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Year: 2026

Cops could be forced into race-based guessing game after Supreme Court move, Thomas joins dissent

Cops could be forced into race-based guessing game after Supreme Court move, Thomas joins dissent

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas on Monday dissented from the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up a case that they said forces police officers to create a separate set of rules for racial minorities. “It is dangerous to allow an individual to be treated differently based on statistics, studies, or expert testimony that purports to show that members of the racial or ethnic group to which he belongs are more likely to act in a certain way than are members of other groups,” Alito wrote on behalf of himself and Thomas. “Here, the special treatment helped the individual; in other situations it will not.” The case, U.S. v. Donte J. Carter, involved a Black man whose firearm and theft convictions were vacated after the D.C. Court of Appeals held that police seized him before they had reasonable suspicion. Officers later recovered a .40-caliber pistol from Carter’s pants and the government said the gun had been stolen from an FBI agent’s vehicle. According to the D.C. court, “black Americans like [Carter] are ‘especially distrustful of law enforcement’” and therefore “‘less likely’ than other people ‘to terminate a police encounter’ due to skepticism that any attempt to exercise their constitutional rights will be respected.”  SUPREME COURT REJECTS BOSTON PARENTS’ APPEAL CLAIMING RACIAL BIAS IN AN ADMISSIONS POLICY The D.C. court reasoned that Carter’s race was relevant to whether a reasonable person in his position would have felt free to end the police encounter. It ruled that the encounter effectively became a seizure, and that such an action was unlawful because police officers hadn’t established reasonable suspicion before subjecting him to it. Alito and Thomas argued that the D.C. ruling effectively forces law enforcement to treat people differently based on their race, something precedent established by the Supreme Court prohibits. “Under the test, officers will need to quickly assess a person’s race, and if officers and courts must craft special rules for black persons, what about dark-skinned Latinos, other Latinos, and members of other minority groups?” Alito continued. “We have said that our ’Constitution is color-blind.’ It ‘almost never’ allows government actors to treat persons differently based on their race.” SUPREME COURT RULES ON KEY VOTING RIGHTS ACT RULE AS REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS WAGE REDISTRICTING WAR To support his claims, Alito cited Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Louisiana v. Callais and Shaw v. Reno.  “And we have rejected the proposition that the Constitution permits an individual to be treated differently based on a ‘perception that members of the same racial group — regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live — think alike,’” Alito wrote, citing Shaw v. Reno. This appears to be a direct challenge to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which lawyers representing the United States argued forced police officers to assume that all black people have the same attitudes toward police officers and would therefore feel uncomfortable exercising constitutional rights in their presence. TRUMP’S FIRING POWER FACES TWIN SUPREME COURT TESTS, BUT ONE AGENCY MAY GET SPECIAL TREATMENT Carter, the individual Alito noted was helped by the case, initially lied to officers by answering in the negative when approached and asked if he was carrying a weapon. The police then asked Carter to pull his pants up, at which point they noticed an L-shaped bulge which was later identified as a .40-caliber pistol that had been stolen from a federal agent’s vehicle.

Chicago’s deadly Juneteenth weekend leaves 7 dead as Trump shames Dem gov for inaction

Chicago’s deadly Juneteenth weekend leaves 7 dead as Trump shames Dem gov for inaction

The city of Chicago was rocked by a spate of shootings over the weekend, including a drive-by mass shooting on Juneteenth, leaving six dead and 39 injured in the Windy City. The shootings, which took place in a three day period between Friday evening and Sunday, prompted President Donald Trump to call on Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker to take action by requesting federal assistance. Chicago police reported that two dozen shooting incidents took place over the weekend, with victims who died ranging in age from 18 to 50, according to the Associated Press. On Friday night, two unidentified individuals fired into a crowd in Princeton Park on Chicago’s South Side, resulting in 12 people — eight males and four females — being hospitalized, according to the AP. That same night, a 29-year-old man named Mario Price was killed in a drive-by shooting in which he was shot in the body and face, according to Fox 32 Chicago. A 70-year-old man who was standing nearby was also shot in the leg but survived. Shootings continued on Saturday and Sunday, resulting in additional deaths and injuries. Besides these, on Thursday, a 14-year-old boy was shot multiple times, resulting in his death, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The outlet reported that the Midwest Hawks youth football team, of which the boy was a member, mourned his passing, saying in a statement that “there are no words that can ease the pain of a loss like this.” AG BLANCHE SLAMS PRITZKER FOR REFUSING HELP AS CHICAGO CRIME SURGES In response to the shootings, Trump shamed Pritzker for not taking action. “Lots of Killing going on in Chicago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Why isn’t Governor Pritzker calling me for help. I could make Chicago a safe City in ONE MONTH, in ONE YEAR, it would be one of the safest!!!” The president pointed to his crime crackdown in the nation’s capital, writing, “D.C. went from one of the worst to one of the safest cities in the U.S.” Besides Washington, D.C., Trump has also deployed National Guard troops and federal authorities to Portland, Los Angeles and Memphis. After extensive legal challenges, Trump sent several hundred troops to the Chicago area late last year. However, the deployment remained tied up in court, and the troops were demobilized in January. TRUMP’S DC CRIME SUCCESS PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON CHICAGO’S DEADLY ‘WAR ZONE’ Pritzker, one of the country’s most prominent Democrats and a rumored 2028 presidential frontrunner, has repeatedly declined Trump’s offers to send the National Guard and federal authorities to crack down on crime in Chicago. In a news conference last year, Pritzker stated emphatically, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” adding, “You are neither wanted here nor needed here.” Pritzker said, “If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is — a dangerous power grab.” ILLINOIS DEMOCRAT LEADERS BLAST TRUMP PUSH TO SEND NATIONAL GUARD TO CHICAGO In October, Pritzker mocked the notion that Chicago was undergoing a surge in violence during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. Dressed in a Kevlar vest and standing in downtown Chicago, the governor quipped, “This is JB Pritzker, reporting from war-torn Chicago. As you can see, there’s utter mayhem and chaos on the ground. It’s quite disturbing.” “We’ve seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup on them, and our deep dish pizza, well, has gone shallow. So, it’s a challenge to survive here in the city of Chicago, but there’s no hellscape that I’d rather be in,” said Pritzker. Fox News Digital reached out to Pritzker for comment.

