Fort Cavazos under lockdown amid active shooter investigation, CBS News reports
June 14 (Reuters) - Fort Cavazos is under lockdown as military officials respond to reports of a potential active shooter on the base, CBS News reported late on Saturday.
A spokesperson said that emergency protocols were initiated in response to an incident on the base, CBS reported.
Fort Cavazos, formerly Fort Hood, is in Texas.
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The Guardian
42 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The rise of Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's hardline immigration policy
With Los Angeles convulsed by confrontation between pro-migrant protesters and military units dispatched by Donald Trump, no figure apart from the president has loomed larger than Stephen Miller. As the man in the Oval Office, it is Trump who has absorbed the accusations of authoritarianism for usurping the powers of California's government after deploying 4,000 national guard troops and 700 active marines on to the streets of a city that is home to more undocumented immigrants than any other in the US. Behind the scenes, however, this has been the apogee of Miller's power – and an episode that illuminated his power in a White House where his influence far outstrips his misleadingly modest title of deputy chief of staff. Miller, 39, may have been the true catalyst for the volatile scenes that played out over several days in the city of his birth. As the long-term architect of Trump's years-long effort to reinvent US immigration policy, he has pressed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to intensify efforts to arrest migrants as deportation figures fell far short of pre-election promises. At a meeting at Ice's Washington headquarters last month, Miller ordered them to skip the usual practice of compiling lists of suspected illegal migrants and instead target Home Depot, where day laborers gather for short-term hire, and 7-Eleven stores, to carry out mass arrests, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ice would aim for a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day, he told Fox News – a figure exceeding previous estimates, based on assumptions that those with criminal records would be prioritised. It also seemed to raise the risk of mistakes and wrongful arrests. Accordingly, Ice has drastically stepped up its arrest rate – and broadened the profile of those targeted. The results have been plain to see. As demonstrators took to the streets, Miller promptly raised the stakes by accusing them of an 'insurrection'. Amid the hullabaloo and expressions of outrage, Miller may allowed himself a quiet smile of satisfaction over sticking it to the city of his birth – in many ways emblematic of the progressive cultural trends despised by Trump's 'make America great again' (Maga) followers but a place where his own hardline anti-immigrant views had long provoked derision. The son of affluent Jewish parents, Miller's evolution into a race-baiting provocateur took shape in the upscale suburb of Santa Monica, where he gained notoriety as an incendiary agitator at the eponymous local high school. Video footage purportedly from the period and circulated on social media shows a bearded Miller stridently voicing his disdainful view of school janitorial staff 'Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do this,' he shouts into a microphone. The gross statement seems to have been representative of a broader canvas of toxic ideas, with racism at its core. In Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, to date the only biography published on Miller, author Jean Guerrero recounts one episode from the future political operative's adolescence, when he suddenly ditched a close friend, Jason Islas, on the grounds of his ethnicity. 'The conversation was remarkably calm,' Islas, a Mexican American, is quoted saying. 'He expressed hatred for me in a calm, cool, matter-of-fact way.' An article he wrote as a 16-year-old for a local website expresses contempt for fellow students of Hispanic origin. 'When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills,' Miller wrote on the Surfsantamonica site. 'There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school.' The school, he added, was one where 'Osama bin Laden would feel very welcome' – a view reflecting the then recentness of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida and also Miller's increasing focus on Muslims. Miller's indulgence in far-right ideas continued during his college years at Duke University in North Carolina, where he associated with white nationalist thinkers and groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he worked with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which it defined as a 'an anti-Muslim hate group', and also with Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader who popularized the term 'alt-right' to describe groups that defined themselves through a white racial identity. After graduating, Miller moved to Washington to work in Congress, serving first as a press secretary to Michele Bachmann, then a Republican representative for Minnesota, before moving to work for Jeff Sessions, at the time a rightwing Alabama senator who later became Trump's first attorney general. It was in the latter role that his reputation as an avatar of extreme anti-immigrant agitprop became established. In 2013, helped by Miller, Sessions torpedoed a bipartisan piece of legislation that was intended to pave the way for immigration for undocumented migrants. To help sink the bill, Miller used Breitbart News, a rightwing website then headed by Steve Bannon. It would prove to be a fateful connection. The Breitbert connection also shone further light on Miller's views on race and immigration, as revealed in emails he sent to editors and reporters. They showed a preoccupation with the 1924 Immigration Act, signed by President Calvin Coolidge, which severely restricted immigration to the US from certain parts of the world on what observers say were racial and eugenics grounds. Hitler subsequently praised the legislation as a model for Germany in Mein Kampf. After Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 - creating scandalizing headlines by demonizing Mexican immigrants as 'drug dealers, criminals and rapists', Miller took a leave of absence from Sessions' Senate office to work for him. On the recommendation of Bannon, by then Trump's campaign chief, he was installed as a speech writer, chiefly because of his focus on immigration, which had become the candidate's own signature issue. It enabled Miller to showcase his ability to channel Trump's inner self. The pair have politically inseparable ever since. Miller wrote Trump's dystopian 'American carnage' speech for his first inauguration in January 2017. As a senior policy adviser in the first Trump administration, it was Miller who was behind some of its most notorious policy initiatives. These included the so-called 'Muslim ban' on travellers from seven majority-Muslim countries and the practice of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border. His growing notoriety as an anti-immigration extremist drew criticism from his own relatives. In 2018, his maternal uncle, David Glosser, branded him a 'hypocrite' for ignoring the memory of his ancestors, who fled antisemitic pogroms in tsarist Russia. 