Posts by Newspaper Staff

Extraordinary and pivotal decisions are playing out on opposite coasts of America as protesters of immigration policy wreak havoc on Los Angeles and President Donald Trump and his administration in Washington take action California leadership does not want.
The situation evolves against a backdrop of a November election in which the nation’s 47th commander in chief campaigned on closing borders and deportations; judges labeled “activist” have delivered courtroom homes to stymie Trump’s efforts; and Southern California hosts the hotbed of activity just five months after a natural disaster from wildfires.
National Guard troops were deployed by the president and not Gov. Gavin Newsom over the weekend.
On social media Sunday, Trump wrote, “A once great American city, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our federal agents to try and stop our deportation operations – but these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant departments and agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the migrant invasion and put an end to these migrant riots. Order will be restored, the illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
On social media, Newsom early Monday morning Eastern time wrote, “Let’s get this straight: 1) Local law enforcement didn’t need help. 2) Trump sent troops anyway – to manufacture chaos and violence. 3) Trump succeeded. 4) Now things are destabilized, and we need to send in more law enforcement just to clean up Trump’s mess.”
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell agreed with Newsom and said his officers could handle it. He also said deployment by Trump has escalated the situation.
(This is a developing story. Check back for updates from The Center Square.)

A pre-sentencing hearing is scheduled Monday for convicted ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
U.S. District Court Judge John Robert Blakey is expected to consider post-trial motions when he meets with prosecutors and defense attorneys Monday afternoon at the Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago.
Blakey scheduled a second hearing Tuesday to consider valuation estimates related Madigan’s conviction on ComEd-related charges. The judge asked attorneys to meet and confer over whether evidence outside of the current record might be required.
Madigan, 83, was convicted Feb. 12 on 10 counts of bribery, conspiracy, wire fraud and use of a facility to promote unlawful activity.
The former speaker’s sentencing is scheduled for Friday, June 13.
U.S. government attorneys requested that Madigan serve 12.5 years in prison and pay a fine of $1.5 million. Madigan’s defense attorneys have asked that the former speaker be sentenced to a year of home confinement along with probation and community service.
Connie Mixon, professor of political science and director of the Urban Studies Program at Elmhurst University, said Madigan’s age is a factor, just as it was for ex-Chicago Alderman Ed Burke.
“I think the judge faces the same dilemma as the judge faced in the Ed Burke trial. Madigan’s going to be what, 83 years old? Even a few years, at that age, is a big deal,” Mixon told The Center Square.
Burke was sentenced to two years in prison and given a $2 million fine in 2024 after being convicted of corruption.
Government attorneys had recommended that Burke’s sentence be longer than six years.
Convicted Illinois politicians often receive sentences much shorter than prosecutors request. Mixon said former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was an exception.
“Many thought that Blagojevich’s was excessively long. At least many made that argument, right, compared to some of the others,” Mixon told The Center Square.
President Donald Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence in 2020 and then granted the former governor a full pardon earlier this year.
Changes have taken place in the U.S. Attorney’s office since Madigan’s conviction.
Andrew Boutros took over as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois earlier this year. Sarah Streicker is now leading the office’s public corruption and organized crime division following Amar Bhachu’s retirement.
“The case with Madigan had multiple attorneys. Sarah Streicker is a superb attorney with tons of experience. I do think they’re in good hands with Sarah Streicker taking over at this point,” Mixon said.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Diane MacArthur and Julia Schwartz have continued to work on the case along with Streicker.
Sentencing is scheduled to follow Madigan’s this summer for four defendants convicted of corruption in the related ComEd Four case.
Madigan’s codefendant, former Illinois state representative and lobbyist Michael McClain, was not found guilty in the Madigan case. In 2023, McClain and three others were convicted in the ComEd case, and ComEd agreed to pay $200 million in fines as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.
McClain’s ComEd Four sentencing is scheduled for July 24.
Additional sentencing dates are July 14 for former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker, July 21 for ex-ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, and August 5 for former contract lobbyist Jay Doherty.
Madigan served in the Illinois House from 1971 to 2021 and was speaker for all but two years between 1983 and 2021. He chaired the Democratic Party of Illinois for 23 years. Madigan also led the 13th Ward Democratic Organization and served as 13th Ward committeeman.

