Republican Representative Chris Jacobs announced Friday that he will not run for another term in Congress amid the backlash over his support for new gun control measures.

Jacobs, who represents parts of western New York, including suburban Buffalo, told reporters he has decided to retire instead of facing what he said would be “an incredibly divisive election.” His announcement came just days after Jacobs broke with his party and voiced support for a federal assault weapons ban.

“The last thing we need is an incredibly negative, half-truth-filled media attack funded by millions of dollars of special interest money coming into our community around this issue of guns and gun violence and gun control,” he said, according to footage of his announcement.

Last week, as the nation mourned deadly shootings at a Texas elementary school and a Buffalo supermarket, Jacobs said he would vote for a federal ban on assault weapons and other measures if he had a chance. His comments sparked a furious backlash among conservatives, who have refused to consider new gun control legislation to try to curb the violence.

“I want to be completely transparent of where I am in Congress. If an assault weapons ban bill came to the floor that would ban something like an AR-15, I would vote for it,” Jacobs said, according to Spectrum News 1.

He also voiced support for limiting magazine capacity, said he planned to write a bill banning body armor for civilians, and said he believed it was “perfectly reasonable” to raise the age limit to purchase semi-automatic weapons to 21.

Jacobs currently represents New York’s 27th Congressional District but had been running for the newly redrawn 23rd District, which includes large swaths of new voters, including rural counties.

Gerard Kassar, who chairs the New York State Conservative Party, welcomed Jacobs’ decision in a statement, saying the party had been perplexed by Jacobs’ “recent stance on Second Amendment rights, a position well outside the mainstream of the Republican Party, the Conservative Party, and the voters of NY 23.”

“We agree that it’s the best interest of all three — and of Congressman Jacobs himself — that he forgoes a run for reelection and returns to civilian life. We wish him only the best in his future endeavors,” he said.

Republicans have largely ignored President Joe Biden’s pleas to back new measures to address gun violence despite polling that shows most U.S. adults think that mass shootings would happen less often if guns were harder to get, and support legislation that would curb access to guns or ammunition. But the numbers are highly partisan, with the vast majority of Republicans in disagreement.

Jacobs had been considered an easy favorite to win the seat before his comments, which sparked a flurry of interest from rival Republicans including Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, best known for his combative campaign for governor in 2010. New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of GOP leadership and rising star in the party, endorsed Paladino shortly after Jacobs’ announcement.
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Peter Navarro, former trade adviser to President Donald Trump, has been indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with a subpoena from the House of Representatives committee that is investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Justice Department said Friday.

A federal grand jury charged Navarro with one count involving his refusal to appear for a deposition before the January 6 select committee and another count for his refusal to produce documents, the department said.

The indictment was returned on Thursday and unsealed Friday.

Navarro was due to make an initial appearance Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

In its subpoena, the January 6 committee said it had reason to believe that Navarro had information relevant to its investigation, the department said.

Each count of contempt of Congress carries a minimum of 30 days and a maximum of one year in jail, as well as a fine of up to $100,000.
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U.S. employers added 390,000 jobs in May, extending a streak of solid hiring that has bolstered an economy under pressure from high inflation and rising interest rates.

Last month’s gain reflects a resilient job market that has so far shrugged off concerns that the economy will weaken in the coming months as the Federal Reserve steadily raises interest rates to fight inflation. The unemployment rate remained a low 3.6% in May, just above a half-century low, the Labor Department said Friday.

The job growth in May was high enough to keep the Fed on track to pursue what’s likely to be the fastest series of rate hikes in more than 30 years. Stock market futures fell Friday after the government released the jobs report, reflecting that concern.

Businesses in many industries remain desperate to hire because their customers have kept spending freely despite intensifying concerns about high inflation. Americans’ finances have been buoyed by rising pay and an unusually large pile of savings that were accumulated during the pandemic, particularly by higher-income households.

Workers, in general, are enjoying nearly unprecedented bargaining power. The number of people who are quitting jobs, typically for better positions at higher pay, has been at or near a record high for six months.

In May, Friday’s jobs report showed, more Americans came off the sidelines of the workforce and found jobs, a sign that rising wages and plentiful opportunities are encouraging people to look for work. Rising prices might also have led some to take jobs: The number of people ages 55 or over who are working rose last month, suggesting that some older Americans are “unretiring” after leaving their jobs — or being laid off — during the pandemic and its aftermath.

