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Watch: Obama Voices Anger And Frustration With Congress, NRA Over Shooting Deaths

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“When you decide to vote, this cause of continuing death for innocent people should be a relevant factor in your decision.”
– President Barack Obama

“There’s been another mass shooting in America,” President Barack Obama, in what likely was the most angered, angst-ridden, and unreserved press conference he has held to date, said in response to today’s Umpqua Community College shooting that left ten dead and another seven wounded. 

“That means there are more American families, moms, dads, children, whose lives have been changed forever. That means there’s another community stunned with grief and communities across the country forced to relieve their own anguish, and parents across the country who are scared because they know it might have been their families or their children.”

Speaking just hours after this latest, the 15th, mass shooting of his presidency, President Obama, as he has numerous times before during his tenure, expressed, unscripted his grief.

“So we know there are ways to prevent it. And of course, what’s also routine is somebody somewhere will comment and say, ‘Obama will politicize this issue.’ Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to our body politic.”

“This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America,” the President told reporters. “We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones.”

“Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine,” a clearly frustrated president said. “We’ve become numb to this.”

“We’ve talked about this after Columbine and Blacksburg, after Tucson, after Newtown, after Aurora, after Charleston,” he continued, rattling off the names of cities forever changed by mass shootings. “It cannot be this easy for someone who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun,” he pleaded.

Challenging the NRA’s claim, the president said, “more guns” and “fewer safety laws” won’t make Americans safer.

“There is a gun for roughly every man woman and child in America…How can you with a straight face make an argument that more guns make us safer?”

President Obama urged all Americans to “think about” whether their “views are properly represented” by elected officials and to gun owners asked them to think if “the organization that suggests it’s speaking for you” – the NRA – actually is.

“I hope and pray that I don’t have to come out again during my tenure as president to offer my condolences to families in these circumstances,” the President said. “But based on my experience as president, I can’t guarantee that. And that’s terrible to say. And it can change.”

“Tonight as those of us who are lucky enough to hug our kids a little closer are thinking about the families who aren’t so fortunate, I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws to save lives and let our young people grow up,” he urged.

In what appeared to be his only scripted remarks, the President asked God to “bless the memories of those who were killed today, may he bring comfort to their families, and courage to the injured as they fight their way back, and may he give us the strength to come together and find the courage to change.”

 

Editor’s note:
At 7:54 PM ET the New York Times reports “Sheriff John Hanlin of Douglas County said that the gunman killed 10 people and wounded seven, adjusting initial reports from law enforcement officials, which counted 13 dead and 20 injured.” 

 

EARLIER:

Live Video: 13 Confirmed Dead In Umpqua Community College Shooting – Gunman Was 20 Year Old Male

BREAKING: At Least 10 Dead, 20 Injured In Shooting At Oregon Community College

Video and screenshot via MSNBC

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‘On Day One’: Trump Vows to End Protections for LGBTQ Students

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May 10, 2024

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Donald Trump says the day he enters the Oval Office for a second term he will end anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ students implemented by the Biden administration.

Serving up a scattershot series of complaints with the hosts from the Philadelphia-based right-wing talk radio show “Kayal and Company” on Friday, Trump compared LGBTQ+ protections to a “cuckoo’s nest.”

“A lot of things don’t make sense, having to do with what they’re doing, from the border to all of the men playing in women’s sports. I mean, the world is like a cuckoo’s nest right now with what they do,” Trump declared.

One of the hosts alleged President Joe Biden has engaged in “manipulation” of Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding. She claimed parents now have to “pinch some pennies” to be able to afford private Christian schools for their children, to remove them from the enhancements that go into effect this summer.

“Many schools are grappling with what they’re going to do,” she said, “because as of August 1, as you know, because of Biden’s manipulation of Title IX, these kids, the school boards, have no choice, they’re meeting right now they, many of them perplexed, and they don’t know what to do, Mr. President, because they’re so upset over this that at August 1 a biological boy can change in a locker room.”

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Trump replied, “It’s crazy. Crazy.”

“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump vowed. “We’re going to change it on day one. It’s going to be changed. We’re going to end it. That’s right.”

“The whole thing is crazy. Look, it’s like men playing in women’s sports. It’s like open borders for the world to come in. Send all their prisoners. We’ll take as many as you can give us. Send all their people from mental institutions.”

“We’ll get that changed. Tell your people not to worry about it. It’ll be signed on day one. It will be terminated,” Trump promised, vowing to end the LGBTQ+ protections which include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity.

On his first day in office, President Biden implemented “the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet” for LGBTQ+ people, according to NPR.

