The American Rescue Plan was signed by President Joe Biden last Thursday in an effort to provide financial relief to individuals, businesses and communities hardest hit by the coronavirus. This marked another round of stimulus checks, the third since the pandemic first hit last year.
According to Politico, some Democratic members of Congress do not feel a third stimulus check is enough. Two months before the new relief package was signed, 50 Democratic members of the House of Representatives signed a letter asking President Biden to prioritize recurring direct checks instead of one-time stimulus payments.
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was the letter’s lead signatory. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was among the other House members who signed.
In a January press release, Omar stated, “A one-time payment of $2,000 is simply not enough. The American people are counting on us to deliver transformative change, and we need to meet the moment by delivering monthly payments of $2,000.”
Eleven Senate Democrats also pressed for recurring direct payments and increased unemployment benefits at the beginning of March, according to CNBC.
While recurring stimulus payments did not end up in the signed bill, it’s still possible that a fourth round of stimulus checks or recurring payments could be set up in the future. However, considering that the American Rescue Plan was passed using the budget reconciliation process, recurring payments are unlikely to happen without bipartisan support.
The letter published by Politico states, “Another one-time round of checks would provide a temporary lifeline, but when that money runs out, families will once again struggle to pay for basic necessities. One more check is not enough during this public health and economic crisis.”
Eight people were shot to death at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area on Tuesday evening, the authorities said, raising fears that the crimes may have targeted people of Asian descent.
Six of the people killed were Asian, and two were white, according to law enforcement officials. All but one were women.
A suspect, identified as Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Ga., was captured in Crisp County, about 150 miles south of Atlanta, after a manhunt, said the authorities, who had earlier released a surveillance image of a suspect near a Hyundai Tucson outside one of the massage parlors.
The motive for the killings was unclear, though the Atlanta police initially characterized the shooting at one of the parlors in the city as a robbery in progress. Officials did not say what type of gun had been used in the shooting.
The suspect in custody is white, and it was not clear whether there was a racial motivation in the shootings. Even so, Stop AAPI Hate, formed to prevent anti-Asian discrimination during the coronavirus pandemic, called the shootings “an unspeakable tragedy” for both the victims’ families and an Asian-American community that has “been reeling from high levels of racist attacks.”
Four people died in the first shooting, at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth, a northwest suburb of Atlanta, said Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. That shooting, in which a Hispanic man was injured, was reported around 5 p.m.
CBS has extended The Talk’s hiatus for yet another week after Sharon Osbourne was accused of frequently calling former co-hosts Julie Chen a ‘wonton’ and Sara Gilbert, who is a lesbian, a ‘fish eater’ – but her publicist hit back saying she’s ‘hardly surprised by the lies’.
The recent claims against the 68-year-old came from sources who spoke to journalist Yashar Ali in a week where the network announced it had launched a probe into her on-air bust up with co-host Sheryl Underwood.
She has faced criticism since her an televised row with Underwood last Wednesday, after Osbourne was accused of being racist for defending her friend Piers Morgan in the wake of his Meghan Markle comments.
Insiders told DailyMail.com that Osbourne was ‘set up to fail’ by CBS executives over her defense of Morgan, in a bid to oust her – the highest paid host – from the show.
But several sources, including former co-hosts Leah Remini and Holly Robinson Peete, have since alleged that Osbourne has a history bullying and racist language.
Osbourne is the only original host left on the show, which began in 2010 with Chen, Gilbert, Remini, Marissa Jaret Winokur, and Holly Robinson Peete.
The sources say Osbourne repeatedly referred to then-co-host Chen as ‘wonton’ and ‘slanty eyes’.
They also claim Osbourne referred to another then co-host Sara Gilbert, who is a lesbian, as a ‘p***y licker’ and ‘fish eater’.
In response to the claims involving Chen and Gilbert, Osbourne’s publicist Howard Bragman said the talk show host was ‘disappointed but unfazed and hardly surprised by the lies’.
‘The only thing worse than a disgruntled former employee is a disgruntled former talk show host,’ he said.
‘For 11 years Sharon has been kind, collegial and friendly with her hosts as evidenced by throwing them parties, inviting them to her home in the UK and other gestures of kindness too many to name.
