5: BARR’S DEFENSE OF TRUMP IS STILL BAFFLING
WASHINGTON — The release of the Mueller report last week didn’t just give the American public an inside view of the two-year probe into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia; it exposed a glaring difference of opinion within the Department of Justice.
The special counsel’s 400-page report stands in stark contrast to Attorney General William Barr’s summary of it in both his letter to Congress one month ago and his press conference before the report’s release on Thursday. This difference rarely appears more exaggerated than on the subject of obstruction of justice.
Vice News
4: Sri Lanka attack ‘retaliation’ for NZ massacre: minister
Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday bombings were retaliation for a recent attack on mosques in New Zealand, the country’s state minister of defence said.
Ruwan Wijewardene made the comment to politicians in parliament on Tuesday without providing evidence or explaining where the information came from about the attacks that killed 321 people.
“The preliminary investigations have revealed that what happened in Sri Lanka was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch, but we are continuing investigations,” Wijewardene said.
Aljazeera
3: THE BLOODY HISTORY OF BORDER MILITIAS RUNS DEEP — AND LAW ENFORCEMENT IS PART OF IT
LAST WEEK, American vigilantes captured hundreds of migrants — including women and small children — along a darkened stretch of the border in New Mexico. The group, calling itself the United Constitutional Patriots, or UCP, uploaded video of its score to Facebook. Illuminated by the florescent glow of flashlights, the shaky footage showed weary mothers, fathers, and toddlers kneeling in the dirt, heads bowed, as the armed men circled around them.
The migrants’ captors summoned the Border Patrol. The agents, once they arrived, offered no sign of concern at the masked men carrying AR-15s decorated with Punisher skulls. For others, however, the footage shot in Sunland Park was a chilling reflection of America in 2019. “We cannot allow racist and armed vigilantes to kidnap and detain people seeking asylum,” American Civil Liberties Union attorneys María Martínez Sánchez and Kirsten Greer Love said in a letter. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called the vigilante operations “unacceptable” and Democratic Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich said the UCP’s operations “cannot be tolerated.”
The Intercept
The FBI has arrested the head of an armed vigilante group that has repeatedly filmed itself detaining migrant border crossers at gunpoint. Sixty-nine-year-old Larry Mitchell Hopkins is the leader of the far-right, pro-Trump group calling itself United Constitutional Patriots, which the American Civil Liberties Union described as an “armed fascist militia organization.” His arrest came just days after the ACLU accused the vigilantes of illegally detaining 300 migrants, including young children, near Sunland Park, New Mexico, last week. We speak to Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico.
Democracy Now
1: Greta Thunberg condemns UK’s climate stance in speech to MPs
