GOP senator floats moving 2028 Olympics from LA after riots
A Republican is calling for the 2028 Olympic host city of Los Angeles to be stripped of the honor of hosting the games after anti-ICE riots have engulfed the liberal city in flames. Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said he is unsure of LA's ability to host matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup in light of the violence and distress rocking the city.
Moreno pointed to the realities of current political leadership at the state and local levels in California as the causes for his concern. Moreno suggested that LA's liberal leadership, who will still be in place in 2028, are 'incapable of handling two big, high-profile' event like the Olympics.
'Won't we be better off as a nation, just to make an acknowledgement of that and move it to someplace that actually will have law and order, that will have the proper amount of protections for American citizens and the tens of millions of visitors that are going to come to both of those events?' Moreno added during a Senate hearing.
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, who serves as the chair of the subcommittee during which Moreno's exchange took place, noted that President Donald Trump was the one who pushed for the United States to host the Olympics in Los Angeles during his first term.
'We're going to continue to welcome the world to the United States,' Lankford said Tuesday. 'We want to make this the most secure, and demonstrate the freedom that happens here in the United States, and literally invite the world to come enjoy that freedom with us,' Lankford also noted.
Moreno's Tuesday exchange came one day after California Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez told CNN Monday that the rioters participating in the fiery Los Angeles ICE protests were no different than sports fans. The California lawmaker also used the appearance to blast the Trump administration for sending both Marines and California National Guard members to the Golden State to deal to rioters who have set vehicles on fire and hurled bricks at law enforcement officers.
'It's no different than when a team wins a national championship and people get overexcited,' Sanchez said, adding that the 'vast majority of protestors have been peaceful.' 'We have been calling for protestors to protest peacefully, that is their constitutional right. The vast majority of protestors have been peaceful. There are always a few bad actors.'
'And yes, we think anybody who commits property damage ought to be arrested and ought to be prosecuted,' Sanchez noted. Sanchez condemned Trump's decision to deploy federal troops to handle civilian unrest as 'authoritarian flexing' that does not enhance anyone's safety.
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Reuters
36 minutes ago
- Reuters
Two days of terror: How the Minnesota shooter evaded police and got caught
NEW HOPE, Minnesota, June 21 (Reuters) - Vance Boelter's disguise wasn't perfect. The silicone mask was somewhat loose-fitting and his SUV's license plate simply read "POLICE" in black letters. But it was good enough on a poorly lit suburban street in the dead of night. At 2:36 a.m. on Saturday, 30 minutes after authorities say Boelter shot and seriously injured Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, he paused behind the wheel of the SUV near the home of another senator, Ann Rest, in the city of New Hope. The SUV was stocked with weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles, as well as fliers advertising a local anti-Trump rally scheduled for later Saturday and a written list of names of people he appeared to be targeting. Senator Rest, prosecutors would later say, was among those Boelter set out to kill on June 14. As Boelter sat in the SUV down the street from Rest's home, another police car - this one an actual police car - approached. A female officer from the New Hope police department, after hearing about the Hoffman shootings, had come out to check on Rest. Seeing the SUV, complete with flashing lights and police-style decals, she believed the man inside was a fellow officer. But when she attempted to speak to him - one officer greeting another - she got no response. Instead, the man inside the SUV with police markings simply stared ahead. The New Hope officer drove on, deciding to go ahead and check on Rest. Rest would later say the New Hope officer's initiative probably saved her life, an opinion shared by New Hope Police Chief Timothy Hoyt. "With limited information, she went up there on her own to check on the welfare of our senator," Hoyt told Reuters. "She did the right thing." The brief interaction in New Hope underscored the carefully planned nature of Boelter's pre-dawn rampage and how his impersonation of a police officer, including body armor, a badge and a tactical vest, confounded the initial attempts to stop him. After the encounter with the New Hope officer, Boelter, 57, drove away from the scene, moving on to his next target. Police would pursue him for another 43 hours. In the process, they would draw in a phalanx of state and federal agencies, in what ranks as the largest manhunt in Minnesota history and added to the sense of disorientation in a nation already grappling with protests over immigration, the forcible removal of a U.S. Senator from a press conference and a rare military parade in Washington. Federal prosecutors say they may seek the death penalty for Boelter, who has been charged with murdering two people and trying to kill two others, in what Governor Tim Walz has called a "politically motivated" attack. Prosecutors said they are still investigating the motive and whether any others were involved. Boelter has yet to enter a plea. Manny Atwal, a public defender representing Boelter, said he was reviewing the case and declined to comment. This reconstruction of the manhunt is based on court documents, statements by law enforcement officials, and interviews with a Boelter friend, local police officers, lawmakers, and residents of the impacted neighborhoods. While the events unfolded like something out of a TV crime drama, there were parallels with past shooting sprees, criminal justice experts said. James Fitzgerald, a former FBI criminal profiler, said he would not be surprised if Boelter studied a mass shooting in Canada in 2020, when a gunman posing as a police officer killed 22 people in the province of Nova Scotia. "These guys always do research beforehand. They want to see how other killers were successful, how they got caught," said Fitzgerald, who helped the FBI capture the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski in 1996. "And, of course, a way you're going to buy yourself some time is to pose as a police officer." The violence began at the Hoffman's brick split-level home in Champlin, a leafy, middle-class suburb of Minneapolis. With his emergency lights flashing, Boelter pulled into the driveway just after 2:00 a.m. and knocked on the door. "This is the police. Open the door," Boelter shouted repeatedly, according to an FBI affidavit. Senator Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, soon determined Boelter was not a real police officer. Boelter shot Senator Hoffman nine times, and then fired on Yvette, who shielded her daughter from being hit. As Boelter fled the scene, the daughter called 911. The Hoffmans were on a target list of more than 45 federal and state elected officials in Minnesota, all Democrats, acting U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson told a briefing on Monday. Boelter voted for President Donald Trump, was a Christian and did not like abortion, according to his part-time roommate, David Carlson. Carlson said Boelter did not seem angry about politics. Thompson said Boelter "stalked his victims like prey" but that the writings he left behind did not point to a coherent motive. "His crimes are the stuff of nightmares," he said. "His crimes are the stuff of nightmares," Thompson said. After the Hoffman's, the next address plugged into Boelter's GPS system was a lawmaker about 9 miles away in the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove. Surveillance cameras from the home of State Representative Kristin Bahner show a masked Boelter ringing the doorbell at 2:24 a.m. and shouting "Open the door. This is the police. We have a warrant," the FBI affidavit says. Bahner and her family were not at home. From there, Boelter moved on to New Hope and the close encounter with the officer who had dispatched to Rest's home. After that, he wasn't seen by police again until he arrived at the residence of Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the state House, in Brooklyn Park. Sensing that Hortman might be a target, Brooklyn Park police officers had decided to check on her. When they arrived at 3:30 a.m. they saw a black Ford Explorer outside her house, its police-style lights flashing. Boelter was near the front door. When Boelter saw the officers exit their squad car, he fired at them. He then ran through the front door on the house, where he killed Melissa and Mark Hortman, her husband. When Boelter left the Hortman's home, he abandoned his fake-police SUV. Inside the car, police found a 9mm handgun, three AK-47 assault rifles, fliers advertising a local anti-Trump "No Kings" rally and a notebook with names of people who appear to have been targets, according to court documents. From that point, Boelter was on the run. Little has been revealed about his movements during the period, although police say he visited his part-time residence in north Minneapolis. He also sent texts. In one, to his family's group chat, Boelter writes, "Dad went to war last night". In another, to a close friend, Boelter says he may be dead soon. Police also know that by early morning on Saturday Boelter had met a man at a Minneapolis bus stop who agreed to sell him an e-bike and a Buick sedan for $900. The two drove to a bank where Boelter withdrew $2,200 from his account. A security camera shows Boelter wearing a cowboy hat. But it took until 10:00 a.m. on Sunday for authorities to close in. Police searching the area near Boelter's family home in the rural community of Green Isle, discovered the abandoned Buick, along with a cowboy hat and handwritten letter to the FBI in which Boelter admitted to the shootings, prosecutors said. Law enforcement scrambled to set up a perimeter surrounding the area, SWAT teams and search dogs were deployed, and drones were put in the air. It was the trail camera of a resident, however, that provided the final clue, capturing an image of Boelter around 7:00 p.m., allowing officers to narrow their search. Two hours later, the pursuit ended with Boelter crawling to police. He was armed but surrendered without a fight.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump's coalition is self-destructing over the Iran war question