'I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country,' Glosser, a retired neuropsychologist, wrote in Politico. Miller cared little for such sentimentality. After Trump's defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Miller stuck with the former president – even while his political future initially looked doomed in the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 attack by his supporters on the US Capitol. Consequently, he grew ever more powerful in Trump's inner circle. He may have earned extra kudos by declining to exploit their relationship to win lucrative consulting contracts, instead setting up a non-profit, the America First Legal foundation. Meanwhile, he immersed himself in studying how to overcome the hurdles that stymied Trump's agenda during his first presidency. The outcome has been apparent in the blizzard of executive orders druing the restored president's first months back in the White House. Miller purposely sought to 'flood the zone' in a manner that would overwhelm the capacity of the courts – or the media – to respond. No order was more quintessentially Miller's than that issued on the day of Trump's second inauguration on 20 January, which attempted to cancel birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants. The order was challenged in the courts and is now with the supreme court after the administration challenged the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions supporting a right that is guaranteed in the US constitution. Miller's anti-immigrant zeal has at times exceeded even that of Trump. According to the New York Times, the president told a campaign meeting last year that if it was up to Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the US – and all of them would look like Miller. The bond between the two men has grown to such an extent that Miller has been dubbed 'the president's id' in some circles. 'He has been for a while. It's just now he has the leverage and power to fully effectuate it,' an unnamed former Trump adviser told NBC. Others have called him 'the most consequential' White House official since Dick Cheney, who exercised vast influence as vice-president under George W Bush. Critics cast Miller as the root of all evil in Trump's White House. 'Stephen Miller is responsible for all the bad things happening in the United States,' NBC quoted Ben Ray Luján, a Democratic senator for New Mexico, as saying. Miller's exalted place at Trump's side was illustrated during the recent Signalgate episode – as revealed by the Atlantic, whose editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently invited into a government chat group to discuss airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen, whose missile attacks on Israel threatened Suez canal shipping routes. When JD Vance questioned the strikes – asking whether Trump 'is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe' – Miller unambiguously slapped the vice-president down. 'As I heard it, the president was clear: green light,' Miller said, according to the transcript. The clearest testimony to Miller's status has come from Trump himself. Asked by Kristen Welker, the moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, about speculation that Miller might become national security adviser, a usually influential White House post currently filled, albeit temporarily, by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, after the previous incumbent, Mike Waltz, was fired. 'Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that,' Trump replied. The result is that Miller's presence is detectable in all policy areas, including at the state department, where he succeeded in having his ally, Christopher Landau, installed as Rubio's deputy. The goal is to control the flow of foreigners entering the United States, insiders have told the Guardian. At the state department, Landau has become an important liaison to officials in the consular affairs section, which has been put under the leadership of a conservative coterie of diplomats and reoriented toward policing migration. Officials from the state department have joined FBI agents on recent Ice raids aimed at tracking down unregistered migrants. Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, laments that Miller's rising star means he can 'use the powers of the federal government to unleash his fascist worldview'. '[That view] has now been transformed into the main political policy and aim of Donald Trump's presidency,' said Setmayer, who now heads the Seneca Project, a women-led political action committee. 'The demagoguery of immigration has long been at the centre of Donald Trump's political rise, and Stephen Miller's desire to make America whiter and less diverse, married with the power of the presidency without guardrails, is incredibly dangerous and should concern every American who believes in the rule of law.' Andrew Roth and David Smith contributed reporting
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Victim of shooting at ‘No Kings' demonstration in life-threatening condition as cops confirm they have three in custody
ONE person is in a life-threatening condition after being shot near a 'No Kings' demonstration as cops confirm three are in custody. Gunfire broke out near the march which was attended by over 10,000 people in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday night. 1 A man who was shot on State Street in front of the Liberty SKY apartment complex is in "critical" condition. He collapsed on the ground and emergency responders performed life-saving measures until he was transported to hospital in a life-threatening condition. Officers attended the scene after hearing gunshots around 7:56 pm, Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd confirmed to reporters. Witnesses were able to help identify the male suspect in the shooting who is in custody. Redd confirmed that the suspect suffered a gunshot wound and was taken to hospital by cops. Two others have also been taken into custody with cops not looking for anyone else in connection to the shooting. The police chief praised the efforts of his officers saying their "rapid response ensured the safety of thousands of participants in the downtown Salt Lake City area".
