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Fox News analyst expresses disbelief after younger brother shot dead in Chicago

Fox News analyst Gianno Caldwell expressed shock and disbelief in several emotional social media posts after he learned his younger brother was shot and killed in Chicago, Ill., over the weekend.

Caldwell, a political analyst for Fox and a contributing opinion writer to The Hill, posted to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, writing that his “teenage baby brother was murdered” in the south side of Chicago on Friday morning.

“Yesterday was the worst day of my existence,” Caldwell wrote on Twitter. “Never could I have imagined my baby brother’s life would be stolen from him. Please keep my family in your prayers.”

Gianno Caldwell’s brother, Christian, had turned 18 this year. Gianno told Fox News that Christian was the youngest of nine siblings who grew up “really poor” in south side Chicago.

The siblings were placed in the care of their grandmother when their mother had to go to rehab for a drug addiction, and Gianno stood in as a father figure for his younger brothers.

“I was like his dad because he never knew his father. So my three youngest little brothers, I considered — they were my kids,” he told Fox News. “Those are my sons, so I took care of them. I financially supported them and still do.”

Gianno was hired by Fox News in 2017. The political analyst also runs a bipartisan public affairs consulting firm and hosts the podcast “Outloud with Gianno Caldwell.”

He’s also an author. In his first book, Gianno recounts a childhood filled with violence and drugs and discusses how conservative values helped him rise above the streets, according to his biography.

On Fox, Gianno has frequently discussed the rising violence in Chicago. Last year was the deadliest year for his home city in a quarter century.

In a September 2018 appearance on “The Ingraham Angle” after he conducted interviews with Chicago residents, Gianno said establishing a path to jobs and opportunities was the best way to lift people out of poverty and stem the tide of violence.

“There were so many that were married to the life because they had no exposure to anything else,” he said of the people he interviewed. “Outside of saying I want jobs and opportunities, there’s no path to get there. And that’s something that honestly needs to be worked on, sincerely.”

On Saturday, Gianno told Fox News he wants the people who murdered his brother to be caught so they could be rehabilitated.

“I would never want to see any street justice or violence against the people who even murdered my little brother,” he said. “But I do want them brought to justice.”

Source: TEST FEED1

McConaughey: Gun safety legislation isn't perfect but 'shining example' of compromise

Actor Matthew McConaughey said new gun safety legislation passed by Congress last week isn’t perfect but is a “shining example” of compromise in the country. 

In an op-ed published by the Austin American-Statesman on Sunday, McConaughey wrote that the gun safety legislation would save “innocent lives” and keep firearms away from those considered dangerous, calling the bill an “investment” in the country’s future. 

“This bill is a responsible investment in the future of our country and in America’s greatest asset, our children,” McConaughey said.

“This bill makes those whose lives have been needlessly cut short by gun violence matter,” he added. “This bill is about more responsible gun ownership in America.”

The 52-year-old actor also wrote that the recent mass shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas, led to “responsible actions” from both parties and showed that a bipartisan effort can result in effective change in the U.S.

“While this bill isn’t perfect, it is a shining example of a great American potential and political virtue: the act of compromise and validating an opposing viewpoint,” McConaughey wrote in his op-ed. 

“This is a quintessential virtue of America, where two seemingly contradictory approaches to the same problem can be true at the same time, AND, when combined, actually reveal a more useful and powerful solution than either on its own,” he added.  

President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act on Saturday, marking the first legislation to address gun violence in nearly 30 years. 

A bipartisan group of senators drafted the legislation in response to the recent string of mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, N.Y. McConaughey met with lawmakers and spoke at a White House press briefing on the matter.

The bill will include funding for school safety resources, expanded background checks for buyers under the age of 21, penalties for straw purchases of firearms, and new protections for domestic violence victims. 

“Today, we say more than enough. We said more than enough. It’s time when it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing some consequential,” Biden said at the ceremony of the bill signing, noting that more work has to be done to address the gun violence issue. “I know there’s much more work to do. I’m never going to give up.”

