Man punches election judge in the face while waiting in line to vote
Facebook / Orland Park Police Department
(ORLAND PARK, IL) — A 24-year-old Illinois man has been arrested after allegedly causing a disturbance in a voting line before punching an election judge in the face, police said.
The incident occurred on Sunday at approximately 11 a.m. when Orland Park police officers were dispatched to the Orland Park Township Office in Illinois due to a man — later identified as 24-year-old Daniel Schmidt — “causing a disturbance in the voting line,” police said.
“Officers on scene learned that Schmidt entered the township building and walked past numerous other voters waiting in line to enter the voting area,” the Orland Park Police Department said in a press release detailing the incident. “An election judge posted at the entrance told Schmidt to go to the back of the line and wait his turn, which Schmidt refused.”
Police said that another election judge was called at that point to help assist in the disturbance and Schmidt was once again instructed to go to the back of the line, which Schmidt declined to do.
“Schmidt attempted to push past that election judge and was prevented from entering by that judge and several other employees,” authorities said. “Schmidt began to yell profanities and punched the election judge in the face, knocking their glasses off.”
Several other patrons jumped in and managed to restrain Schmidt until officers arrived and found him inside the Township office where he tried to resist arrest, police said.
“At Orland Park Police Headquarters, the Cook County States Attorney’s Office was contacted and approved (2) counts of Aggravated Battery to a victim over 60 (Class 3 Felony), (2) counts of Aggravated Battery in a public place (Class 3 Felony), (5) misdemeanor counts of Resisting Arrest and one misdemeanor count of Disorderly Conduct,” said the Orland Park Police Department.
Schmidt was held overnight and transported to Bridgeview Courthouse for a detention hearing and the investigation is currently ongoing.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Judiciary Committee will see a changing of the guard in the 119th Congress with a new Democratic leader.
Rep. Jerry Nadler announced Wednesday that he would not run to be the top Democrat on the committee, which he has been for the last seven years.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D- Md., announced plans Monday to challenge Nadler for the leadership spot. Nadler, 77, endorsed Raskin, 61, in a letter to his colleagues.
“As our country faces the return of Donald Trump, and the renewed threats to our democracy and our way of life that he represents, I am very confident that Jamie would ably lead the Judiciary Committee as we confront this growing danger,” he wrote.
Raskin did not immediately comment on Nadler’s decision.
The Maryland congressman’s challenge came as Democrats worried that Nadler was not vigorous enough to match the Republican committee chair, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.
Raskin is the former chair of the House Oversight Committee, a constitutional scholar and also sat on the Jan. 6th Committee. He was also the lead manager for Trump’s second impeachment over the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Raskin said in a letter to colleagues that the Judiciary Committee “will be the headquarters of Congressional opposition to authoritarianism and MAGA’s campaign to dismantle our Constitutional system and the rule of law as we know it.”
Raskin was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2010 and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in 2022 and underwent chemotherapy for both diagnoses and surgery for the former. Last year, Raskin said the cancer was in remission.
The congressman noted his cancer survival in his letter to colleagues.
“I hope to be at the center of this fight and — as someone who has battled cancer and chemotherapy — I can tell you that I will never, never surrender,” he wrote.
Nadler, who plans on staying on the committee, also praised Raskin.
“I am also proud that, under my leadership, some of our caucus’s most talented rising stars have been given a platform to demonstrate their leadership and their abilities,” he wrote. “That includes Jamie Raskin, who in just a few terms in Congress has already proven himself to be an exceptional leader and spokesperson for our party’s values.
(NEW YORK) — Former president Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was framed as his “closing argument” in his bid for the White House and as a way to bring a diverse group of supporters together.
Instead, it included divisive language and racist insults aimed at some of the very voters Trump has been working to attract.
Causing the most backlash were comments from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who made explicit jokes about Latinos and turned to Trump recently calling the United States the “garbage can” of the world.
With just about a week until Election Day, the rally was an opportunity for the Trump campaign to connect with Hispanic and Black Americans, voters the Trump campaign is attempting to court in deep-Blue New York.
His campaign instead was forced to try to respond to distance Trump from the comedian the campaign had chosen to speak at his high-profile event.
“This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” Trump campaign’s senior adviser Danielle Alvarez wrote in a statement to ABC News about the “island of garbage remark.”
Trump Campaign National Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt added on Fox News on Monday morning that Hinchcliffe’s joke was in “poor taste.”
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign immediately slammed Hinchcliffe’s comments, pointing to how Harris would work to support Puerto Rico — a key voting bloc that Harris targeted during a stop in swing state Pennsylvania over the weekend.
“Puerto Ricans deserve better,” she said in a Sunday video post on X.
The backlash to Hinchcliffe’s comments kicked up in Puerto Rico from both sides of the political aisle. Jenniffer Gonzalez, a Republican who is running to be the island’s governor, called the comedian’s comments “despicable, inappropriate and disgusting.” The Republican Party of Puerto Rico also denounced Hinchcliffe’s comments, with party chair Angel Cintrón writing that they were “unfortunate, ignorant, and entirely reprehensible.”