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
How glam lawyer turned lawless ‘Lady Mafia' scammer swindled $10m from pals and clients – and blew it all in Las Vegas
SARA King – AKA Lady Mafia – had the designer clothes, pink champagne and a husband descended from royalty – but her addiction to excitement turned this glam American lawyer into a lawless criminal. Dressed in head-to-toe Christian Dior, Sara looked every inch the high-powered lawyer as she strutted into federal court in Orange County, California. 8 8 Her hair extensions were pulled back into a sleek bun and she was ready to do business. But she wasn't there to defend a client. It was the summer of 2023 and the 41-year-old attorney was facing charges of financial fraud and money laundering. It was part of a criminal career that saw her swindle an estimated $10million from friends and business associates to fund a lavish lifestyle that included designer clothes, jewellery, a suite at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel and the best seat in all the casinos. In a case that both baffled and gripped America, King was dubbed ' the Anna Delvey of the OC ', 'the Slot Whisperer' and – her favourite nickname – 'Lady Mafia.' After pleading guilty to her crimes, she was sentenced on May 5 this year by an Orange County federal judge to 21 months in prison, and ordered to pay more than $8million in restitution. Her shocking story has been laid bare in podcast The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia, in which investigative journalist Michele McPhee spends hours with the glamorous scammer trying to unpick her tall tales. 'Her charisma pulls people in. She's obviously very attractive – she's not just pretty, she's glamorous – so I'm sure that helped her navigate her way around the shady underbelly," Michele tells Fabulous. 'I think she spent most of the money on clothes. She's one of those people who has to be head-to-toe in designer labels,' says Michele, who believes that King doesn't quite comprehend the damage she has done, and points out that she changes her story many times during the podcast. 'It's very unusual that somebody would participate in anything like this podcast before they've faced a judge [for sentencing]. But I think she was motivated by wanting people to think she's innocent and that it was all a big mistake.' King grew up in Newport Beach, Orange County, home to sprawling mansions, golf courses and Ferraris. Anna Delvey dons neon prison suit on video call from ICE custody Money wasn't tight, and her parents enjoyed a happy marriage and were successful insurance brokers. She wanted what they had – and more. Before embarking on a life of dodgy deals, King built a successful career in law, fuelled by her burning ambition to be a badass businesswoman instead of a trophy wife. 'I wanted to be the 'It' girl. I wanted to have a seat at the boys' table, without sleeping around,' she said in the podcast. 'I can sell anything. I can sell fire to the devil.' With a million-dollar home in Newport Beach, and an ambitious husband, Gerar Jamal – a consultant in the environmental industry, who she married in 2014 – King soon had everything she'd dreamed of. But she didn't stop there. I wanted to have a seat at the boys' table. I can sell anything – I can sell fire to the devil Sara King Describing her high-flying job at a law firm as 'a lot of work and not a lot of money,' by 2017 King was looking for new opportunities to fund her pink-champagne lifestyle. She and Gerar began to invest in different ventures, including money lending, where they would rake in high interest for funding short-term loans. King – who hung out in Orange County's hottest spots, where she met men who'd offer her more chances to invest in their dodgy deals – said: 'I was looking for a way out of law. It was so miserable and I needed to make money.' She soon earned a reputation as a 'fixer' who could help rich people get anything they wanted, from prostitutes to puppies. In May 2018, after her marriage had broken down, a mutual friend introduced her to Kamran Pahlavi, the handsome grandson of Iranian Princess Ashraf, who apparently invested in real estate. After a two-hour dinner in Beverly Hills, the pair clicked. 'I was just taken aback by the pizzazz of it all,' said King. 'I felt a connection, and to this day I wish I never did. 'He told me, 'I have no money, all my watches are fake, I have nothing to my name, so if that's what you're interested in, please walk.' He came clean about everything, saying, 'I have a lot of baggage, I have three ex-wives, I have kids. But I want to make something of myself'.' Fixer for the rich Besotted, King suggested they start a business together – but the pressure to make more money led her to take more risks. 'I think they genuinely had love for each other,' says Michele. 