Chicago resident living in shadows of Obama Presidential Center reveal chaos caused by years-long construction

Chicago resident living in shadows of Obama Presidential Center reveal chaos caused by years-long construction

CHICAGO – A man who has lived on Chicago’s South Side for 18 years and now lives in the shadow of the newly opened Barack Obama Presidential Center described to Fox News Digital the havoc he says the years-long construction project wreaked on his housing complex. Akoma Amanze is a local cab driver who lives in Jackson Park Terrace, a low-income housing community directly across the street from the 19.3 acre campus dedicated to the 44th president. Over the weekend, while thousands of people from across the country — celebrities and ordinary folks alike — swarmed the area to visit Obama’s new campus that features a museum, library, gardens and recreational activities, Amanze and other residents took in the spectacle. But Amanze told Fox News Digital the buzz across the street was nothing new. While he made it very clear that he supports Obama, and described living at Jackson Park Terrace as a “very good experience,” Amanze and others in his complex dealt with massive headaches caused by the construction. OBAMA CENTER EMBEDS ‘INDIGENOUS’ LAND MESSAGE ON CONTROVERSIAL SITE He described the construction process, which began in 2021, as “sometimes very, very disturbing.” SUBCONTRACTORS SAY THEY’RE OWED MILLIONS, FACE FINANCIAL RUIN, AFTER HELPING BUILD OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER “He’s my man, and I’m excited that this site is here” said Amanze, referring to Obama, “but as a resident, there has been a lot of things [that] have stopped us here.” “On two occasions, my apartment flooded while they were digging the lower level of that project,” he said. “Two times. And I had to deal with the ramifications of that twice. Those ramifications were that all my apartment was flooded, and I had to throw away everything on the floor. Boxes, papers, clothes, I had to throw them away.” BUREAUCRATS HIDE TRUE PRICE OF OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER AS TAXPAYERS HIT WITH INFRASTRUCTURE BILL He said he had to suck the water out of his home himself, and then clean the entire mess up himself. Despite the destruction, according to Amanze, neither the complex’s management nor representatives from the Obama Center offered to help deal with the fallout, financially or otherwise. Then there was the reverberation from the digging, he said. “Sometimes, you stay in bed or in the apartment, [and] the digging — sometimes when they were digging deep— [it] would be shaking your bed,” he said. “I had that experience all through the construction.” OBAMA’S LEGACY PROJECT OFFERS LITTLE HOPE FOR CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE RESIDENTS Across the street used to be a community park where Amanze said he “more or less raised all [his] children.” “In fact, my last child, that is 14 today, there used to be a favorite swing on that park where I took him every time he starts crying or he starts showing signs of stress,” Amanze said. “I take him there, and I put him on that swing, and I swing him up and down, and then he will fall asleep, and then I bring him back home.” The park is gone now, but Amanze is not bitter. “When things are happening that you do not have the power to stop, you just have to learn to live with it,” he said. “I just learned to live with it. I’m not upset. I’m excited that my brother Obama was able to establish something this big in my neighborhood. At least in my mind, I’m a part of the history.”

Pence says Iran agreement ‘smacks of the kind of appeasement’ Trump rejected in prior term

Pence says Iran agreement ‘smacks of the kind of appeasement’ Trump rejected in prior term

Former Vice President Mike Pence said that the Iran Memorandum of Understanding President Donald Trump signed last week “smacks of the kind of appeasement” Trump rejected in his first White House term. “The president deserves tremendous credit for taking the fight directly to Tehran, and every American should welcome the prospect of peace. No one wants another prolonged war in the Middle East, despite the flippant accusations from isolationists on the populist right,” Pence asserted in a Wall Street Journal piece. Pence, however, characterized the agreement as nothing more than “a plan to make a plan.” TRUMP’S IRAN GAMBLE DIVIDES GOP HAWKS AND ‘AMERICA FIRST’ CONSERVATIVES OVER WHAT VICTORY LOOKS LIKE “But the memorandum of understanding with Iran signed last week falls well short of what is required to end the Iranian threat. It smacks of the kind of appeasement the president rightly rejected during our first term. It isn’t the deal a defeated Iran should be getting. It isn’t even a deal—it’s a plan to make a plan,” he asserted. “Maximum pressure worked. America’s military strength worked. The blockade worked. Iran came to the table because the regime’s existence teetered on a knife’s edge,” Pence wrote. VANCE, IRANIAN OFFICIALS END FIRST ROUND OF TALKS IN SWITZERLAND, MOVE TO NEXT PHASE “This 60-day period should be used to secure what this agreement doesn’t yet provide: an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, an end to Iranian-backed terror, and an end to its half-century of warfare against the U.S. and Israel. If those reasonable goals cannot be achieved, Mr. Trump should let the armed forces finish the job,” Pence wrote. ISRAELI AMBASSADOR WARNS IRAN’S GRIP ON LEBANON IS A ‘WARNING SIGN’ FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.