‘Sharon is disappointed but unfazed and hardly surprised by the lies, the recasting of history and the bitterness coming out at this moment.
‘She will survive this, as she always has and her heart will remain open and good, because she refuses to let others take her down.’
Osbourne has found herself at the center of a race row ever since she defended her longtime friend Morgan during a heated on-air discussion with Underwood last week.
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) will host its annual virtual convention and career fair on August 18-21, 2021.
#NABJ21 is the premier multiday conference for journalism education, career development, networking, and industry innovation, attracting leaders and influencers in journalism, media, technology, politics, business, health, arts, and entertainment.
In 2020, nearly 4,000 attendees joined us for our first-ever virtual gathering. We look forward to welcoming you this year! Registration will open soon!
For more information and registration go to: www.nabjonline.org
Her family said Jeanettrius Moore worked hard at a beauty supply shop to support herself and two little girls and appreciated the most recent $1,400 stimulus check issued to help Americans recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The father of her youngest baby, Malik Halfacre, thought he should get half.
Quadruple homicide suspect arrested after SWAT operation on east side
“He wanted some of Jeanettrius’ tax money, stimulus money,” said Wendy Johnson, a cousin who heard Jeanettrius’ account of what led up to a quadruple murder in a house in the 300 block of Randolph Street Saturday night. “She had just got her money, and he wanted half of her money.
“She said, ‘No, you don’t deserve any of this. I work. I take care of our child. You don’t do anything.’ “He said, ‘I really want half.’ “She said, ‘I’ll give you 450. Take it or leave it.’ “He said, ‘I’m gonna get that money.’ “This was the day before.” Johnson was told that on Saturday evening, Jeanettrius was outside at the curb looking after her car when Halfacre walked up.
Third stimulus check: IRS updates ‘Get My Payment’ tool so you can check on status of your money
“She said he gave her an evil look and walked off,” said Johnson. “He came back.”
Police said after Halfacre came back for a second time, four people were dead, the mother of his child was wounded, the baby was missing, and the ex-con was on the run. During an exclusive interview with FOX59, the family identified the dead as Jeanettrius’ 7-year-old daughter, Eve Moore, her brother, 23-year-old Daquan Moore, her mother, 44-year-old Tomeeka Brown, and her cousin, 35-year-old Anthony Johnson. “Malik came back in the house asking, ‘Where’s the money?’ said Johnson, repeating the account Jeanettrius told her. “They’re like, ‘What money? What? What are you talking about?’ “He said, ‘Where’s the money? Where’s the money?’” Johnson said she was told that’s when Halfacre started going through Jeanettrius’ purse.
“Daquan was trying to save his sister. He was taking up for his sister,” said Johnson. “He stood up and said, ‘You cannot have the money. You cannot have her money.’ That’s what she said and pushed Malik, and Malik pulled out the gun and just started killing everybody.
“He shot Daquan first. He shot Anthony. He turned around, and he shot my Auntie Tomeeka. My Auntie Tomeeka said, ‘Malik!’ and he shot her again. He came back and shot Daquan for the second time and somewhere between little Baby Eve got hit somewhere and she was screaming, she was screaming.”
Johnson said Jeanettrius recalled that Halfacre took her and their infant daughter to the car, and after strapping the baby into a child safety seat, he reentered the house to retrieve a milk bottle. “He went back in the house, and that’s when he shot Anthony again when he was coming down the steps,” said Johnson. “When he went in the house, that was Jeanettrius’ cue to run for her life, and that’s what she did. Ran for her life in traffic across New York Street and knocking on everyone’s doors.”
Jeanettrius hid on a neighbor’s porch until IMPD officers arrived as Halfacre drove away with their child.
“He told her that she made him kill everybody,” said Johnson. “She made him do it.”
Jeanettrius directed officers to the home a block north where the victims were discovered. At the same time, Lorenzo Moore walked in the back door to find his brother, Daquan, and the rest of his family.
“I seen all my family members in there on the floor dead,” said Lorenzo. “I could put the picture together of how everything went down and how everybody went.”
Lorenzo said he was in disbelief.
“I didn’t even know that that was my people on the ground suffering because they let a monster out of prison.”
