National Roundup

Texas
City leaders denounce string of antisemitic actions
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Austin leaders gathered Monday to demonstrate solidarity with the city’s Jewish community after a string of antisemitic incidents over the past two weeks.

The nonprofit Interfaith Action of Central Texas organized the Monday demonstration after a fire around 9 p.m. Sunday caused $25,000 in damage to the main entrance of Congregation Beth Israel’s synagogue. Fire investigators believe the blaze was deliberately set. No injuries or arrests have been reported.

Austin Fire Capt. Brandon Jennings said they received tips about who committed the arson. Investigators are also reviewing security video of the incident, he said.

Also, on Oct. 23, about a dozen people unfurled an antisemitic banner from an overpass on the heavily traveled North MoPac Boulevard and displayed similar posters in the East Sixth Street entertainment area, according to Anti-Defamation League-Austin.

On Oct. 22, Anderson High School’s buildings were vandalized with swastikas, homophobic slogans and racist slurs.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler joined representatives of the city’s other elected leaders to denounce such activity.

“When we see acts of hate, they’re jarring. They’re hurtful, and they are scary. But they are not surprising,” Adler said. “Because there are people who do hateful and horrible, wrongful things.”

He added: “The danger is that hate spreads.” Which, he said, made it essential for the wider community to declare, “That is not us.”

California
Ex-Army vet sentenced for bomb plot
An Army veteran who plotted to bomb a white supremacist rally in Southern California was sentenced Monday to 25 years in federal prison.

Mark Steven Domingo, 28, of Reseda in Los Angeles, was convicted in August of providing material support to terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Domingo schemed to bomb a planned April 2019 rally in Long Beach before he was arrested, prosecutors said.

Domingo, a former combat infantryman, had recently converted to Islam and over several months discussed several plots to kill scores of people in Southern California in revenge for the March 2019 attacks on two New Zealand mosques that left 50 people dead, prosecutors said.

In online posts and an online forum, Domingo expressed “a desire to seek violent retribution for attacks against Muslims, as well as a willingness to become a martyr,” the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.

Domingo considered attacks against Jewish people, churches and police officers before deciding to bomb the white supremacist rally, authorities said.

Domingo posted one online message saying “America needs another Vegas event,” an apparent reference to the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 people, documents show. He said it would spark civil unrest to weaken “America by giving them a taste of the terror they gladly spread all over the world.”

The terror plot was foiled by the FBI and police using an undercover officer and informant Domingo thought were his accomplices.

“This defendant planned a mass-casualty terrorist attack and repeatedly admitted at trial that he had a desire to kill as many people as possible,” acting United States Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison said. “Had this bombing been successful, many innocent people would have been murdered, yet this defendant has shown no remorse for his conduct, nor has he renounced the extremist ideology that motivated his horrific plot.”

Domingo “represents the very real threat posed by homegrown violent extremists in the United States,” said Kristi K. Johnson, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

Military records show Domingo served about 16 months in the Army, including a four-month stint in Afghanistan in fall 2012. A U.S. official told The Associated Press in 2019 that Domingo was demoted and discharged before completing his enlistment contract for committing an unspecified serious offense.

He left with a rank of private, the lowest possible grade.


Louisiana
Court revives lawsuit filed over journalist’s arrest
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday revived a lawsuit filed by an online freelance journalist in Texas who says she was arrested for merely seeking information from the police.

Priscilla Villarreal goes by the name La Gordiloca on Facebook and Twitter. Monday’s opinion from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals describes her as a non-traditional journalist who posts livestreamed video and information on crime scenes in the Laredo area, along with “often unfiltered” commentary that is sometimes critical of local authorities.

Her lawsuit, revived in a 2-1 decision by the appeals court panel, said she was arrested in 2017 and accused of violating a little-known Texas law that a judge later found unconstitutional.

Monday’s opinion said the law made it a crime for a person to solicit information from public officials that has not been made public if the person seeking the information intends to benefit from it in some way. Villarreal had sought — and obtained from a police officer — the identities of a person who killed himself and a family involved in a car accident and published the information on her Facebook. The arrest affidavit said she sought the information to gain Facebook followers.

The charges against Villarreal were thrown out by a judge who ruled that the state law was unconstitutionally vague. Villarreal sued Laredo officials, alleging her constitutional rights to free speech and protection from unlawful seizure were violated when police arrested her.

In district court filings, the Laredo officials’ lawyers said the police acted in good faith and had no reason to believe the law under which Villarreal was arrested would later be found unconstitutional.

A federal district judge in Texas found the officials were protected by “qualified immunity” — meaning the law largely protects them for actions they take as part of their official duties.

But two of the three judges for the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit disagreed, reversing much of the district court’s ruling.

“Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question,” Judge James Ho, who was nominated by former President Donald Trump, wrote for the majority. “If that is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what would be. And as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, public officials are not entitled to qualified immunity for obvious violations of the Constitution.”

Ho was joined by Judge James Graves, who was nominated by former President Barack Obama. Judge Priscilla Owen, nominated by former President George W. Bush, dissented. The court said her reasons would be posted later.