Day: April 12, 2024

Top FBI lawyer under fire for role in Crossfire Hurricane submits resignation  Washington Examiner

Judge rejects Trump request to dismiss classified documents prosecution  FOX 59 Indianapolis

Hurry up and wait: Trump’s classified documents case is mired in delays that may run past election  KCAU 9

Prada Liquidity Murmurs & Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Veepcasting  Puck

Trump Gets Bad News About Future of His Own Stock  Newsweek

1. Trump tries to boost support for Truth Social as DJT stock tanks  CNBC
2. Some Trump stock investors have already lost half their money  CNN
3. For all his bombast, Trump is plummeting – financially, legally and politically | Lloyd Green  The Guardian

(NewsNation) — Police across the country are issuing warnings around a new social media game called the “senior assassin challenge,” saying the toy water guns used in the game could be mistaken for real firearms which has already caused panic in several cities.

As high schoolers enter their final stretch of the school year, many are partaking in a game going viral on TikTok involving the use of water guns. 

While meant to be harmless, these incidents have turned chaotic in several cities with police bringing attention to the dangers of the game if not played responsibly. 

In many instances, teens dressed in dark clothing attack from hidden places prompting fear among bystanders who are not aware that the attack is part of a game. 

What is the ‘senior assassin’ game?

The “senior assassins” game has gone viral across the country on social media among teens. 

In the game, students separate into teams and shoot each other with water guns. 

Players get assigned a random target they must “tag” to “eliminate” and then post their “hit” on an app, according to the social media videos explaining the game.

Those who “hit” the most people without getting tagged themselves come out on top.  

The rules of the game vary by location. In some cases, rules say that the game cannot be played during school hours or on school property. 

 Videos of the “hits” have been posted on social media, including on TikTok.  

In many reports, teens are dressed in dark clothing and hoodies with hoods up to emulate a real attack, which has alarmed bystanders.

Concerning incidents from the ‘senior assassin’ game

Several incidents spurring from the “senior assassin” challenge have prompted concern from law enforcement. 

Police in San Mateo, California, said they responded to calls involving numerous teens with “guns” around Hillsdale Shopping Center last month, reported KNTV.

 Shoppers who did not know about the game were terrified, they said. 

“Police are detaining teens and locating these fake ‘firearms’ now,” the San Mateo police department said, reported KNTV.

“The guns aren’t real, but could easily be mistaken for one, especially if modified to disguise colorful toy markings with black paint,” Jeanine Luna, a police spokesperson said. 

“We don’t want anybody to get injured or lose their life for playing a game,” Luna also said.

Several Chicago area police departments have also reported chaotic incidents stemming from the game. 

In Gurnee, a suburb north of Chicago, a group of high school students from another suburb entered a restaurant wearing ski masks and holding water guns that police said resembled firearms, reported WMAQ. 

“They were targeting other students who were dining in the restaurant and attempting to spray them with water,” police said, reported the outlet. “An adult, who was a concealed carry holder, in the restaurant mistook the situation for a genuine threat, and the situation could have escalated quickly. The gravity of the situation cannot be emphasized enough; it had the potential to lead to serious consequences.”

Police in Bartlett, another Chicago suburb, said they have gotten reports of teens who are playing the game driving on lawns and brandishing water guns that looked like realistic-looking handguns.

This caused concern for responding officers since they were unable to tell whether the participating students were committing actual crimes or simply playing a game, an alert stated. 

Officers in nearby suburbs have responded to 911 calls made by residents concerned about people wearing masks or hoodies lurking around homes or suspicious vehicles driving around neighborhoods, the Bartlett police said. 

In Spanish Fort, Alabama, which sits ten miles east of Mobile, police chief John Barber said several residents called after seeing what they perceived as a gunman, reported WPMI. 

“We don’t know what that’s about so we try to make a traffic stop and we end up in a car chase last year. Turns out it was seniors trying to do the senior assassin game, ended up in a car chase, bailing out of the vehicle,” he said.

“Again, we don’t know what we’re dealing with until we finally took them into custody and we go, wow, look where this went from a harmless game to a car chase to running from the police for what?”

What police are saying about the ‘senior assassin’ game?  

Police have issued formal warnings and advisories to those partaking in the “senior assassin” game as well as to the general public. 

In Arlington Heights and Bartlett, both Chicago area suburbs, police have set rules for the game. 

Their rules specify the activity cannot take place during school hours or on school property and prohibits trespassing or other illegal activities, alerts in these cities have stated. 

“The concept is not against the law or a local ordinance. We ask everyone to play safely, use common sense and recognize how players’ actions may be perceived by members of the community,” Arlington Heights police wrote in their alert, reported WMAQ.

“The unintentional result of participants running throughout the community with a water gun, some often resembling a look-alike firearm, could have deadly consequences.”