Average hourly wages rose 10 cents in May to $31.95, the government said, a solid gain but not enough to keep up with inflation. Compared with 12 months earlier, hourly pay climbed 5.2%, down from a 5.5% year-over-year gain in April and the second straight drop. More moderate pay raises could ease inflationary pressures in the economy and help sustain growth.

Nearly every large industry added workers in May. One major exception was retail, which shed nearly 61,000 positions. Some large retailers, including Walmart and Target, have reported disappointing sales and earnings. Last month, Walmart said it had over-hired and then reduced its head count through attrition.

Construction companies added 36,000 jobs, a hopeful sign for Americans who have bought new homes that aren’t yet built because of labor and parts shortages. Shipping and warehousing companies, still struggling to keep up with growing online commerce, added 47,000 jobs. Restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues hired 84,000.

The strength of the job market is itself contributing to inflationary pressures. With wages rising across the economy, companies are passing on at least some of their increased labor costs to their customers in the form of higher prices. The costs of food, gas, rent and other items – which fall disproportionately on lower-income households – are accelerating at nearly the fastest pace in 40 years.

Inflation had begun surging last year as spiking demand for cars, furniture, electronic equipment and other physical goods collided with overwhelmed supply chains and parts shortages. More recently, prices for such services as airline tickets, hotel rooms and restaurant meals have jumped as Americans have shifted more of their spending to those areas.

To try to cool spending and slow inflation, the Fed last month raised its short-term rate by a half-point, its biggest hike since 2000, to a range of 0.75% to 1%. Two additional half-point rate increases are expected this month and in July. And some Fed officials have suggested in recent speeches that if inflation doesn’t show signs of slowing, they could implement yet another half-point increase in September.

The Fed’s moves have already sharply elevated mortgage rates and contributed to drops in sales of new and existing homes. The rate hikes have also magnified borrowing costs for businesses, which may respond by reducing their investment in new buildings and equipment, slowing growth in the process.
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A man shot and killed two women in the parking lot of a church in the U.S. state of Iowa on Thursday and then turned the gun on himself, police said, adding three more dead to the toll in a series of recent shootings that have rocked the United States.

The Iowa shooting took place shortly after President Joe Biden delivered a major address on gun violence in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, in recent weeks.

Meanwhile another shooting Thursday wounded two people attending a burial at cemetery in Racine, Wisconsin.

The Iowa shooting took place outside Cornerstone Church, a fundamentalist Christian church east of the city of Ames, while a church program was on inside, said Nicholas Lennie, chief deputy of the Story County Sheriff’s Office.

When deputies arrived on scene they found all three dead, Lennie said, adding that he could not provide identities nor disclose what the relationship between them may have been.

“This appears to be an isolated, single-shooter incident,” Lennie said.

Moments before, Biden urged Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other gun control measures to address the mass shootings.

“Enough, enough!” the president said.

The United States has been shaken in recent weeks by the mass shootings that killed 10 Black residents in upstate New York, 19 children and two teachers in Texas, and two doctors, a receptionist and a patient in Oklahoma.

In Racine, Wisconsin, on Thursday, multiple gunshots were fired into a crowd of mourners attending an afternoon grave-side funeral, wounding two people, Racine police Sergeant Kristi Wilcox told reporters.

One victim was treated at a local hospital and released, the other was flown to a Milwaukee hospital, apparently suffering more serious injuries, Wilcox said. No suspect was taken into custody.
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Harini Logan was eliminated from the Scripps National Spelling Bee once, then reinstated. She missed four words in a grueling standoff against Vikram Raju, including one that would have given her the title.

In the first-ever lightning-round tiebreaker, Harini finally claimed the trophy.

The 13-year-old eighth grade student from San Antonio, Texas, who competed in the last fully in-person bee three years ago and endured the pandemic to make it back, spelled 21 words correctly during a 90-second spell-off, beating Vikram by six.

Harini, one of the best-known spellers entering the bee and a crowd favorite for her poise and positivity, wins more than $50,000 in cash and prizes.

Perhaps no champion has ever had more final-round flubs, but Harini was no less deserving.

