National Roundup

Pennsylvania
Woman jailed after baby left outside bar

HAZLETON, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania woman has been jailed after police say she was drunk and abandoned her 14-month-old baby outside a bar.

Hazleton police charged 18-year-old Destiny Davila with child endangerment, public drunkenness and underage drinking after the incident early Saturday.

Police and federal agents conducting a saturation patrol found a woman sitting in a car with Davila’s baby. The woman told police she had found the baby unattended for about 25 minutes in front of the bar and was caring for it.

Davila arrived at a hospital after police had taken the baby to be checked out. Police say she was drunk and told them she had been drinking before she took the child to the bar, and left the baby there when someone offered to care for her.

New Jersey
Prosecutor: Toddler in car seat died as mom was high in car

ALLOWAY, N.J. (AP) — Prosecutors say a New Jersey mom was high on drugs in her car and left her 2-year-old daughter unattended for hours in her car seat, where she fatally injured herself.

NJ.com reports Deanna Joseph called 911 on Saturday night to report her child was unresponsive.

Salem County Prosecutor John Lenahan says the child was found dead in a car parked in the driveway of Joseph’s home with the engine running. Lenahan says it appears the child might have injured herself in the car seat.

The exact cause of death will be determined by the medical examiner’s office.

Joseph was charged with second-degree child endangerment. No attorney information is available.

Court records show it is Joseph’s third arrest in nine years on charges related to neglect of a child.

Maryland
ACLU sues Trump over transgender military ban

BALTIMORE (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender individuals joining the military.

The federal lawsuit , Stone v. Trump, was filed in Maryland on Monday by the ACLU of Maryland on behalf of Petty Officer First Class Brock Stone, an 11-year Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, and several other transgender members of the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marines.

Trump directed the Pentagon on Friday to implement the ban on transgender individuals joining the military, which he first announced in a tweet. He also gave to the Pentagon the authority to decide the future of openly transgender people already serving.

The lawsuit says Trump’s policy violates the equal protection rights of transgender service members who now have “grave reason to fear for their careers.”

The lawsuit questions the premise for the ban cited in the president’s tweets. Trump wrote that he made his decision after consulting with “my Generals and military experts,” saying they “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”

But the lawsuit says news reports indicate top “military officials were surprised by Trump’s announcement, and that his actual motivations were purely political, reflecting a desire to accommodate legislators and advisers who bear animus and moral disapproval toward men and women who are transgender, with a goal of gaining votes for a spending bill that included money to build a border wall with Mexico.”

Connecticut
Police: Suspects used bat to steal wedding cake

TOLLAND, Conn. (AP) — Police say two Connecticut men used a baseball bat they stole from one home to break into another and steal wedding cake.

Police say 24-year-old Zachary Jurewicz and 26-year-old Eric Rawson are in custody and face charges including home invasion and burglary after breaking into two Tolland homes Sunday.

Authorities say they stole several items at the first home and used the bat to strike items on the property.

Officials say they then used the stolen bat to break into another nearby house, stealing a laptop, purse, alcohol and the top portion of a wedding cake from the homeowner’s freezer.

The men ran into the woods after being confronted by the homeowner and were captured by police.

Both were held on $100,000 bail. It was unclear if they had lawyers.

Alabama
Oldest white supremacist web site shut down

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The founder of the internet’s oldest white supremacist site said he was trying to get back online Monday after a company revoked its domain name following complaints that it promotes hatred and is linked to dozens of murders.

Don Black, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who has operated stormfront.org since 1995, said he didn’t receive any warning before Network Solutions blocked the use of the stormfront.org name on Friday.

Stormfront.org had more than 300,000 registered users, Black said, with traffic increasing since a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Popular with the KKK and neo-Nazi groups, the site included forums where users sometimes promoted white power events.

Another major white supremacist website, The Daily Stormer, was previously shut down by the web-hosting company Go Daddy and then Google after the violence in Charlottesville.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said the stormfront.org shutdown followed complaints it filed with Network Solutions alleging the site promotes not only hate speech, but deadly violence.

A spokesman for Network Solutions didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment.

Users of Black’s website have been implicated in more than 100 murders, according to the complaint, including 77 people slain by neo-Nazi Anders Breivik at a camp in Norway in 2011.

“Especially in the wake of tragic events in Charlottesville and the spike in hate crimes across the country, Stormfront crossed the line of permissible speech and incited and promoted violence,” said a statement by Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Black, speaking about the shutdown during an online radio show Monday, said his site had rules against promoting violence or any crime.

Black was a state KKK leader under former Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke, who appeared on the radio show following Black and expressed his “full support” for Black and the website.