'She was the female Bernie Madoff [the US fraudster who was jailed for operating a dodgy 'pyramid' investment scheme] and he was the real housewife of Orange County, who got to sit around and not do much.' In January 2022, business was booming for her company, King Family Lending. She established herself as someone who could supply short-term loans to celebrities and professional athletes – as long as they were happy to pay the 30% interest. Hobnobbing with NFL stars, including Tom Brady, bragging about her high-profile connections and shopping for designer clothes were all in a day's work for her. 8 8 She also reportedly harboured ambitions of going into politics. She and Kamran married in February 2022 – but behind the facade, King was doing less lending and more spending. She was using her investors' money – which was intended to fund high-interest loans – to splash out on her own lavish lifestyle and gambling habit. And the collateral she claimed she had collected to guarantee them didn't exist. By November 2022, Kamran had called time on their relationship – later claiming it was due to all her lies – and moved to Morocco. By the end of the year, they were divorced, after Kamran cited 'irreconcilable differences'. Meanwhile, King moved into a $6,000-a-night suite at the Wynn in Vegas, which she'd been gifted because she was such a 'good customer' – complete with marble counters, a private infinity pool and a butler. 8 In the casinos, where she was once known as The Slot Whisperer for her winning streaks, King's luck was starting to run out. At one point, she was gambling away $20,000 a day. 'I always had that kind of money, so 20 grand a day is no big deal,' she said. 'It got scarier when I was dropping $50,000 to $100,000 a day.' On November 11, 2022, it all fell apart. King was lying in the bath of her suite when hotel staff burst into her room and ordered her to leave. Gambling $20k a day A Beverly Hills lawyer named Ronald Richards, who was representing one of the clients she'd swindled, was on her tail and had informed the Wynn of her dodgy deals. He also set about shutting her gambling down by making sure she was barred from casinos. 'As she got kicked out of each one, I'd call her and say, 'How was your escort today?' because I wanted her to know I was on to her,' Ronald told Michele in the podcast. 'Sometimes she was mad, because she was embarrassed. I told her, 'I'm going to cut off everything you like to do. Your days of gambling are over and we'll make sure no casino allows you to ever wager a dollar'.' On February 11, 2023, he filed a lawsuit against King on behalf of the man named 'Laurent R', just one of the investors in King Family Lending who'd lost millions, and the federal prosecutor drew up a criminal complaint of wire (financial) fraud and money laundering charges. Ronald also tipped off the media, and King hit the headlines for being a scammer. That's when she realised she'd reached the end of the road. In March 2023, she checked herself into rehab – then checked out again, heading to her LA apartment, where eviction notices were waiting for her. Betrayal, lies and theft Her parents took her home to Orange County, then her mum drove her to the FBI headquarters in Los Angeles. There was no warrant for her arrest, so she claims she wrote to the Attorney General to get a meeting about her case. In June 2023, King appeared in federal court and pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud and money laundering, admitting she'd caused five investors to lose more than $8million. Three of them – all former close friends – were watching from the gallery, including trauma surgeon Amal Obaid-Schmid, who'd lost her family's life savings of $400,000. While King agreed to pay restitution of at least $8,785,045, the real total of her scamming has been estimated to be nearer to $10million, with more possible victims who, as yet, haven't come forward. Before King's sentencing, which was postponed twice, she was lying low in a small apartment with her parents back in Orange County and joking that she was taking Prozac to get through it all. Kamran is still in Morocco, a non-extradition country, and hasn't faced any charges. 'She betrayed me. Lied to me. Stole from me. Embarrassed me. Humiliated me. That's not bad for a reason to break up,' he has said. He added: 'When I realised what she had done, I left and never looked back. To tell you the truth, it kills me to do this, but she is sick and she needs to be stopped before she scams the wrong person and she gets in real trouble.' He also claimed that King had sent him threatening messages following their split, including one that warned: 'Just wait and see, your time is coming.' 'Obviously, he's going to want to separate himself from all this,' says Michele. Anna Delvey comparisons While awaiting her sentencing, King tried to find employment. 'Everybody recognised her, so she couldn't work,' reveals Michele, who says she forged a genuine friendship with King over the course of making the podcast. 'She got a job at Nordstrom [the department store], but got fired once they realised who she was, so ended up working as a home helper for the elderly, which was a huge step down. 'People have compared her to Anna Delvey, but Sara herself points out she's not a total fraud because she had money, she was an attorney and she's savvy,' says Michele. 'I have respect for her work ethic. She was definitely a hustler and that's what's so mesmerising. She could have easily lived that Real Housewives life and gone to Pilates at the country club all day long, but she wanted to work. 'She's a smart woman, but she had such a facade, and she told so many little white lies.'