Halfacre was accused of shooting a man five times on the city’s north west side in early 2017 but was released from custody in 2018 after pleading guilty to a lesser charge.
“We always knew that he carried a gun,” said Lorenzo. “He didn’t have a job — just laying around being lazy.”
Lorenzo said his sister was afraid of Halfacre.
“It was like you could feel this fear, but you never want to do anything about it because you’re too scared and it might come to what it’s come to,” he said. “Just him being angry about not having any money and him not doing anything for himself, so he thought he would just take something from her.”
Several hours later, the couple’s baby was recovered unharmed on the city’s north east side while almost 24 hours after the killing, following a four-hour-long SWAT stand off on the east side, Halfacre emerged from a duplex in handcuffs after hiding in an attic to avoid several volleys of tear gas that had been fired inside. “He just felt he could take from her,” said Lorenzo.
In the middle of the grieving family is Shawn Brown who lost a sister, two nephews and a niece on Randolph Street Saturday night.
“We grew up so close. We was always together,” said Brown, “but at the end of the day, we are blood, and we love each other, and we hate to see something like this happen. It is the most tragic thing that has ever happened by far to my family.”
Brown knows of what he speaks, having lost one brother to drowning and two of his wife’s cousins to murder on the far east side a year ago.
“I feel like this gun violence has touched enough people that y’all can go ahead and knock it off,” Browns said. “It’s been enough. Enough is enough.”
The family now is struggling to raise the funds to bury four loved ones.
A white Georgetown Law professor was fired Thursday after getting caught on video belittling black students during a Zoom call with a colleague, saying they “usually” perform “just plain at the bottom” of her classes.
Georgetown Law Dean Bill Treanor said he was “appalled” by the conversation between now-terminated adjunct professor Sandra Sellers and another faculty member, David Batson, who was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
“I informed Professor Sellers that I was terminating her relationship with Georgetown Law effective immediately,” Treanor wrote in a statement released Thursday afternoon. “During our conversation, she told me that she had intended to resign. As a result of my decision, Professor Sellers is no longer affiliated with Georgetown Law.”
A brief clip posted to Twitter Wednesday showed Sellers and Batson having what they believed was a private discussion about a class they jointly taught.
“I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks,” Sellers said. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, oh come on. It’s some really good ones, but there are usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”
Sellers made the comments after saying “they were a bit jumbled,” prompting Batson to apparently nod in agreement, the footage shows.
“That’s the best way I can put it,” Sellers said with a laugh on the call. “It’s like OK, let me reason through that, what you just said.”
Sellers, according to the Georgetown Black Law Students Association, was referencing the only black student in her class. The organization quickly called for her immediate resignation, and a petition demanding her ouster garnered hundreds of signatures from students, alumni and several Georgetown faculty members.
“We demand nothing short of the immediate termination of Sandra Sellers as adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center,” the group said in a statement. “Not suspension. Not an investigation. The university must take swift and definitive action in the face of blatant and shameless racism.”
The revealing clip shows the “conscious and unconscious bias” in grading at Georgetown Law and in other law school classrooms across the country, the group claims.
“The difference is that Sellers was caught and her racism was broadcast for the world to see,” the statement continued.
The recorded call was leaked after it was available to students for several days, the Daily Beast reported.
Treanor promised a “thorough investigation” into the matter in a statement released Wednesday.
“We are responding with the utmost seriousness to this situation,” Treanor said. “I have watched a video of this conversation and find the content to be abhorrent. It includes conduct that has no place in our educational community. We must ensure that all students are treated fairly and evaluated on their merits.”
Charges have been filed against a suspect arrested in a kidnapping incident where the bodies of two men were found at 5203 Arboles Drive shortly after 9 a.m. on Wednesday (March 10).
The suspect, Daniel Karl Hite (w/m, 26), was taken into custody and subsequently charged with two counts of aggravated kidnapping in the 339th State District Court. A booking photo of Hite is attached to this news release.
