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Clash At California Capitol Leaves At Least 10 Injured

Clash At California Capitol Leaves At Least 10 Injured

By Eric M. Johnson and Justin Madden

At least 10 people were injured at a rally outside the California state capitol in Sacramento on Sunday as members of a white supremacist group clashed with counter-protesters, authorities said.

The melee erupted during a rally staged by the Traditionalist Worker Party, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white nationalist extremist group.

One of its leaders, Matt Parrott, said the party had called the demonstration in part to protest against violence that has broken out outside recent rallies by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

The incident may fuel concerns about the potential for violent protests outside the major party conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia this summer and in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election.

“With the eyes of the world’s media on both Philadelphia and Cleveland, no doubt there will be significant protests,” said Democratic strategist Steve Schale. “The extreme rhetoric, combined with the nonstop media attention, does encourage these kinds of events.”

In Sacramento, when the white supremacists arrived at the capitol building at about noon on Sunday, “counter-protesters immediately ran in – hundreds of people – and they engaged in a fight,” said George Granada, a spokesman for the Capitol Protection Service division of the California Highway Patrol.

In announcing the counter-protest, a group called Anti-Fascist Action Sacramento said on its website that it had a “moral duty” to deny a platform for “Nazis from all over the West Coast” to voice their views.

“We have a right to self defense. That is why we have to shut them down,” Yvette Felarca, a counter-protester wearing a white bandage on her head, told reporters after the clash.

The Sacramento Fire Department said 10 patients were treated at area hospitals for multiple stabbing and laceration wounds.

None of the injuries were life-threatening and there were no immediate reports of arrests, Granada said. The building was placed on lockdown.

Matthew Heimbach, chairman of Traditionalist Worker Party, said his group had expected violence even though it planned a peaceful rally and had a permit.

“We were there to support nationalism. We are white nationalists,” Heimbach told Reuters. “We were there to take a stand.”

Representatives of the Sacramento police could not be reached immediately for further comment.

Video footage on social media showed dozens of people, some of them wearing masks and wielding what appeared to be wooden bats, racing across the capitol grounds and attacking others.

Photos on social media showed emergency officials treating a victim on the grass in the area as police officers stood guard.

The melee comes about four months after four people were stabbed during a scuffle between members of the Ku Klux Klan and counter-protesters near a KKK rally in Anaheim, California.

In recent months Trump has blamed “professional agitators” and “thugs” for violence that has broken out at many of the Republican candidate’s rallies.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, last month, anti-Trump protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers who responded with pepper spray. A month earlier, some 20 demonstrators were arrested outside a Trump rally in Costa Mesa, California.

 

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle, Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden in Chicago; Writing by Frank McGurty; Editing by Chris Reese)

Photo: Anti-fascist counter-protestors parade through Sacramento after multiple people were stabbed during a clash between neo-Nazis holding a permitted rally and counter-protestors on Sunday at the state capitol in Sacramento, California, United States, June 26, 2016. REUTERS/Max Whittaker 

Russian Spies Hack U.S. Democratic Party Computers: Washington Post

Russian Spies Hack U.S. Democratic Party Computers: Washington Post

Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

“The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system they also were able to read all e-mail and chat traffic,” the paper said, citing committee officials and security experts.

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, confirmed the breach.

“When we discovered the intrusion, we treated this like the serious incident it is …,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “Our team moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network.”

The Post quoted U.S. officials as saying Russian spies also targeted the networks of Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, as well as computers of some Republican political action committees.

It said some of the hackers had access to the Democratic National Committee network for about a year “but all were expelled over the past weekend in a major computer clean-up campaign.”

 

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by James Dalgleish)

A woman is silhouetted against a projected image of the Democratic National Committee during its Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting in Washington May 31, 2008.  REUTERS/Jason Reed

Trump Revokes Washington Post’s Campaign Press Credentials

Trump Revokes Washington Post’s Campaign Press Credentials

By Ginger Gibson and Emily Flitter

U.S. Republican Donald Trump said on Monday he will no longer issue press credentials to the Washington Post, stopping the publication from gaining access to press areas at his presidential campaign events.

The Washington Post, based in the U.S. capital, is one the country’s the most influential newspapers and has one of the largest circulations.

“They have no journalistic integrity and write falsely about Mr. Trump,” his campaign said in a statement explaining the decision. “Mr. Trump does not mind a bad story, but it has to be honest.”

Trump’s campaign repeated criticism the candidate has made of Post owner Jeff Bezos, who also owns online retailer Amazon.com.

It is unusual for a presidential campaign to refuse to issue credentials to news organizations. Credentials are needed for reporters, photographers and other staff to gain access to press seating, travel with the campaign and attend media-only events, like press conferences.

“Donald Trump’s decision to revoke The Washington Post’s press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press,” the newspaper’s editor, Marty Baron, said in a statement.

“When coverage doesn’t correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished. The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along — honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly. We’re proud of our coverage, and we’re going to keep at it.”

A source close to the campaign said the ban could be temporary and pointed out that Trump has already barred other new organizations, including Politico, from obtaining press credentials and then reversed course.

Ben Smith, executive editor of Buzzfeed, responded that his news organization, which targets millennials, is also banned from covering official Trump events. The Huffington Post posted on Twitter that its reporters are also barred.

“A candidate for the highest elected office in the land doesn’t get to choose what goes in a newspaper,” said Committee to Protect Journalist Deputy Executive Director Robert Mahoney. “It provides a ready-made excuse for authoritarian leaders to crackdown further on independent journalists. We urge Donald Trump to reconsider and let the Washington Post do its job.”

Trump’s campaign took issue with an article that appeared on The Washington Post’s website earlier on Monday with the headline, “Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting’ as their headline.” The headline was changed to “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting” within an hour after it was published.

The Washington Post has assigned a team of reporters to produce a book about Trump that is scheduled to be released later this year.

 

(Reporting by Ginger Gibson and Emily Flitter; Editing by Tom Brown and Sandra Maler)

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump delivers a campaign speech about national security in Manchester, New Hampshire, U.S. June 13, 2016 in response to the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.  REUTERS/Brian Snyder 

U.S. Must Protect National Security, Not Demonize Muslims: Clinton

U.S. Must Protect National Security, Not Demonize Muslims: Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, speaking on Monday after the massacre in a Florida nightclub, said the United States must find a way to keep the country safe without demonizing Muslim Americans.

Clinton called for “statesmanship, not partisanship” in the aftermath of the shooting in Orlando while Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, urged the monitoring of mosques in the United States and reiterated his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

Fifty people, including the gunman, the U.S.-born son of Afghan immigrants, died in at the gay nightclub in what was the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

Clinton, in several television interviews, said she would support stronger measures to prevent so-called lone wolf attacks and urged closer internet monitoring. She said she was committed to protecting the rights of Muslim Americans at the same time.

“We cannot demonize, demagogue and declare war on an entire religion. That is just dangerous,” Clinton said on the MSNBC network.

She also called for steps to prevent people who are on the U.S. no-fly list from purchasing guns and said possible restrictions on assault weapons needed to be part of the debate.

Trump plans to deliver a speech on national security at 2 p.m. EDT on Monday in New Hampshire. The topic was a change from his earlier plans to criticize Clinton and what he said was her scandal-prone past.

Trump said on CNN that the United States needed better intelligence-gathering to prevent incidents such as the Orlando massacre.

“We have to look at the mosques … and we have to look at the community,” he said. “And believe me, the community knows the people that have the potential to blow up.”

 

(Reporting by Washington newsroom; Editing by Caren Bohan and Bill Trott)

Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in Washington, U.S. June 10, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron