STATE & NATION IN BRIEF
Protesters blockade library, shut down drag queen story event
LOS ANGELES — Dozens of protesters physically blocked the entrance to the San Fernando Library this week to stop a scheduled drag storytime reading event from taking place.
Videos posted on social media showed a group of about 70 people — some of whom had previously attended similar demonstrations in
North Hollywood, Glendale and elsewhere — wearing blackand-white shirts reading, “Leave our kids alone.” They chanted the same slogan through bullhorns while hurling verbal abuse and slurs at the guest reader.
Story hours, during which drag queens read to children at venues such as libraries, schools and bookstores, have drawn fury and condemnation from conservatives and rightwing extremists across the country. Some events have been the subject of ANTI-LGBTQ+ threats and at times violent confrontations.
Wednesday’s scheduled 30-minute event, which organizers said was intended to promote youth literacy, never took place.
“What was meant to be a celebration of love and inclusion turned into the opposite,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, the event’s host, said in a statement Thursday.
“Protesters claimed they want to keep children safe while pounding on walls, shouting obscenities and slurs toward my staff and library staff, and using strollers to blockade moving vehicles. The hypocrisy is astounding,” Horvath said.
Ivanka Trump ordered to testify in father’s NY civil trial
NEW YORK — A New York judge ordered Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump to testify at the ongoing trial of the state’s $250 million civil fraud lawsuit against the former president and his sprawling real estate company.
Justice Arthur Engoron on Friday denied Ivanka Trump’s request to strike down a subpoena by New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking her testimony about financial transactions, rejecting her argument that she no longer has sufficient business ties to New York to be subject to the court’s jurisdiction.
“Ms. Trump has clearly availed herself of the privilege of doing business in New York,” Engoron said after holding a brief hearing on the matter.
Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner in the 2024 campaign for president, is accused of inflating his assets by billions of dollars in financial documents provided to banks and insurers. The New York trial is one of six he is facing as he seeks to return to the White House next year. Trump denies wrongdoing and says the case is part of a “witch hunt” by Democrats.
The former president’s daughter is scheduled to testify as soon as Nov. 3 if she fails to overturn the subpoena on appeal. She was initially a defendant in the suit, but she won dismissal by an appeals court earlier this year. Her lawyer argued the subpoena was a form of “harassment” to bypass her dismissal from the suit.
Trump’s adult sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who are defendants in the suit, are expected to testify as soon as Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, respectively, lawyers for the state told the judge Friday. Trump would then testify Nov. 6.
Judge Tanya Chutkan asks Trump for input on request to televise federal Jan. 6 trial
Judge Tanya Chutkan on
Friday asked former President Donald Trump for input on requests by media organizations to televise his federal election interference case.
The U.S. district court judge ordered Trump’s team to weigh in on the motion to allow cameras in the court after making a similar request of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team.
Chutkan gave Trump’s defense team until Nov. 10 to submit filings on the issue.
Trump has previously said he supports as much transparency as possible.
Federal trials are generally not permitted to be televised.
A federal judicial commission recently affirmed the policy and said any reforms would take years to approve and implement.
A coalition of media organizations has asked
Chutkan to make an exception for the Trump trial, citing the historic nature of the case.
Trump is facing four counts of violating rights and defrauding the U.S. with his alleged campaign to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty.
Chutkan has set a March 4 trial date and insists the former president will be tried before America votes again in 2024.
Shelter-in-place order lifted in Lewiston, other Maine communities as search continues for mass shooting suspect
LEWISTON, Maine — Thousands of Mainers were cleared from a shelter-in-place order Friday afternoon as law enforcement continued their second full day searching for a 40-year-old man suspected of committing a pair of mass shootings here.
Lockdowns were lifted in Lewiston, Auburn, Bowdoin, Monmouth, and Lisbon hours after investigators and search teams made clear they were settling into an expansive evidence gathering and manhunt operation that included hundreds of law enforcement personnel from across the country.
Authorities issued this week an arrest warrant for eight counts of murder for Robert Card, the man they said allegedly entered Just-in-time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille Restaurant Wednesday and killed 18 people and injured 13 others.
Maine Public Safety Department Commissioner Michael Sauschuck said the decision to rescind the shelterin-place order came after an internal discussion where officials weighed the pros and cons of communities having to put their lives on pause.
“Are we doing more harm than good by keeping people away from these clinics and their doctors and in schools?” Sauschuck at City Hall. “And while this is still absolutely a dangerous situation without question, we’ve got to make recommendations and ask the people that we serve as the people who we protect, to be vigilant.”
But even as the orders were lifted — though hunting is barred in those communities starting Saturday — Sauschuck said law enforcement had not seen Card in the last two days and his whereabouts were still unknown.
More than 500 tips and leads had already come in to police as early Friday, he said.
FDA staff raises concerns over lack of safety data for sicklecell treatment
The Food and Drug Administration’s staff raised concerns about safety data on a potential gene-editing treatment for sickle cell disease, ahead of a closely watched meeting where scientific experts will weigh the first therapy using Crispr technology.
FDA advisers are preparing to meet Oct. 31 to consider and discuss an application from Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Crispr Therapeutics AG to use a Crispr-based treatment for people with the painful blood disorder.
Crispr makes precisely targeted changes in DNA that researchers are trying to use to repair flaws in patients’ genomes related to inherited disease. It isn’t clear if the genetic diversity of patients studied by the companies in their safety analysis “is sufficient to adequately assess” the risk that the treatment would make unintended changes in patients’ DNA, the FDA staff said Friday in a report, or that it can “adequately capture variants in this population across the United States.”
The report also published data from a clinical trial by the companies that found 93.5% of subjects met the primary endpoint, which was freedom from pain crisis for 12 months after treatment.
Source: Tribune News Service