In an explainer on the new expanded rules, Ms. Magazine reports “The 2024 regulations prohibit discrimination not only on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of sex characteristics, pregnancy or related conditions, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

According to GLAAD, which is tracking “the Biden administration’s executive orders, legislative support, speeches and nominations that affect LGBTQ people and rights,” President Biden has made 337 “moves” in 1206 days.

Listen to a short clip below or at this link.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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Ari Fleischer Offers Donald Trump Advice Attorney Says ‘Effectively’ Violates Gag Order

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May 10, 2024

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A Fox News panel discussing the Trump New York criminal trial debated whether or not the indicted ex-president could attack the judge’s daughter, with former Bush 43 press secretary Ari Fleischer insisting he should, and claiming doing so would not violate the terms of the gag order.

“President Trump needs to stop calling the judge ‘conflicted.’ He needs to explain why he’s conflicted,” Fleischer said Friday to a panel that included former Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. “Every day of the trial he goes in there, he says, ‘the judge is conflicted, conflicted bigger than I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life.’ He doesn’t explain how or why. He needs to say that the judge’s daughter works for a Democratic political consulting firm that does anti-Trump business. He needs to explain it. Otherwise, it’s just an assertion with no proof. And the President if he’s going to say it, back it up. Explain.”

“I think that’s a violation of the gag order, is it not?” a Fox panelist replied.

“No, he can criticize the judge,” McEnany responded.

READ MORE: Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

“Not the judge but the family,” the panelist added.

“But when he says the judge is conflicted, you can still explain how and why, and I think comply with a gag,” Fleischer insisted.

The panelists then agreed Donald Trump has been “measured” in his remarks.

National security attorney Brad Moss weighed in on social media, posting the relevant portion of the gag order and writing that Fleischer “effectively recommends Trump violate the terms of the gag order.”

The gag order in part reads: “Defendant is directed to refrain from” … “Making or directing others to make public statements about (1) counsel in the case other than the District Attorney, (2) members of the court’s staff and the District Attorney’s staff, or (3) the family members of any counsel, staff member, the Court or the District Attorney, if those statements are made with the intent to materially interfere with, or to cause others to materially interfere with, counsel’s or staffs work in this criminal case, or with the knowledge that such interference is likely to result.”

Despite Trump’s repeated attacks, an ethics panel last year cleared Judge Juan Merchan of any issues surrounding his daughter’s work.

On Monday, Judge Merchan warned Trump he may throw him in jail if he violates the gag order again.

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

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Bannon Will Be ‘Going to Prison’ After Criminal Contempt Conviction Upheld, Experts Predict

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2 days ago

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May 10, 2024

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A federal appeals court panel of three judges has upheld the criminal contempt of Congress conviction of Steve Bannon, the far-right provocateur and former Trump chief strategist and senior White House advisor. Legal experts say he can appeal but ultimately he will he headed to prison.

Bannon had refused to comply with a subpoena lawfully-issued by the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.

“Bannon was sentenced to four months in jail in 2022 by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols after a jury convicted him of two counts of contempt of Congress,” Politico reports Friday. “But Nichols, a Trump appointee, agreed to postpone the jail term while Bannon appealed the decision, agreeing that the complex mix of laws that govern executive privilege and testimonial immunity for White House aides could be overturned by higher courts.”

The appeals court panel includes judges appointed by President Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, according to CNN’s Zachary Cohen.

In their ruling the judges wrote: “Public accounts indicated that Bannon had predicted on a January 5, 2021 podcast that ‘all hell [wa]s going to break loose’ the next day,” and noted, “In addition to the podcast prediction, Bannon had reportedly participated in discussions in late 2020 and early 2021 about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”

READ MORE: House Ethics Committee Extends Investigation Into ‘Ultra MAGA’ Congressman

Politico noted the “three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Bannon’s argument, saying the former aide and prominent podcaster had no legal rationale for his blanket refusal to appeal before the Jan. 6 committee — and that long-standing case law.”

Bannon is a peddler of conspiracy theories whose podcast “was crowned the top peddler of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements among political podcasts,” according to The New York Times, citing a Brookings study.

“Bannon is unlikely to have to report to prison immediately,” NBC News reports.

Legal experts weighed in on the question of prison for Bannon.

READ MORE: ‘Undisguised Corruption’: Critics Slam Trump for ‘Selling the White House’ to Big Oil

“And now it’s time for Bannon to be given a date to report to the federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving his sentence,” remarked MSNBC and NBC News legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor.

“Bannon is effectively out of appeals,” observed professor of law and MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney. “He can delay a little bit longer, asking for the full court to review the decision en banc & asking SCOTUS to hear his case on cert, but neither one of those things will happen. Bannon is going to prison.”

Professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter remarked, “it’s slammer time.”

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