The victims, identified as Amilcar Eduardo Rivera, 28, and his brother, Richard Alexander Rivera, 25, were pronounced dead at the scene. Their causes of death are pending verification by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
HPD Homicide Division Detectives W. Huff and J. Nguyen reported:
About 2:15 a.m., HPD patrol officers responded to a discharge of firearms call at a condominium complex at the above address. When officers arrived and announced themselves, they were threatened by a male suspect, who stated, “if you want to go home tonight, leave my address.” Officers then saw two males climbing out a second-floor bedroom window. The males claimed they and four other persons were being held against their will by the suspect inside the location. HPD SWAT and Hostage Negotiation teams responded to the scene.
After convincing the suspect to surrender peacefully, SWAT officers searched the residence and found two deceased males,, later identified as Amilcar and Richard Rivera, in a second floor bedroom from which the two males were initially seen climbing out. There were no obvious signs of trauma to either victim.
No charges have been filed for the deaths of Amilcar and Richard Rivera at this time, as the investigation is pending their autopsy results.
Anyone with additional information in this case is urged to contact the HPD Homicide Division at 713-308-3600.
Charges have been filed against a suspect arrested in the fatal stabbing of a man at 11911 Martin Luther King Boulevard about 12:35 a.m. on February 24.
The suspect, Leonard Humphrey (b/m, 46) is charged with murder in the 339th State District Court. A booking photo of Humphrey is attached to this news release.
The victim, Keith Davis, 63, was transported to Memorial Hermann Hospital where he was pronounced deceased.
HPD Homicide Sergeants M. Holbrook, J. Horn, K. Meek and Detective J. Roscoe reported:
Houston Fire Department paramedics responded to a person down call at the apartment complex at the above address and found Mr. Davis on the ground with possible trauma to his chest. He had suffered multiple stab wounds and was transported to the hospital where he died.
Further investigation led to the identity of Davis as the suspect in this case and, on Tuesday (March 9), he was arrested without incident.
HOUSTON – A 46-year-old local chiropractor and her medical group have been named in a civil suit under the False Claims Act alleging fraudulent billing, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Jennifer B. Lowery.
Suhyun An owns and manages Campbell Medical Group PLLC and Johnson Medical Group PLLC dba Campbell Medical Clinic in the Spring Valley area of Houston.
The civil complaint, filed today, alleges An fraudulently obtained over $3.9 million from the Medicare and TRICARE programs by billing for the implantation of neurostimulator electrodes. These are surgical procedures usually requiring use of an operating room, and Medicare pays thousands of dollars for this procedure, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that neither An nor her clinic’s employees performed surgery. Instead, they allegedly applied inexpensive devices used for electro-acupuncture. This procedure involves inserting needles into patients’ ears with a neurostimulator taped behind the ears with an adhesive, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit alleges nurse practitioners working for An learned how to apply the devices by watching YouTube videos and participating in trainings with sales representatives.
The complaint alleges An knew the devices were not billable or recklessly disregarded that fact. She allegedly read specific guidance from a Medicare contractor stating Medicare did not cover the devices because they only provided acupuncture. The suit further claims she ignored emailed warnings from employees and outside billing companies including warnings that the devices were being labeled as “possible fraud.”
The Department of Health and Human Services – Office of Inspector General and Defense Criminal Investigative Services assisted with the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Brad Gray is handling the matter.
The claims are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.
An analysis of police department statistics has revealed that the United States experienced a significant hike in anti-Asian hate crimes last year across major cities.
The analysis released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, this month examined hate crimes in 16 of America’s largest cities. It revealed that while such crimes in 2020 decreased overall by 7 percent, those targeting Asian people rose by nearly 150 percent.
Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of demographic data and policy research nonprofit AAPI Data, told NBC Asian America that while the uptick cannot be entirely attributed to the Trump administration’s incendiary, racist rhetoric about the coronavirus, he believes former President Donald Trump’s wielding of the fact that the virus originated in China and repeated elevation of the “China virus” rhetoric did play a part in fostering hate.
“What Trump did is that he weaponized it in a way,” Ramakrishnan said. “Trump’s rhetoric helps set a certain narrative in place — and presidents have an outsized role in terms of shaping narrative. They don’t call it a bully pulpit for nothing, and especially Trump, the way he frequently used Twitter as well as press conferences and off-the-cuff remarks to campaign rallies to frame the narrative in a particular way, it likely played a role.”