You have to admit that there's something delicious about watching Ted Cruz get served his just deserts by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a nearly two-hour long interview on Carlson's own channel and in Cruz's Washington office, Carlson repeatedly grilled, roasted, and fried the Texas senator, exposing a deepening rift within the Maga movement and showing us the hollowness of our so-called leaders along the way. You don't have to be a fan of Carlson to enjoy the spectacle of a Republican civil war. Carlson, who once hosted a show on CNN, established his reputation on Fox News and then became 'a racist demagogue and promoter of far-right disinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories', as a 2023 profile in Mother Jones described him. While at Fox, he was for a time the highest rated personality on cable TV and was deeply influential in setting the conservative agenda. On air at Fox – and in this essay for Politico – he praised Trump. Off-air, he was texting his colleagues a different opinion: 'We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,' Carlson wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. 'I truly can't wait,' he wrote, adding: 'I hate him passionately.' So there's something fishy about Carlson. We all know it. Even Fox knew it. He was abruptly fired from the network in 2023 and later launched his own streaming service, the Tucker Carlson Network, in December 2023. His 2024 interview of Vladimir Putin has raised questions about judgment. 'I am definitely more sympathetic to Putin than Zelenskyy,' he told NewsNation. Questionable, to say the least. Carlson is also a much under-appreciated actor. He will explode in giddy laughter in one second only to turn accusatory the next. He lures you in with a goofy gaze, but he is extremely quick on his feet. He somehow always looks like he just got back from summer vacation. People call him a pundit. I think of him more as a performance artist. While the interview with Cruz illustrates some of Carlson's abilities, it was also a masterclass in highlighting Cruz's main talent. Over the years, Cruz has honed the marvelous skill of brilliantly showcasing his own limitations (such as the time Cruz ran off to Cancún in the middle of a devastating power outage that occurred during a deep freeze in Texas). The Carlson-Cruz interview centered on a few topics: the influence of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) on American politics, if Aipac should register as a foreign agent (Carlson: Yes. Cruz: No), and who blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, among others. The question of the United States going to war with Iran, however, was at the center of the interview, as it is also at the center of our national politics right now. 'How many people live in Iran, by the way?' Carlson asks Cruz. 'I don't know the population,' Cruz responds. 'You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple?' Carlson asks, incredulously. Cruz shoots back. 'How many people live in Iran?' Carlson quickly responds, '92 million. How could you not know that?' 'I don't sit around memorizing population tables,' Cruz says defensively. 'Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government,' Carlson says. 'I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran!' 'You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of their government. You don't know anything about the country!' 'No. You don't know anything about the country!' And so it went. The whole fiasco was at times childish, other moments vindictive, but all over simply wonderful, as the Maga world implodes on its own fissures, ignorance, and contradictions. A case in point. Cruz repeatedly lashes out at the Iranian regime for basing its politics on religion, while he wishes to use his own theology to justify his politics. Carlson is having none of it. It began with Cruz telling Carlson that he was 'taught from the bible that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.' 'Those who bless the government of Israel?' Carlson asks. Cruz responds that 'it doesn't say the government of Israel. It says the nation of Israel. That's in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.' Carlson presses Cruz. 'Where is that?' 'I can find it for you. I don't have the scripture off the tip of my, pull out the phone and use Google.' 'It's in Genesis,' Carlson quickly says. 'So you're quoting a Bible phrase that you don't have context for and you don't know where it is, and that's like your theology? I'm confused.' The Maga movement is doomed to self-destruct at some point, full as it of too many contradictory tendencies. We already saw it crack when Elon and Donald took a relationship pause recently. But there are other fractures. Trump ran on a platform that was supposed to end all wars immediately. That clearly hasn't happened. In fact, he may soon bring the United States into another endless war in the Middle East. The prospect is widely disliked, even by his base. Only 19% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 think 'the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran'. Maga diehard Marjorie Taylor Greene now calls Fox News 'propaganda', saying the American people have been 'brainwashed into believing that America has to engage in these foreign wars in order for us to survive, and it's absolutely not true.' Steve Bannon, a key influence on Trump, told reporters this week that 'We don't want any more forever wars.' He added: 'We can't do this again. We'll tear the country apart. We can't have another Iraq.' For his part, Trump offered his typically bold leadership by telling reporters 'Nobody knows what I'm going to do.' Presumably that nobody also includes him. The White House later said that Trump will 'make a decision on whether to attack Iran within two weeks'. Bannon further believes that, if Trump does drag the US into war, most of his base will ultimately follow. The Democratic party, unsurprisingly, can't decide what it wants, though only 10% of those who voted for Harris in 2024 favor going to war. In other words, the US entering Israel's war with Iran is massively disliked across the political spectrum. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. Our fractured and hollow politics may actually enable it. If it happens, the Maga movement may not survive, but do they really have to take the rest of us down with them along the way? Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Recent US political violence aided by DIY murder tradecraft available on internet