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Boris Johnson says Russian victory in Ukraine would be 'catastrophic'

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday that Russia prevailing in its invasion of Ukraine would be “absolutely catastrophic” for the world, as it would legitimize further aggressions elsewhere.

Speaking with CNN “State of the Union” co-anchor Jake Tapper in Germany on the sidelines of the G7 Summit, Johnson called President Biden’s support for Ukrainians “extraordinary.”

“I would just say to people in the United States that this is something that America historically does and has to do,” Johnson said. “And that is to step up for peace and freedom and democracy.”

Johnson will meet with Biden and other leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at this week’s G7 Summit, which will be followed by a NATO summit in Spain.

The Biden administration on Thursday announced its latest security package for Ukraine, bringing the total U.S. security assistance to $6.1 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Biden last month signed a $40 billion package passed by Congress that includes security, humanitarian and economic assistance to Ukraine in the months ahead.

“I would argue that that is a price worth paying for democracy and freedom, because when you think about the postwar period…think what that achieved, the decades and decades of peace and freedom,” Johnson said on Sunday.

After failing to take Ukraine’s capital city, Kyiv, Russia has shifted its focus to the Donbas region in the east, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian military for years.

The U.K.’s Defense Ministry said earlier on Sunday that Russian forces had likely taken the city of Sieverodonetsk, which it called a “significant achievement.”

“If we let Putin get away with it and just annex, conquer sizable parts of a free, independent, sovereign country, which is what he is poised to do, if not the whole thing, then the consequences for the world are absolutely catastrophic,” Johnson told Tapper.

Johnson said the repercussions could extend to places like Taiwan, where fears are rising that China will attempt to seize control in the coming years, either through military or economic aggression.

At the Spain summit, NATO leaders are expected to discuss a new strategic concept that the White House said last week would reflect those threats from China.

“That is what is ultimately disastrous,” Johnson said. “Not just for democracy and for the independence of countries, but for economic stability.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Governors offer array of approaches to abortion fight

State governors offered an array of approaches on Sunday as to how they would govern under the new abortion landscape in a post-Roe America, with Republicans largely moving to make the procedure a felony with little to no exceptions and Democrats ensuring their states will become an abortion haven for women seeking care.

The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade on Friday punted laws on abortion access back to individual states, some of which have already banned or tightened restrictions on abortions because they had trigger laws in place.

In total, 22 states across the country will ban or restrict access to abortions, according to an analysis from the Guttmacher Institute. Another 16 states and Washington, D.C., have laws in place that protect the right to an abortion.

Much of the midwest is likely to see its abortion clinics close. In South Dakota, performing an abortion is now a felony unless it will save the life of a pregnant woman. There are no exceptions for rape or incest.

Gov. Kristi Noem (R) told CBS’ “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday the state will target doctors who perform illegal abortions for prosecution but not women.

Noem added South Dakota has a bill in the pipeline that will further restrict abortion access by banning telemedicine appointments between abortion care providers and patients in order to block women from getting prescribed abortion pills that can be shipped via mail.

The GOP governor told Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation” the pills were “very dangerous medical procedures” despite it being FDA-approved.

“We know so much more using technology and science than we did even 10, 15 years ago about what these babies go through and the pain they feel in the womb,” she said. “We’re putting resources in front of these women and walking alongside them, getting them the healthcare, the mental health counseling services they need.”

After Roe was overturned, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Department of Justice would move to protect women’s abortion rights and access to the pills. 

Places such as Colorado have a law guaranteeing access to abortion, signed by its Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, setting the stage for the state to become an abortion haven.

“In Colorado, we will continue to choose freedom and we stand against government control over our bodies,” Polis said in a statement on Friday.

But states with divided political power are likely to come under the spotlight as they grapple over the future of access to abortion. 

In Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Sunday told Brennan on CBS that Republicans in her state who control the state legislature are pushing to ban abortions, adding that she does not see lawmakers coming to a compromise on the issue.

Abortions are currently legal in the state because a court recently blocked a trigger law banning abortions from taking effect. But abortion access will only remain legal as long as the injunction holds, which Republicans are moving to lift.

Whitmer, meanwhile, has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution because the landscape has become “scary” for women.

“We’re pulling out all the stops,” Whitmer told Brennan. “This is a fight like hell moment.”

In Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) called a new six-week abortion ban that will go into effect “horrendous” and vowed to reverse the ban if she defeats current Republcian Gov. Brian Kemp in November.

“It is very, very dangerous for women in Georgia right now,” Abrams told co-anchor Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The nation itself will become a battleground between Democratic and Republican leaders when red states move to restrict abortion access and blue states offer themselves up as an abortion haven for out-of-state women.

Arkansas has some of the tightest restrictions in the nation. Abortions are illegal in all cases except to save the life of a woman. Performing an abortion is a felony with a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

It’s Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd he was protecting the rights of the unborn, which he saw as allowing him to exercise state power to intervene.

“You use the power of the state to say, ‘Unless the health of the mother is at risk, let’s carry that child to term,’” the governor said. “When you’re saving life, that’s an appropriate role of the state.”

Source: TEST FEED1

UK's Boris Johnson labels Supreme Court abortion decision a 'backward step'

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade a “backward step” on Sunday but said the U.S. remains a guarantor of freedom.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” in Krun, Germany during the G7 summit, the conservative lawmaker told co-anchor Jake Tapper that he supports a woman’s right to have an abortion.

“I want to stress that this is not our court, it’s not our jurisdiction,” Johnson said. “So, in a sense, it’s for the United States, it’s not for the U.K. But the Roe v. Wade judgment, when it came out, was important psychologically for people around the world, and it spoke of the advancement of the rights of women, I think.”

“And I regret what seems to me to be a backward step,” he continued. “But I’m speaking as someone looking in from the outside.”

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Mississippi state law banning abortion at 15 weeks in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

A majority of justices also voted to overturn Roe, the landmark case that guaranteed abortion rights nationwide for nearly half a century, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the abortion right guaranteed by Roe.

Johnson is slated to meet with President Biden and other leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies at the G7 summit this week, which will be followed by a NATO summit in Spain.

When asked if the decision hurt the United States as a representative of rights and freedom, Johnson said he didn’t think that was the case, pointing to the country’s support of Ukraine.

“For me, it remains a shining city on the hill,” Johnson told Tapper. “And it’s an incredible guarantor of values, democracy, freedom around the world.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Man accused of attacking Los Angeles officer with torch during abortion rights protests

(KTLA) – A man who allegedly attacked a police officer with a “makeshift flamethrower” during Friday night’s abortion rights demonstration in downtown Los Angeles has been arrested and is facing possible charges for attempted murder.

The Los Angeles Police Department said 30-year-old Michael Ortiz attacked an officer with a torch, sending the officer to the hospital with burn injuries.

The attack happened during protests staged in downtown Los Angeles following the United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion protection ruling.

While most demonstrations were peaceful, a sentiment echoed by both organizers and the LAPD, a small group of protesters did clash with police in downtown. Bottles, rocks and fireworks were seen thrown at officers during a later portion of the protest.

Ortiz was booked into jail where he awaits charges for attempted murder of a police officer, LAPD said. He remains in custody as of Saturday night with bail set at $1 million, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department inmate roster.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that, although he supports protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, those who commit crime will be arrested and the department will “vigorously pursue prosecution.”

“I condemn the violence against officers that occurred last night and into today. Individuals participating in such criminal activity are not exercising their 1st Amendment rights in protest of the Supreme Court decision, rather, they are acting as criminals,” Moore said in a news release.

A second person, whom police identified as 23-year-old Juliana Bernado, was arrested after she allegedly tried to take an officer’s baton. Bernado was struck by a 40mm “less lethal round” which helped police take her into custody. She was booked into jail and faces possible charges for resisting arrest, police said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Half in new poll say Trump tried to stay in office through illegal means

Half of U.S. adults believe former President Trump planned to remain in the presidency through illegal and unconstitutional activities, according to a new CBS News-YouGov poll.

Three in 10 respondents believed Trump planned to stay in office through legal means, while 2 in 10 believed he did not plan to stay.