Hinchcliffe responded to criticism from Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz — who ripped the comedian for the “island of garbage comments.
“These people have no sense of humor. Wild that a vice presidential candidate would take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist,” Hinchcliffe wrote on social media. “I love Puerto Rico and vacation there. I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set.”
While Puerto Rico does not vote for president in the general election since it is a U.S. territory, the Republican Party of Puerto Rico held a primary in April as part of its presidential nominating process. That primary was won by Trump, who netted the territory’s delegates.
The controversy is not a first for Hinchcliffe, who has a history of making racially charged jokes.
In 2021, he came under fire after calling fellow comedian Peng Dang racist names in a mocking Chinese accent.
It was during a Big Laugh Comedy show in Austin, Texas, where Dang had just introduced Hinchcliffe to the stage after doing a series of jokes related to #StopAsianHate. During the set, Hinchcliffe reportedly further made racist jokes against Chinese people.
The incident led to the cancellation of several of Hinchcliffe’s upcoming shows and reportedly caused him to be removed from his agency, WME.
Other pre-program speakers at the Madison Square Garden rally also made false and harmful remarks about Harris. Businessman Grant Cardone told the crowd that Harris “and her pimp handlers will destroy our country;” Trump’s friend David Rem called her “the devil” and “the anti-Christ.”
Former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson also made racially charged jokes aimed at Harris; radio host Sid Rosenberg used expletives to describe undocumented immigrants and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also repeated disparaging rhetoric on Palestinians.
Trump’s campaign has still only condemned one comment — those from Hinchcliffe — in a long list of sexist, racist and profane remarks that were made during his Madison Square Garden campaign rally.
In the final weeks of his campaign, Trump has regularly used vulgar, dark and shocking rhetoric to paint a picture of a country being “destroyed” – attacking migrants and his opponent’s intelligence.
(WASHINGTON) — A top government watchdog raised concerns Tuesday over the handling of leak investigations during the first Trump administration that targeted members of Congress and the media despite finding no evidence that the inquiries were politically motivated, according to a newly released report.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz initiated the investigation after public reports that prosecutors, during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term, had obtained warrants to access communications records for members of Congress, congressional staffers and reporters at CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post to identify sources of apparent leaks of classified information.
The investigations were not publicly disclosed until after Trump left office, in part because prosecutors had secured court orders that prevented lawmakers, their staff and media members from learning about the searches.
While Rep. Eric Swalwell and now-Sen. Adam Schiff, both California Democrats, previously revealed their records had been seized as part of the investigation, Horowitz’s report revealed prosecutors also searched the records of 43 others who were congressional staffers at the time the leaked information was published.
But Horowitz’s report noted that the partisan affiliation of the staffers was not imbalanced — 21 staffers whose records were searched were Democrats, 20 were Republicans, and two worked in nonpartisan positions. The inspector general investigation determined the basis for the staffers’ records being searched was entirely due to their known ability to access the materials that were found to be leaked to the press, while the investigations into Schiff, then a congressman, and Swalwell were initially bolstered by information given to the department by an unidentified committee staffer who suspected them of leaking — but provided no evidence to support the claims.
While his name is not mentioned directly in the report, Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, was among the 43 people who were congressional staffers at the time of the Trump-era leak probe whose records were searched, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed.
Patel has also said publicly on multiple occasions that he was subject to investigation by Trump’s DOJ and was also informed by Google that the DOJ had sought information on his personal accounts.
Horowitz’s report expressed concerns regarding the congressional leak investigations largely related to a lack of existing policies at the DOJ to provide senior-level oversight over such investigations that implicate the separation of powers. Records reviewed by Horowitz said the inquiries into members of Congress were conducted by career prosecutors almost entirely without senior-level supervision or notification and that there was no evidence they were pressured to carry out the inquiries despite Trump and other Republicans repeatedly singling out Schiff and Swalwell as possible leakers.
According to Horowitz, that the department was able to carry out its sweeping investigation of the members of Congress and their staff solely on the basis of them having had access to the leaked information “risks chilling Congress’s ability to conduct oversight of the executive branch because it exposes congressional officials to having their records reviewed by the Department solely for conducting Congress’s constitutionally authorized oversight duties.”
As for the Trump-era leak investigations of reporters from CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Horowitz found that officials in the department violated several policies that existed at the time then-Attorney General William Barr authorized the investigations. Prosecutors failed to convene a News Media Review Committee that would normally be consulted in the process of investigations of leaks to members of the media and, in one of the investigations, failed to obtain approval from the director of national intelligence, according to the report.
Upon disclosure of the news media leak investigations in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland convened several meetings with newsroom leaders across Washington, D.C., and ultimately implemented new DOJ policy that bars prosecutors from securing search warrants for reporters’ records to obtain information about their sources.
The future of that policy, however, remains very much in question — given public comments by Trump and his top allies suggesting they fully intend to use the powers of the DOJ and the FBI to target political enemies and even possibly members of the media during his second term. While Horowitz’s report offered up several recommendations for internal policy fixes to the issued identified in the report, all of which were accepted by the Biden DOJ, it will be up to leadership in the incoming Trump DOJ to determine whether those recommendations will be implemented.
