Weekly Review

Patrick W. Carlineo Jr., who called Representative Ilhan Omar’s office, spelled his name to an aide, and threatened to shoot the congresswoman, was arrested after he told an FBI agent interviewing him about the incident that “if our forefathers were still alive, they’d put a bullet in her head.”¹ Cesar Sayoc, who has pleaded guilty to mailing 16 bombs to politicians, journalists, and other public figures, told a judge that he never intended to hurt anyone.^{2 3} During a guest sermon at Relentless Church in Greenville, South Carolina, Pastor Hope Carpenter told the congregation, “I cut people. I got a knife right in that pocketbook. Greenville News, come on. We done went through this. I’m still here, and guess who else is still going to be here?”⁴ A group of analysts in the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis who specialized in domestic terrorism were reassigned, and Kirstjen Nielsen announced her resignation as the agency’s secretary.^{5 6} The Trump Administration labeled the Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of Iran’s military that has had indirect business ties to the Trump Organization, as a foreign terrorist organization.^{7 8} “The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” President Trump wrote in a statement.⁹ Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has commended Trump’s decision to name the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization and created a coalition between the ultranationalist parties Jewish Power and Jewish Home, has promised to annex the West Bank if elected to a fifth term.^{10 11}

Senator Kamala Harris missed a vote that reduced debate time on President Trump’s nominees because she was campaigning in Nevada, and a student at the University of Iowa asked Robert Francis O’Rourke, who was speaking on campus that day, “Are you here to see Beto?”^{12 13 14} Joe Biden, who has not officially declared his candidacy for president, spoke to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and told the audience, “I am not sorry for anything that I have ever done.”¹⁵ Anthony Weiner was ordered to register as a sex offender for a minimum of 20 years.¹⁶ At her trial, a middle school teacher accused of having sex with a 13-year-old boy testified that she continued their relationship because she felt flattered by his attention.¹⁷ A police officer in Richmond, Virginia, was put under investigation after he was filmed telling a group of black middle school students, “Wait until your asses turn 18, then you’re mine,” and an illegally operated drone, flown during the funeral of Rabbi Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, struck a New York City police officer in the head.^{18 19} In Genoa, a baby allegedly died after a botched at-home circumcision, the second such incident in Italy in two months.²⁰ A mother and son returning to Quebec from the United States were stopped from reentering Canada after customs agents discovered the dead body of the family’s octogenarian patriarch; they had not sought treatment for their relative because they believed U.S. health care was too expensive.²¹ Motel 6, which gave guest lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from 2015 to 2017, was ordered to pay $12 million to Washington State.²²

A newly elected civil court judge in Texas accidentally resigned; an English judge said that it was a “fundamental human right” of a man to have sex with his wife; and Zimbabwe’s Judicial Service Commission spent $155,000 on 64 horsehair wigs for judges, which has upset some citizens.^{23 24 25} A new report suggests that Russians offered at least six Malagasy presidential candidates money, and Vladimir Putin’s press secretary responded to a new study authored by the country’s official statistics agency that showed that one-third of Russian citizens cannot afford two pairs of shoes for each family member every year by saying, “Why shoes? Why one third? Where are these figures from?”^26 27 Some of Robert Mueller’s investigators have complained that Attorney General William P. Barr’s summary of their findings fails to convey their severity.²⁸—Violet Lucca