The analysis revealed a surge in cities such as New York, where anti-Asian hate crimes rose from three in 2019 to 28 in 2020, a 833 percent increase. Los Angeles and Boston also experienced notable rises, from seven to 15 and six to 14, respectively. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C., experienced a decline from six to three anti-Asian hate crimes. Chicago remained unchanged, with two crimes each year.
Though New York accounts for a sizable portion of the increase, Ramakrishnan said the increases in other cities are significant.
“We also know that first-generation immigrants tend to underreport acts of racial discrimination and hate crimes, but the fact that we are talking about change data suggests a meaningful shift that likely means not just greater reporting, but actually greater occurrence,” he said.
According to the analysis, it’s likely that overall hate crimes declined due to the pandemic and a subsequent lack of interaction in public areas and other gathering places including public transit, commercial businesses, schools and houses of worship.
The first spike in anti-Asian hate crimes occurred in March and April last year. However, it occurred alongside a rise in Covid-19 cases and ongoing negative associations of Asian Americans with the virus, the analysis noted.
Ramakrishnan explained that research on Trump’s use of racist language in reference to other groups shows that his language did have a profound impact on how people behave toward marginalized groups.
He said a 2020 study that examined Trump’s comments about Mexican immigrants during his presidential campaign — when he referred to them as “rapists” and declared that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best” — found that the inflammatory remarks emboldened certain members of the American public and gave them license to express deeply held prejudices. Researchers dubbed this the “Trump effect” or “emboldening effect.”
“Trump’s rhetoric on Latinos in 2016 actually changed people’s attitudes and behavior towards Latinos,” Ramakrishnan, who worked on the study, said. “So they were more likely to be punitive towards Latinos in the workplace.”
A separate study revealed that the use of “China virus” language to refer to the coronavirus, particularly by GOP officials and conservative outlets, has already resulted in a shift in how many people in the U.S. perceive Asian Americans. The significant uptick in discriminatory coronavirus speech that occurred on March 8 — the day Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., tweeted about the “Wuhan virus,” which coincided with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s interview the day before on “Fox and Friends” in which he referred to the “China virus” — was followed by a rapid reversal of a decadelong decline in anti-Asian bias.
“Research suggests that when people see Asian Americans as being more ‘foreign,’ they are more likely to express hostility toward them and engage in acts of violence and discrimination,” Rucker Johnson, a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of the study, previously told NBC Asian America.
The new report, however, compares figures from 2019 and 2020, which does not include recent graphic attacks on Asian American elders earlier this year that have prompted significant media coverage in recent weeks. Many outlets have attributed the attacks to rhetoric that Trump used during his tenure. But Ramakrishnan cautioned against defaulting to a “simplistic understanding of what’s going on.”
“There’s a complex variety of factors, but the fundamental reality is that there’s an increase in the number of Asian Americans who feel unsafe,” he said.
He said more data on the current situation will become available in another year, and until then, it’s difficult to definitively declare that there’s been an increase in hate crimes of late. It’s possible, Ramakrishnan said, that what Asian Americans were going through a year ago was just as bad or worse but failed to receive the kind of media attention they’re getting now.
He also said there’s likely a confluence of factors that have contributed to the recent attacks on elders, and it cannot be neatly summed up by solely the heightened anti-Asian sentiment witnessed throughout the pandemic.
Ramakrishnan said there could be a combination of the effects of poverty and financial struggle as well as opportunity at play.
“Not everyone reacts to economic deprivation in the same way. And even if someone wants to do something, they might not find the opportunity to do it. So in some ways, Asian elders seem to be softer targets than others for this activity,” he said.
The availability of vaccines for older people, along with Lunar New Year festivities and shopping, could have contributed to more older Asian Americans being out in the community, Ramakrishnan said. And many of the older victims were attacked in areas that had already struggled prior to the pandemic and were hit particularly hard by the economic impacts of the virus.
“Many of these Chinatowns are in places that are low income and also suffering economically. So that might be one set of explanations as to why this phenomenon is taking this particular shape,” he said. “On top of that, we live in an age of viral social media, and … especially the shock value of some of these videos increases awareness and maybe anxiety in the community.”