She is the fifth Scripps champion to be coached by Grace Walters, a former speller, fellow Texan and student at Rice University who is considering bowing out of the coaching business. If so, she will depart on top.

The key moment came during the bee’s much-debated multiple-choice vocabulary round, when Harini defined the word “pullulation” as the nesting of mating birds. Scripps said the correct answer was the swarming of bees.

But wait!

“We did a little sleuthing after you finished, which is what our job is, to make sure we’ve made the right decision,” head judge Mary Brooks said to Harini. “We (did) a little deep dive in that word and actually the answer you gave to that word is considered correct, so we’re going to reinstate you.”

From there, Harini breezed into the finals against Vikram. They each spelled two words correctly. Then Scripps brought out the toughest words of the night.

Both misspelled. Then Vikram missed again and Harini got “sereh” right, putting her one word away from the title. The word was “drimys,” and she got it wrong.

Two more rounds, two more misspelled words by each, and Scripps brought out the podium and buzzer for the lightning round that all the finalists had practiced for in the mostly empty ballroom hours earlier.

Harini was faster and sharper throughout, and the judges’ final tally confirmed her victory.

The last fully in-person version of the bee had no tiebreaker and ended in an eight-way tie. The 2020 bee was canceled because of the pandemic, and in 2021 it was mostly virtual, with only 11 finalists gathering in Florida as Zaila Avant-garde became the first Black American champion.

The changes continued this year with Scripps ending its deal with longtime partner ESPN and producing its own telecast for its networks ION and Bounce, with actor and literacy advocate LeVar Burton as host. The transition was bumpy at times, with long and uneven commercial breaks that broke up the action and audio glitches that exposed the inner workings of the broadcast to the in-person crowd.

The bee itself was leaner, with fewer than half the participants it had in 2019 because of sponsors dropping out and the end of a wild-card program. And spellers had to answer vocabulary questions live on stage for the first time, resulting in several surprising eliminations during the semifinals.

Harini bowing out on a vocabulary word was briefly the biggest shock of all. Then she was back on stage, and at the end, she was still there.
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Two years after the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer that touched off months of demonstrations against police brutality, a U.S. public opinion survey suggests solid support among Americans for broad reforms to policing.

The study, conducted by the nonpartisan Gallup Center on Black Voices from April 24 to May 17, found 50% of Americans favored “major changes” to policing in the U.S., while 39% said “minor changes” were needed to improve how police do their jobs.

“U.S. adults overall remain steadfast that some reform to policing is needed, whether those are major changes or minor changes with the way we police society,” said Camille Lloyd, director of the Gallup Center on Black Voices in Washington.

The poll included a survey of 4,000 Black Americans and found that 72% of them wanted major changes to policing, compared with 44% of whites and 54% of Hispanics. Half of Black respondents said they were particularly supportive of eliminating policing against nonviolent crimes and reducing the operating budgets of police departments to shift the money toward social programs.

Overall, two-thirds of respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed with requiring officers to have good relations with the community. They also favored changing management practices so officers with multiple incidents of abuse of power are no longer allowed to serve.

Ninety-one percent of Black adults said they supported reforms so that police officers face legal action for abuse of power or unnecessary harm. “We found a common theme in the survey of support for fostering better relations with the police and increased accountability for misuse or abuse of power,” Lloyd told VOA.

The study found Black Americans, like other groups, reported less frequent interactions with police over the last year compared with previous years, but some Black respondents were more likely to describe such interactions as positive compared with what they reported in 2020. The study noted the positive ratings of interactions between African Americans and police still lagged behind the national average for all racial groups.  

“I think our research shows Black Americans want safer communities but don’t want to have these negative encounters with the police,” said Lloyd.  

The Gallup Center for Black Voices started its surveys in July 2020. The research is designed to gather public opinions on justice issues that can be monitored over time. The organization has committed to a 100-year study.

Policing laws

President Joe Biden has called on police officers to deliver both effective crime deterrence and equal treatment of the public. Efforts by his Democratic administration to win support in Congress for a police reform law named after George Floyd, however, collapsed in the U.S. Senate amid Republican opposition last September. The legislation was introduced in 2020 after several high-profile killings of unarmed Black people.

With police reform legislation stalled in Congress, Biden used his executive powers last month to tighten rules for federal law enforcement agencies, directing them to revise their use-of-force policies. Additionally, the executive order created a national registry of officers fired for misconduct.