A rash of recent assassinations have brought on congressional scrutiny and concern among law enforcement agencies who are wary of an age of political polarization turning deadly. But experts say the violence is as much a byproduct of the times as it is the easy accessibility to DIY murder tradecraft, evident in some high-profile slayings of late. So while the willingness to commit these acts has certainly increased, the tradecraft to pull them off has never been more obtainable. 'Political polarization, combined with the idea that one's opponents are irredeemably evil and that there are no other legal avenues to create change, can lead to violence,' said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst who closely tracks extremists across the political spectrum. 'There are several guides online for assassination, guerrilla warfare or similar violent acts, as well as counter-surveillance manuals shared by individuals in communication apps such as Telegram and online libraries.' The proliferation of those kinds of resources have spilled into the mainstream and have given the average person the knowhow to access the types of instructions on popular apps that were once only available on dark web archives. Whether it's downloading blueprints for and creating a 3D-printed gun, professionally tracking down targets, cooking up a bomb recipe or looking up ways to evade law enforcement once an act has been committed, a number of public attacks show so-called 'lone wolves' using internet resources to plot their crimes. For example, police say Vance Boelter, 57, charged with killing Democratic state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband at their home in Minnesota earlier this month, used a number of data brokering websites to amass not only a hitlist of 'mostly or all Democrats' but their home addresses, too. Court documents say Boelter was caught with 'lists of internet-based people search engines including Truepeoplesearch, Spokeo, Pipl, Peoplefinders, Beenverified, Whitepages, Truthfinder, Intelius, Ownerly, USsearch and Peoplelooker' which can 'aggregate data from various online and offline sources to provide the querying user details about the searched-for person, such as home addresses, phone numbers and information about family members'. Extremists on the far right have also used similar resources to create kill lists of their enemies, and Fisher-Birch said some have become more 'adept at doxing in recent years'. He noted that terrorist groups have gone about producing easily digestible manuals in pdf form then spreading them on Telegram, while other instructional materials are 'commercially available books written by former members of militaries or intelligence services' they suggest reading. Available online materials can also extend to sourcing weaponry. Fisher-Birch continued: 'According to police, Luigi Mangione used a partially 3D-printed pistol to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.' Mangione, who has amassed a cult-like following among anti-corporatists after the Manhattan assassination of Thompson in December, also allegedly managed to evade a manhunt for days with a stunning amount of counter-surveillance tradecraft – something other known attackers have achieved. Still, to this day, the masked and hooded suspect seen planting pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC offices in Washington DC the night before the 6 January 2021 insurrection on Capitol Hill has yet to be caught. In the past, multiple law enforcement sources remarked how the surveillance footage shows the would-be bomber wearing the same prescribed disguise and gloves featured in terrorism manuals circulated on the far right. Incidents like that suggest the ecosystem of DIY manualling has partly been seeded by extremist organizations on social media, which have then spread elsewhere. As early as 2018, the internationally designated neo-Nazi terrorist group the Base posted military tradecraft gleaned from US Marine Corps manuals and other sources instructing how to make a covert exit if you're pursued by authorities. Other jihadists groups, such as the Islamic State, have uploaded similar literature on encrypted forums they use to communicate with recruits. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion 'More generally, violent extremists groups put considerable time and effort into inciting followers to plot attacks and building robust online communities for information sharing and advice,' said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center. '[IS] and al-Qaida produce and disseminate manuals and videos teaching followers to construct explosive devices, detonators, suppressors and more.' Coinciding with this surge in political violence is the growing willingness of nation-states to increase covert assassination operations on foreign soil, taking advantage of the moment. Iranian agents sponsored the attempted assassination of a dissident in New York by tapping criminal networks to carry it out, while Indian diplomats tried to disguise the murder of a Sikh activist in Canada as a gangland killing. Of course, political assassinations and their attempts, without the clear aid of online tools, have also come to pass: a man stalked an event at a Jewish museum in DC to gun down Israeli diplomats in May, while then presidential candidate Donald Trump faced an attempted assassination last summer in the lead-up to the November vote – both attackers using over-the-counter firearms and limited tradecraft. One thing does seem clear: authorities appear unable or unsure on how to counter the rising threat of lethal political violence. The FBI declined to comment on the broad string of recent political assassinations and how the agency plans to handle them in the future. 'We have nothing to add to previous statements about the events you mention,' said a spokesperson in an email. After Boelter was caught, a federal agent in Minnesota called his alleged murders 'an appalling act of political violence that has no place in our country'.
