict. He said Monday that he hopes the two sides will be able to agree to a six-week pause by this week.
Progressives have driven much of Biden’s opposition among Democrats regarding the conflict, with a coalition of pro-Palestine voters expected to carry out a protest campaign during the Michigan primaries on Tuesday.
Moderate Democrats have also raised questions about the amount of military support for Israel amidst its ground invasion of Gaza.
Over 30,000 Palestinians have died in the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with nearly all the region’s 2.3 million population displaced and needing food, according to the United Nations.
The Biden administration has pressured Israel to step back its military operations, to little effect. President Biden has especially opposed an expected ground invasion of Rafah, one of the last remaining settlements in southern Gaza and host to an estimated 1.4 million people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that an invasion of Rafah “has to be done.”
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Man initially denied person in undercover video was him, before he took off sprinting a mile down 7th Avenue, with O’Keefe giving chase.
An IRS official who was caught on undercover film admitting his agency has no problem destroying the lives of average Americans fled when confronted by journalist James O’Keefe.
O’Keefe recently caught up with IRS Criminal Investigations Unit worker Alex Mena outside a bodega in New York City, asking him for comment on the video last week that showed him telling a female OMG (O’Keefe Media Group) undercover journalist that the IRS “has no problem going after the small people, putting people in prison, and destroying people’s lives.”
Mena initially denied the person in the video was him before he took off running down 7th Avenue attempting to evade the journalists, with O’Keefe giving chase.
IRS Official Alex Mena SPRINTS a mile down 7th avenue in NYC after O’Keefe shows footage of him calling the IRS AI programs 'unconstitutional’
Mena then attempted to hide by standing in a shadowy doorway on Commerce Street, before O’Keefe found him and Mena began running again.… pic.twitter.com/ZcXmWBpxwn
In the video last week, Mena also admitted that the IRS has what he described as the unconstitutional authority to access anybody’s bank records.
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“They see the amount in your bank account, yes,” Mena said, adding he “doubts” such authority is constitutional.
BREAKING: IRS official Alex Mena who works in “Criminal Investigations” says @IRSNews, ‘has no problem going after the small people, putting people in prison, and destroying people’s lives.’
Mena ‘doubts the constitutionality’ of his employer, the IRS, using AI to access… pic.twitter.com/KexsoTlMbz
“[IRS agents] are assholes. They are the definition of an asshole, all of them,” he said. “They all said ‘we were all nice when we started, now look at us.’ They’re like robots right now, all of them.”
When asked by the OMG journalist whether the IRS needs evidence to launch an investigation or audit into a taxpayer, Mena replie that they do not.
“No, not with the IRS,” he said. “They can audit like whoever they want.”
“Like, in six months, they were able to capture half a billion dollars,” he said, adding the Department of Justice and Inspector General control the AI algorithms used to determine if someone needs to be audited.
Mena also recounted a story highlighting IRS agents’ lack of humanity, claiming they’ve been trained to shoot U.S. citizens without emotion.
“When I went to the criminal investigations unit, the guy is telling me, ‘the first person you shoot you’re gonna remember, but after that you’re gonna shoot like a hundred people, you’re not gonna remember any of them.’”