Several U.S. House Republicans say they won’t vote for the budget reconciliation bill if changes are, or aren’t, made in the Senate.
U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said he voted for the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” because he supported many provisions in it but primarily because it cut what he called “Green New Scam” subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
“We fought like hell to get 60% of the ‘Green New Scam’ basically terminated,{” Roy said. “The president campaigned on terminating all of it, but this weak-ass Congress and Senate are going to not do that because ‘we can’t disrupt the existing flow of the $400 billion of subsidies going into the pockets of all those big companies’ raking in the money … while you guys subsidize their getting rich and your grid gets weaker. This congress is going to do that,” he said, expressing alarm that those restrictions may not stay in the Senate version of the bill.
The K St. lobby is working hard to keep them in, he said, knowing wind and solar projects don’t produce enough energy to be economically viable without subsidies.
“My message to the Senate,” he said, “you backslide one inch on those IRA subsidies and I’m voting against this bill. I want the White House to hear it. I want the Senate to hear it.
“The God-forsaken IRA subsidies are killing our energy, killing our grid, making us weaker, destroying our landscape, undermining our freedom. I’m not going to have it. … if you mess up the Inflation Reduction Act, green new scam subsidies, I aint voting for that bill.”
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, also said she wouldn’t vote for the bill if the Senate doesn’t take out an artificial intelligence provision. She said she regretted voting for the bill not knowing the provision was in it.
Posting a section of the bill on X, she said, it “strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years. I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.
“We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous. This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, disagrees, arguing, “It’s a terrific policy, it’s something I have vocally advocated,” NOTUS reported.
U.S. Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska also said he wouldn’t have voted for the bill had he known a provision to block federal judges from enforcing contempt citations if a bond wasn’t previously ordered was in it. Republicans who support the measure argue it’s intended to discourage frivolous lawsuits.
U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said at a hearing last month that a judge “can set the security at whatever level he wants. What’s typically happened in these cases is he’s just waiving it. Nobody’s putting it up. And they’re getting this injunction that applies nationwide, which is the concern.”
At a raucous townhall meeting in Seward, Flood told constituents, “I do not agree with that section that was added to that bill. I do believe that the federal district courts, when issuing an injunction, it should have legal effect.
“This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill, and when I found out that provision was in the bill, I immediately reached out to my Senate counterparts and told them of my concern,” he said, adding that he was “going to very clearly tell the people in my conference that we cannot support undermining our court system and we must allow our federal courts to operate and issue injunctions.”
Cruz disagrees, arguing at a Senate committee hearing that federal judges issuing nationwide injunctions were engaging in “judicial tyranny.”
“One unelected district judge sitting in a courtroom in San Francisco, Boston, or Baltimore can now issue a nationwide injunction that ties the hands of the president of the United States for all 330 million Americans. That’s not law, that’s judicial tyranny.”
Since January, there have been more than 40 universal injunctions issued against the Trump administration’s policies. To put that in perspective, he explained, “In the first 150 years of the Republic, zero nationwide injunctions were issued.”
During 100 years of the 20th century, 27 nationwide injunctions were issued; under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, 32 were issued; during the first Trump administration, 64 were issued, Cruz said. Since January, more injunctions have been issued than during the 20th century and under the Bush, Obama, and Biden administrations combined.
“This is not normal. This is not justice. This is an orchestrated campaign of judicial obstruction,” Cruz said.

As the manhunt continues for 32-year-old Travis Decker, suspected in the murders of his three young daughters in Chelan County, Wash., more information is coming out about his declining mental state and struggles to access mental health services through Veterans Affairs.
Multiple law enforcement agencies are searching for Decker after the bodies of 5-year-old Olivia, 8-year-old Evelyn, and 9-year-old Paityn Decker were discovered Monday at a campground near Leavenworth. Decker is wanted on first-degree murder charges in connection with the killings.
Authorities have said Decker has extensive military training, including service in the U.S. Army and Washington National Guard, and went to mountain survival school.
Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison noted that Decker’s extensive military training and outdoor experience are being considered in the ongoing search.
“We do understand and we’re getting more confirmation that he might have possibly gone through mountain survival school, but we also know, too, that he’s been an outdoorsman since he was a kid and it’s something that he was attracted to like doing in his free time,” he said during a Wednesday news conference.
Attorney Arianna Cozart, who represents the deceased girls’ mother, Whitney Decker, told The Center Square that her client believes the girls would be alive if her ex-husband had received the mental health services he needed.
Cozart drafted the most recent parenting plan for the couple, finalized in September 2024.
“It was approved by Judge Robert Jourdan here in Chelan County. And what we did is we put together the most well-thought-out parenting plan we could that both protected the girls as well as protected their relationship with their father,” Cozart said. “A lot of people don’t realize that Travis was actually a very loving father. There was never any sort of violence or mistreatment of the girls, but Travis’s issue was that he had some severe mental health issues that resulted from his service to our country in the military.”
The Wenatchee attorney explained that as part of the parenting plan, Travis Decker was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and a domestic violence evaluation for any anger management issues that he might have, as well as required mental health counseling.
“He tried and reached out to several of the mental health resources that are available to veterans, which, as I’m sure you’re aware, are sorely underfunded,” Cozart said. “So, he did all the things, or tried to do all the things that he could, and he wasn’t able to get the help that he needed and was never able to get the psychiatric evaluation,” she said.
Cozart said that because Travis Decker did not meet the parenting plan’s requirements, Whitney could dictate the terms of visitation.
“He did great with the girls. He attended all their activities. He always was very communicative with Whitney on what was going on with his housing situation,” Cozart said, noting Travis Decker was living in his car, so he was not allowed to take the girls overnight. “Everything was fine until it wasn’t.”
Cozart shared that Whitney Decker told her that her ex-husband struggled in the weeks before his last time picking up the girls.
“Travis was struggling with his life. I mean, he was feeling very, very alone and isolated, which he had felt since the military,” she said. “He had concerns about his own worth, you know, being a father. But he loved Whitney and those girls incredibly.”
Cozart said Whitney Decker’s hope now is that their family tragedy can potentially save others by resulting in improved access to mental health care services for veterans.
“Whitney will tell you the system failed her girls, you know, the lack of military services for veterans killed her children,” Cozart noted. “That is absolutely the case.”
Officials said Wednesday they expected the Chelan County Coroner’s Office to release the official cause of death for the Decker girls on Thursday. Coroner Wayne Harris responded to an email from The Center Square to say the report would not be coming until Friday, at the earliest.
“The autopsies will not be completed until sometime tomorrow afternoon,” Harris said. “We may have the results tomorrow, but maybe not until Monday, and in Washington state, the autopsy report is a private document, so I am unable to release that.”
In a Thursday news release emailed to The Center Square by Chelan County Undersheriff Dan Ozment, officials asked citizens to be on the lookout for Travis Decker.
“We are asking citizens who own cabins or reside in our remote areas of Chelan, Kittitas King, Snohomish, and Okanagan counties to please be aware that Mr. Decker is still missing,” Ozment said. “As law enforcement conducts their searches, we are asking for those owners to lock all of their doors, to include any shed out outbuildings, and leave their window blinds open, and we recommend leaving outside lights on.”