But the poll found that among Republicans, just 13 percent believed Trump planned to stay through illegal means. Half of Republicans said he was using legal processes to remain in the presidency, while more than a third — 37 percent — said he did not plan to stay.

Half of Republicans called the events of Jan. 6, 2021, “patriotism,” and 70 percent of Republicans said President Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, according to the poll.

The poll was conducted in the wake of public hearings held by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing its own investigation.

Forty-six percent said they believed the House panel should recommend DOJ charge Trump with crimes, while 31 percent said the committee should recommend Trump not be charged. Twenty-three percent said the panel should not make a recommendation either way.

The poll found that those views were split on partisan lines. Eight in 10 Democrats said they think the committee should recommend criminal charges, compared to 44 percent of independents and 8 percent of Republicans.

The question of referring criminal charges has become a point of disagreement among some members of the committee.

The panel’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), said earlier this month that the panel would not be issuing formal criminal referrals to DOJ, but Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the panel’s vice chairwoman, soon after said the question of referrals remained unresolved.  

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), another member of the panel, said last week that the DOJ has to make its own decision.

Meanwhile, more Democrats watching from the sidelines are calling on the committee to make a criminal referral for Trump.

The poll found that Americans were evenly split on whether they thought charging Trump with crimes for Jan. 6 would help strengthen democracy in the United States.

Thirty-nine percent said clearing Trump of wrongdoing for the events of that day would help strengthen the country’s democracy.

The poll was conducted between June 22 and 24 through interviews with 2,265 U.S. adult residents. The margin of error is 2.6 percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Graham: Alito 'set the right tone' in Roe ruling by arguing same-sex marriage, contraception not in jeopardy

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said Justice Samuel Alito “set the right tone” by writing in an opinion overturning Roe v. Wade that Supreme Court decisions protecting contraception and same-sex marriage are not in jeopardy.

Graham made the remarks during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” while noting that he respects Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote that he wanted to take a look at contraception and same-sex marriage after overturning Roe and abortion protections.

“Alito, I think, set the right tone. He said nothing in this decision puts those cases at risk. The reason he decided that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided is because it deals with the potential for life,” the senator said.

Thomas joined conservatives in overturning Roe, but in his concurring opinion, the justice said he wanted to examine contraception and same-sex marriage, both of which are protected by Supreme Court decisions.

Thomas argued the Constitution’s Due Process Clause does not give a right to an abortion or to any other substantive rights. He referred to the cases Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right to use contraception, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which protects same-sex marriage.

Graham, however, said on Sunday that he agreed with Alito that the court did not need to extend its reach into other privacy rights.

“These other privacy issues like contraception do not deal with the potential for life,” the senator said. “He made a distinction between same-sex marriage and contraception, which I think will win the day over time.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The misleading question of innocence distorts the abortion debate

There was a time when opponents of abortion actually endorsed a restricted pro-choice position. “Pro-life” meant opposition to abortion except in cases of rape, incest and medical emergencies where a fetus posed a threat to a woman’s life. Those exceptions created room for abortion choice in specific situations. 

There was a time when constitutional conservatives believed — consistent with traditional conservative opposition to governmental overreach into private life — that abortion was a medical issue not appropriately subject to governmental interference. In Barry Goldwater’s words, abortion was a “decision that’s up to the pregnant woman.” 

Those days are long gone. Not only has the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, but the decision could endanger traditional pro-life exceptions. Radical moral absolutism has infected anti-abortion rhetoric, finding its way, for instance, into the platform of Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano, who, having made abortion his “number one issue,”  seeks to prohibit abortion at any point after conception.

Those who hold the Mastriano perspective have upended the traditional hierarchy of values, with the value of a developing form of human life — conceptus, embryo, fetus — not equal to but superior to the value of the pregnant woman’s life. Overlooked in the contemporary abortion discussion is the question: “Why?”  

A pregnant woman is a fully endowed member of the moral community, and the fetus has only such rights as the moral community decides to confer upon it. What is it about the fetus that allows it to attain a status superior to that of the pregnant woman?

The answer to this question is troubling but it also points to a way out of the legal tangle over abortion. It lies in the attribution of innocence. The conceptus-embryo-fetus holds its superior status because it is deemed “innocent.”

To offer innocence as a reason for fetal supremacy is not the same as saying that protections for the fetus flow from species membership — the fact that the fetus is human.  Of course, it is — a human conceptus is not a frog — but we make all kinds of exceptions to allow for actions that bring about the end of human life, everything from self-defense, and permissible losses of non-combatants in warfare to the cessation of life support for brain dead patients. 

The absolute value of fetal life has been most prominently advanced in Roman Catholic moral teaching, but the church also preserved in Western culture the just war tradition, a perspective that opposes war but allows for exceptions in certain specified situations if certain justice criteria are met. Although this mode of moral analysis focuses on possible exceptions to generally held moral positions, the Catholic moral tradition does not apply this ethic to the fetus and to abortion. That is because, in the words of John Paul II, the fetus is not only innocent but “absolutely innocent.” 

With abortion, the pope wrote, “we are dealing with murder.” Regarding the fetus, “No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined.“  And the pope denied that a life-threatening medical problem could render abortion an act of self-defense, declaring  “In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor.”

The implications of this kind of perspective are quite profound. The innocence to which Pope John Paul II refers is not the kind of innocence we attach to a person unjustly accused of a crime who can be shown to be not guilty of that crime — a conceptus cannot commit a wrongful act. Fetal innocence is not moral but metaphysical. When the pope, enmeshed as he was in Christian theology, makes a claim that the fetus is absolutely innocent and nothing more innocent can even be imagined, one can only imagine that he is invoking an idea of sinlessness and including fetal life in the cohort of others recognized as absolutely innocent: God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, and Mary, the mother of Christ whom Catholicism holds was herself the result of an immaculate conception. This church dogma explains why Jesus Christ was “absolutely innocent” and not born into sin like the rest of us.

As shocking as this perspective may be to articulate, it does allow us to understand how and why the life of an “absolutely innocent” fetus can claim supremacy over a woman’s life.  The fetus shares a property thought to belong exclusively to divinity, no one in the moral community being able to claim absolute innocence.

Much that goes on in the abortion issue is infused with metaphysics and beliefs that can only be described as religious. That the government could endorse the idea that fetal life is superior to a woman’s life — not equal to but superior to — is morally reprehensible no matter what kind of sense it might make in someone’s theology. That the fetus should be absolutely protected — no exceptions — because its claim to a right to life rests on absolute innocence is a religious belief that imposed by governmental fiat violates First Amendment protections against establishing a religion. Religious bodies have addressed abortion rights in the context of faith, with my own denomination the United Church of Christ allowing diverse opinions on abortion yet speaking as a denomination in support of women’s reproductive rights, including the right to abortion.

The metaphysical and nonscientific view that attaches absolute innocence to a fetus shifts the legal discussion about abortion to theology and religious beliefs. And although I do not agree with the view that a fetus is “absolutely innocent,” I recognize this belief to be a religious view deserving of protection under the First Amendment. I also think that the traditional Jewish view that a woman whose life is in danger from pregnancy is required, even against the pregnant woman’s will, to have an abortion to save her life, is a religious view that deserves similar protection. 

The solution to the abortion question lies in recognizing the religious nature of beliefs surrounding fetal humanity, something Justice Harry Blackmun did take note of in the original Roe decision but chose not to pursue. If the government, the Supreme Court in particular, could have simply abided by the Barry Goldwater conservative perspective, society might have been able to move beyond the inevitable conflicts that are about to engulf us. 

My hope is that in the wake of the toppling of Roe, a new challenge on abortion rights will be raised solely on the issues related to religious beliefs and First Amendment protections. Those protections are grounded in support for the free exercise of religion and in opposition to any legislative or judicial action that would in law establish for all a religious belief.   

Lloyd Steffen is a professor of Religion Studies and university chaplain at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa. His most recent book is “Christianity and Violence” (Cambridge). The argument made in this article is developed at greater length in his book, “Ethics and Experience: From Just War to Abortion” (Rowman & Littlefield).

Source: TEST FEED1