Northern Lancaster County Regional Police Department in Pennsylvania said the “behavior, though intentionally innocent, could easily be perceived, reported, or confronted as suspicious behavior by unknowing persons and outcomes could have serious consequences,” in a post, reported by the York Daily Record. 

Authorities told residents to be aware of the game. 

“When police officers respond to suspicious person calls, they most always engage in the unknown. When encountering a person in the dark, who is wearing dark clothing, and carrying what appears to be a firearm requires an appropriate response. … Determining the intentions of the ‘suspect’ and the difference between a real firearm and a replica water gun at that moment can be life-altering.”

In San Mateo, police are asking residents for assistance “to help end this game,” reported KNTV. 

“We don’t want anybody to get injured or lose their life for playing a game,” Luna said.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program on Friday, in a major step toward keeping a key element of the United States’ foreign intelligence-gathering operation in place.

The House passed a bill reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in a 273-147 vote. The FISA bill now moves to the Senate, which is expected to give it bipartisan approval. Without congressional action, the program will expire on April 19.

Approval came after the duration of the bill was changed to two years from a previous version of five years, as some Republicans had sought.

FISA has attracted criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who argue it violates Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. The bill was blocked three times in the past five months by House Republicans bucking their party.

The White House, intelligence chiefs, and top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee have warned of potentially catastrophic effects of not reauthorizing the program, which was first created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The reauthorization was thwarted earlier this week when House Republicans refused to support the bill House Speaker Mike Johnson had put forward, which fell short of the changes they wanted.

“We will go blind on April 19” without the program, Representative Mike Turner, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Wednesday.

Although the right to privacy is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the data of foreign nationals gathered by the program often includes communications with Americans, and can be mined by domestic law enforcement bodies such as the FBI without a warrant.

That has alarmed both hardline Republicans and far-left Democrats. Recent revelations that the FBI used this power to hunt for information about Black Lives Matter protesters, congressional campaign donors and U.S. lawmakers have raised further doubts about the program’s integrity.

A key issue has been an amendment which would require domestic law enforcement agencies to obtain warrants before searching the database. Executive branch officials argue that such a change would undermine the program’s utility for agencies such as the FBI.

The amendment barely failed in a 212-212 vote ahead of the vote on the bill’s final passage.

The post House Passes FISA Surveillance Bill on Fourth Try appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Minnesota’s new K-12 social studies standards will teach students about Palestinians’ fight for “liberation” against the oppressive “colonizer” state of Israel, according to documents obtained by a think tank in the state.

Under new standards adopted by the Minnesota Department of Education, students will learn about “decolonization,” with accompanying examples that portray the Jewish state as a colonizing force.

Students will be instructed to “describe how individuals and communities have fought” for “liberation against systemic and coordinated exercises of power,” according to the publicly available standards. They will also be asked to analyze “the impact of colonialism” and “dominant and non-dominant narratives.”

The public standards don’t mention Israel directly, but non-public documents obtained by the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based think tank, show that the Israel-Palestine conflict is listed as a corresponding example to each of the above lessons.

The standards, and accompanying examples, push an “ideology” that “portrays Israel as an illegitimate state—an oppressive ‘colonizer’—whose victims are entitled to forcibly throw off their oppressor,” Katherine Kersten, a senior policy fellow at the center, wrote in a recent op-ed. The standards’ non-public examples highlight Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) as an immigrant who has made “contributions” to “political ideas,” Kersten notes.

The new standards—which were approved by a judge on Jan. 16—will allegedly help the next generations “understand our shared history” and help them avoid “repeating the mistakes of the past,” a Minnesota teachers’ union official told Fox 9 after the judge’s approval.

Minnesota Department of Education spokesman Kevin Burns declined to answer the Washington Free Beacon‘s questions, deferring instead to the publicly available guidelines.

The Center of the American Experiment also revealed that Minnesota’s Department of Education “ignored its own paid expert reviewers, and knowingly crafted academic standards that violate multiple statutory requirements.” In fact, three out of four reviewers—experts in citizenship and government, economics, geography, and history—criticized the standards, with one of the reviewers reportedly describing them as “among the worst in the nation.” The reviewers also found that the standards were imbued with “pervasive leftward bias,” divisive ideology, and were unteachable in the classroom, according to the center.

Minnesota isn’t the only state to face backlash for dramatic shifts in standards. California’s new equity-focused math curriculum guidelines abandon student performance tracking and aim to narrow the gap between gifted and non-gifted learners—at a time when only a third of the state’s students are proficient in the subject. The guidelines also recommend most students wait until ninth grade to take Algebra I, effectively limiting students from reaching Calculus before graduating high school.

Jo Boaler, a Stanford University professor whose research was credited with axing eighth grade algebra in San Francisco and nudging the state away from accelerated math pathways, is facing allegations of “reckless disregard for accuracy” in her work, according to an academic complaint filed last month.

The post Under New Social Studies Standards, Minnesota Public School Students To Learn Palestinians’ ‘Liberation Struggles’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.