Author: chicagoinquirer

by Darlene Superville WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will observe next month’s 22nd anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil at an Alaska military base with service members and their families, the White House announced. Biden will not participate in any of the observances at 9/11 memorial sites in New York City, Virginia or Pennsylvania. Instead, the president will stop in Alaska for a Sept. 11 observance at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage on his way back to Washington after a trip to Asia. Biden is scheduled to travel to India from Sept. 7-10 to attend a…

by John Seewer TOLEDO, Ohio  — Samuel “Joe” Wurzelbacher, who was thrust into the political spotlight as “Joe the Plumber” after questioning Barack Obama about his economic proposals during the 2008 presidential campaign, and who later forayed into politics himself, has died, his son said Monday. He was 49. His oldest son, Joey Wurzelbacher, said his father died Sunday in Wisconsin after a long illness. His family announced this year on an online fundraising site that he had pancreatic cancer. “The only thing I have to say is that he was a true patriot,” Joey Wurzelbacher — whose father had…

by Steve Peoples and Brendan Farrington TALLAHASSEE, Fla.  — Ron DeSantis scoffed when the NAACP issued a travel advisory this spring warning Black people to use “extreme care” if traveling to Florida. The leading civil rights group argued that the state’s loose gun laws and the Republican governor’s “anti-woke” campaign to deny the existence of systemic racism created a culture of “open hostility towards African Americans and people of color.” Just three months later, DeSantis is leading his state through the aftermath of a racist attack that left three African Americans dead. Black leaders in Florida — and across the…

Kimberlee Kruesi and Jonathan Mattise NASHVILLE, Tenn.  — Republican lawmakers voted Monday to temporarily silence a Democratic member of the so-called Tennessee Three during an already tense House floor session after determining the young Black member violated newly enacted rules designed to punish disruptive members. The move directed at Rep. Justin Jones prohibited him from speaking on and debating bills for the remainder of the day, which came a week into a special session that Republican Gov. Bill Lee called in reaction to a deadly shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville in March. The House and Senate are…

by Agency reports CHICAGO  — A shooting that wounded two women at Friday night’s Chicago White Sox-Oakland Athletics game most likely involved a gun that went off inside Guaranteed Rate Field, Chicago’s interim police superintendent said Monday. Officials have said little about where the bullets came from, or if someone brought a gun into the stadium, but Fred Waller, interim superintendent of Chicago Police Department, said Monday that investigators have nearly ruled out the possibility that the shots came from outside the ballpark, the Chicago Tribune reported. “We’re dispelling a lot of things,” Waller said during a brief media availability. “(A shot) coming from…

by Kate Brumback ATLANTA  — Mark Meadows testified in court Monday that actions detailed in a sweeping indictment that accuses him of participating in an illegal conspiracy to overturn then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss were all part of his job as White House chief of staff. The extraordinary testimony — from a former top presidential aide who now faces charges alongside his old boss — came in the first courtroom skirmish in a case that’s likely to have many. Meadows’ claims were part of his argument that the case should be moved from a state court to federal court.…

by Russ Bynum JACKSONVILLE, Fla.  — A campus security officer tipped off by observant students likely stopped the killer who fatally shot three people at a nearby Dollar General Store from carrying out his racist attack at Edward Waters University, the president of the historically Black institution said Monday. Students reported seeing a young, white man, pull into a campus library parking lot in Jacksonville, Florida, and begin putting on tactical gear Saturday, Edward Waters University President Zachary Faison Jr. said. They immediately flagged down a security officer who was on patrol to tell them what they saw. The officer approached the…

by Michael Tarm CHICAGO  — A judge on Monday refused to dismiss the case against a father who helped his son obtain a gun license three years before authorities say the younger man fatally shot seven people at a 2022 Fourth of July parade in suburban Chicago. Illinois prosecutors charged Robert Crimo Jr. under a unconstitutionally vague law, his lawyer argued at a hearing earlier this month in Waukegan, north of Highland Park where the shooting took place. Lake County Judge George Strickland rejected that argument, as well as a defense contention that prosecutors charged Crimo Jr. too late — after a…

by Nathan Ellgren WASHINGTON  — “Hola, mamá.” What seems like an unremarkable greeting between mother and son was in this case anything but. Forty-two years ago, hospital workers took María Angélica González’s son from her arms right after birth and later told her he had died. Now, she was meeting him face-to-face at her home in Valdivia, Chile. “I love you very much,” Jimmy Lippert Thyden told his mother in Spanish as they embraced amid tears. “It knocked the wind out of me. … I was suffocated by the gravity of this moment,” Thyden told The Associated Press in a…

by Ciaran Giles MADRID  — The mother of Spanish soccer federation president Luis Rubiales started a hunger strike Monday in a church in southern Spain in defense of her son, who is under fire for kissing a player during the Women’s World Cup awards ceremony. Ángeles Béjar told the state news agency EFE she would remain on hunger strike “night and day” until a solution is found to the “inhumane hounding” of her son. Speaking outside the church in the southern town of Motril, Rubiales’ cousin, Vanessa Ruiz, joined his mother in calling on the player, Jenni Hermoso, to “tell the truth.”…