HellsBelle

After a shooter killed six people at Nashville’s Covenant School in 2023, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature ignored calls to pass gun control measures. Instead, they passed a series of increasingly punitive laws aimed not only at preventing future violence but dissuading kids from making threats that disrupt school and terrify other students.

Two contradictory laws went into effect before this school year began. One requires school officials to expel a student only if their investigation finds the threat is “valid,” a term that the law does not define. The other mandates that police charge people, including kids, with felonies for making threats of any kind, credible or not. As a result, students across the state can be arrested for statements that wouldn’t even get them expelled.

Tennessee has not yet released statewide data on how many arrests for threats of mass violence have been made since school started in August. But Hamilton County arrested 18 students in the first six weeks of the school year, more than twice as many as Nashville’s Davidson County — despite Hamilton having far fewer students. Data that ProPublica and WPLN obtained through a records request shows that at least 519 students were charged with threats of mass violence last school year, when it was a misdemeanor, an increase from 442 the prior year. Many of them were middle schoolers and most were boys. The youngest child charged last school year was 7 years old.

Virginia does not have to restore the registrations of 1,600 voters, some of whom appear to have been wrongly removed, ahead of next week’s election, the US supreme court said on Wednesday.

The court made the decision on its emergency docket and did not give a rationale for its decision, which is customary for rulings on an expedited basis. All three liberal justices on the court – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – said they would not have halted a lower-court ruling earlier in October ordering the state to restore the voter registrations.

The legal dispute centers on a 7 August executive order by the Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, directing the state to run its voter registration rolls against DMV data on a daily basis to check for non-citizens. The justice department and civil rights groups sued, saying that the state was violating a federal law that prohibits systematic removals of voters within 90 days of a federal election.

Earlier this month, subscribers to the Wisconsin Law Journal received an email with an urgent subject: “Upholding Election Integrity — A Call to Action for Attorneys.”

The letter began by talking about fairness and following the law in elections. But it then suggested that election officials do something that courts have found to be illegal for over a century: treat the certification of election results as an option, not an obligation.

The large logo at the top of the email gave the impression that it was an official correspondence from the respected legal newspaper, though smaller print said it was sent on behalf of a public relations company. The missive was an advertisement from a new group with deep ties to activists who have challenged the legitimacy of recent American elections.

Two women were removed from a British Airways flight at Heathrow after an altercation reportedly provoked by a Make America Great Again (Maga) cap.

The incident occurred on Saturday as the women, aged 40 and 60, were preparing to board a flight bound for Austin, Texas.

Witnesses said that one woman took offence at her fellow passenger’s red Maga hat, worn by supporters of the former US president Donald Trump, and asked that it be removed, the Sun reported.

Punches were allegedly exchanged between the two women, both booked to fly in premium economy, before they ended up squaring up to one another in the cabin. When the captain called for assistance, police arrived at the scene to escort the passengers from the aircraft.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre thinks it would be “not fair” for the Liberals to oust Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now, as in his view they are “morally obligated” to keep him.

Poilievre’s comments come ahead of another potentially significant Liberal caucus meeting Wednesday, during which members are expected to continue discussions around the party’s leadership and the next election.

“I think the Liberals are morally obligated to keep Justin Trudeau,” Poilievre told 580 CFRA’s The Morning Rush host Bill Carroll in a radio interview on Tuesday.

In the summer of 2023, a Canadian taxpayer logged into his Canada Revenue Agency account, falsely amended previous tax returns and wrongly claimed he was suddenly owed more than $40 million in refunds.

Then, without verifying the newly filed tax slips, the Canada Revenue Agency authorized the payments and promptly began making the initial instalments, according to sources.

An investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada has learned the scam might never have been detected, except for one thing.

CIBC became alarmed after noticing the government of Canada had deposited an unusually large payment of $10 million to a customer's bank account.

The bank contacted the CRA to make sure it hadn't made a mistake.

Steve Bannon emerged Tuesday from four months in federal prison. He was tanned, supposedly “empowered,” and obviously eager to again help Donald Trump lie about election results if he loses.