The measure also offered grants to the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies to encourage police to restrict the use of chokeholds and neck restraints when detaining individuals – tactics that have been linked to several high-profile fatal encounters between police officers and civilians.

“It’s a measure of what we can do together to heal the very soul of this nation, to address the profound fear, trauma, exhaustion” that Black Americans in particular “have experienced for generations,” Biden said last month.

The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), representing more than 241,000 law enforcement officers, gave the administration’s executive order mixed reviews. The group expressed support for the fact that the Biden administration didn’t seek to restrict the ability of police officers to protect themselves against lawsuits.

“The executive order does not recommend Congress take action to eliminate qualified immunity for officers, which is of utmost importance as this legal protection for officers is essential,” NAPO said in a statement. Qualified immunity makes it harder to put police officers on trial for using excessive force or for otherwise violating a person’s constitutional rights.

Promoting policing reforms 

With a few months remaining before the November midterm elections that will determine which political party controls Congress, civil rights groups are urging the legislature, currently led by Democrats in both houses, to act on police reform legislation.

“I think those of us who want this to happen are going to have to be engaged and continue to pressure members of Congress and members of the United States Senate to support reforms to policing,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League.

“We are going to have to renew our fight for police reform legislation,” Morial told VOA.

As local and federal efforts seek to curb some police powers, the U.S. Justice Department unveiled a National Law Enforcement Knowledge Lab in April.

It’s a resource hub for law enforcement designed to promote constitutionally based policing and build trust in communities. Law enforcement agencies nationwide can use the Knowledge Lab to access material on best practices and training curricula, as well as a roster of constitutional policing experts to provide support and counsel.

“Providing law enforcement with the tools, resources and support they need to do their jobs effectively and fairly makes our communities safer and stronger,” said Vanita Gupta, U.S. associate attorney general.
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U.S. President Joe Biden, in a White House address Thursday night, will implore Congress to approve “common-sense laws” to attempt to curb the recent spate of mass shooting deaths that have shocked many Americans.

The White House said Biden would call for the new restrictions “to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”

It was not clear whether Biden would advocate for specific restrictions he favors, such as universal background checks for gun buyers or a ban on the sale of the rapid-fire, high-powered weapons that have been used in recent mass shootings.

Neither element is likely to win approval in the politically divided Congress, where lawmakers for years have been at odds over gun legislation.

But some lawmakers are attempting to craft more limited restrictions in the aftermath of the three mass shootings within the past month: 10 Black people gunned down in a racist attack at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store; 21 students and teachers shot to death in their classroom at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school; and four more killed at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical facility.

The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday debated a bill it said was an emergency response to the mass shootings. It would raise the purchase age for an assault weapon from 18 to 21 and attempt to curb the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines and “ghost guns” without identification numbers. The measure could pass the Democratic-controlled House as early as next week but is not expected to advance in the Senate, which is divided equally, with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats.

Mass shootings every week

In the United States this year, there have been 232 mass shootings, defined as incidents in which four or more people, not including the shooter, have been injured or killed. Not a single week has passed without at least four mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group.

Some lawmakers have called for a significant boost in school security measures. Others want rules allowing law enforcement authorities to confiscate guns for a year or so after people threaten to harm others or exhibit mental instability — so-called “red flag” laws.

Congress has long been divided on the passage of new laws to control the sale of guns. Biden and Democrats mostly support a ban on the sale of assault weapons, such as the 10-year U.S. prohibition that ended in 2004, and they have called for more background checks of gun buyers before sales are completed.

Republicans, on the other hand, have condemned mass shooting violence but have regularly blocked gun control legislation. For the most part, Republicans say the proposed restrictions that Democrats favor would impinge on the freedom of law-abiding citizens and are at odds with the right of Americans to own guns that is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Hours after the Texas elementary school rampage, Biden spoke to the nation about gun violence.

“As a nation, we have to ask: When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said. “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”

Vice President Kamala Harris last weekend told reporters that Congress should pass a ban on assault weapons.

“We know what works on this,” she said. “It includes, ‘Let’s have an assault weapons ban.’ You know what an assault weapon is? You know how an assault weapon was designed? It was designed for a specific purpose: to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in a civil society.”
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