But he presented himself on his War Room show and in a press conference Tuesday as a freedom fighter.

“If you’re not prepared to be thrown in prison by this weaponized justice system, then you’re not prepared to stand up and fight for your country,” Bannon said after serving his sentence at a low-security prison in Connecticut.

A former Republican congressional candidate was charged with stealing ballots during a test of a voting system in Madison County, Indiana, state police said on Tuesday.

During the test on Oct. 3, which involved four voting machines and 136 candidate ballots marked for testing, officials discovered that two ballots were missing, according to the Indiana State Police.

Surveillance video showed Larry Savage, 51, a precinct committeeman, folding and placing both ballots in his pocket after receiving instructions about the validity of the test ballots, the police said.

A search warrant was issued and Savage's residence was subsequently searched, police said, adding that officers found the missing ballots in his vehicle.

Rick Roth is a staunch Republican and a conservative member of the Florida Legislature, but he’s quick to point out that he’s first and foremost a farmer. Roth grows vegetables, rice and sugar cane on the thousands of acres passed down to him from his father, in Palm Beach County south of Lake Okeechobee. And because the farm relies on a steady stream of laborers, most of them from Mexico, Roth spent substantial time over the last three decades, before and after he became a politician, trying to stop lawmakers from messing with his workforce.

A big part of that fight was against legislation that would make employers verify their workers’ immigration status. Such laws, Roth once said, would bankrupt farmers like him.

But by 2023, when Florida was once again considering such a bill, Roth’s convictions had grown shaky. In May of that year, he sat and listened as his Democratic colleagues voiced their opposition: “This bill will tank our state’s economy by directly harming Florida's agriculture, hospitality and construction industries,” one of them warned.

Several minutes later, (he) rose from his seat on the House floor, peered through reading glasses and delivered a statement antithetical to what the 70-year-old had long stood for: “I rise in support of SB 1718,” he announced. First among his reasons, he said, was an “invasion” of immigrants at the border. He called it a “ticking time bomb.”

Roth didn’t mention it on the House floor or broadcast it to his constituents, but the visa program made his farm mostly impervious to the provisions he’d rallied against in the past. As anxiety gripped communities of undocumented people and many of their employers, Roth Farms was going to be just fine.

A deputy fire chief in Cape Breton has apologized after some guests attended a Halloween dance at a fire hall dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Photos circulating on social media from Saturday's event at the North Sydney Firefighters Club show four people wearing white sheets and white pointed hoods — garb synonymous with the American white supremacist group. One of the partygoers is holding a large cross.

MacLean said he was frustrated that the four guests were not only admitted into the dance but allowed to stay.

Coun. Gurpartap Singh Toor, who sits on both Brampton city council and Peel regional council, denies owning the house on Gardenbrooke Trail, in the northeast of the city. But property records show he has been on the title since 2021, and information obtained through a freedom-of-information request reveals the basement has been rented out illegally that entire time.

Toor's sister has owned the property since 2012, according to the records, and transferred him a one per cent share in 2021, making him a co-owner. It's one of at least four properties that Toor owns — property records show he also owns three houses in Caledon, Ont.

The city first inspected the Brampton property and issued a compliance notice in September, along with a $750 fine, noting that unregistered apartments could pose safety risks to occupants.

The U.S. Justice Department has opened 12 investigations into possible civil rights abuses by police departments since Democratic President Joe Biden took office, but has not secured even one binding settlement to implement reforms in any of them.

After winning office following a wave of mass protests in 2020 over police killings of Black people, the Biden administration highlighted "pattern or practice" investigations of alleged systematic civil rights violations by state or local police as critical to police reform.

A Reuters review of the probes shows that the Justice Department under Biden has moved at a slower pace than it maintained in Democratic President Barack Obama’s first term.

A Justice Department spokesperson said that ensuring lawful and effective policing is a "top priority," noting that the department has been enforcing 16 existing agreements while also opening 12 new investigations.