#Southern District of Texas

[mostlysignssomeportents]

One of America’s most corporate-crime-friendly bankruptcy judges forced to recuse himself

Today (Oct 16) I'm in Minneapolis, keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

"I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." The now-famous quip from Robert Reich cuts to the bone of corporate personhood. Corporations are people with speech rights. They are heat-shields that absorb liability on behalf of their owners and managers.

But the membrane separating corporations from people is selectively permeable. A corporation is separate from its owners, who are not liable for its deeds – but it can also be "closely held," and so inseparable from those owners that their religious beliefs can excuse their companies from obeying laws they don't like:

https://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2014/10/13/hobby-lobby-and-closely-held-corporations/

Corporations – not their owners – are liable for their misdeeds (that's the "limited liability" in "limited liablity corporation"). But owners of a murderous company can hold their victims' families hostage and secure bankruptcies for their companies that wipe out their owners' culpability – without any requirement for the owners to surrender their billions to the people they killed and maimed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Corporations are, in other words, a kind of Schroedinger's Cat for impunity: when it helps the ruling class, corporations are inseparable from their owners; when that would hinder the rich and powerful, corporations are wholly distinct entities. They exist in a state of convenient superposition that collapses only when a plutocrat opens the box and decides what is inside it. Heads they win, tails we lose.

Key to corporate impunity is the rigged bankruptcy system. "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," so every successful civilization has some system for discharging debt, or it risks collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

When you or I declare bankruptcy, we have to give up virtually everything and endure years (or a lifetime) of punitive retaliation based on our stained credit records, and even then, our student debts continue to haunt us, as do lawless scumbag debt-collectors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

When a giant corporation declares bankruptcy, by contrast, it emerges shorn of its union pension obligations and liabilities owed to workers and customers it abused or killed, and continues merrily on its way, re-offending at will. Big companies have mastered the Texas Two-Step, whereby a company creates a subsidiary that inherits all its liabilities, but not its assets. The liability-burdened company is declared bankrupt, and the company's sins are shriven at the bang of a judge's gavel:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

Three US judges oversee the majority of large corporate bankruptcies, and they are so reliable in their deference to this scheme that an entire industry of high-priced lawyers exists solely to game the system to ensure that their clients end up before one of these judges. When the Sacklers were seeking to abscond with their billions in opioid blood-money and stiff their victims' families, they set their sights on Judge Robert Drain in the Southern District of New York:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers

To get in front of Drain, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, NY, then waited 192 days to file bankruptcy papers there (it takes six months to establish jurisdiction). Their papers including invisible metadata that identified the case as destined for Judge Drain's court, in a bid to trick the court's Case Management/Electronic Case Files system to assign the case to him.

The case was even pre-captioned "RDD" ("Robert D Drain"), to nudge clerks into getting their case into a friendly forum.

If the Sacklers hadn't opted for Judge Drain, they might have set their sights on the Houston courthouse presided over by Judge David Jones, the second of of the three most corporate-friendly large bankruptcy judges. Judge Jones is a Texas judge – as in "Texas Two-Step" – and he has a long history of allowing corporate murderers and thieves to escape with their fortunes intact and their victims penniless:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice

But David Jones's reign of error is now in limbo. It turns out that he was secretly romantically involved with Elizabeth Freeman, a leading Texas corporate bankruptcy lawyer who argues Texas Two-Step cases in front of her boyfriend, Judge David Jones.

Judge Jones doesn't deny that he and Freeman are romantically involved, but said that he didn't think this fact warranted disclosure – let alone recusal – because they aren't married and "he didn't benefit economically from her legal work." He said that he'd only have to disclose if the two owned communal property, but the deed for their house lists them as co-owners:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24032507-general-warranty-deed

(Jones claims they don't live together – rather, he owns the house and pays the utility bills but lets Freeman live there.)

Even if they didn't own communal property, judges should not hear cases where one of the parties is represented by their long term romantic partner. I mean, that is a weird sentence to have to type, but I stand by it.

The case that led to the revelation and Jones's stepping away from his cases while the Fifth Circuit investigates is a ghastly – but typical – corporate murder trial. Corizon is a prison healthcare provider that killed prisoners with neglect, in the most cruel and awful ways imaginable. Their families sued, so Corizon budded off two new companies: YesCare got all the contracts and other assets, while Tehum Care Services got all the liabilities:

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/prominent-bankruptcy-judge-david-jones-033801325.html

Then, Tehum paid Freeman to tell her boyfriend, Judge Jones, to let it declare bankruptcy, leaving $173m for YesCare and allocating $37m for the victims suing Tehum. Corizon owes more than $1.2b, "including tens of millions of dollars in unpaid invoices and hundreds of malpractice suits filed by prisoners and their families who have alleged negligent care":

https://www.kccllc.net/tehum/document/2390086230522000000000041

Under the deal, if Corizon murdered your family member, you would get $5,000 in compensation. Corizon gets to continue operating, using that $173m to prolong its yearslong murder spree.

The revelation that Jones and Freeman are lovers has derailed this deal. Jones is under investigation and has recused himself from his cases. The US Trustee – who represents creditors in bankruptcy cases – has intervened to block the deal, calling Tehum "a barren estate, one that was stripped of all of its valuable assets as a result of the combination and divisional mergers that occurred prior to the bankruptcy filing."

This is the third high-profile sleazy corporate bankruptcy that had victory snatched from the jaws of defeat this year: there was Johnson and Johnson's attempt to escape from liability from tricking women into powder their vulvas with asbestos (no, really), the Sacklers' attempt to abscond with billions after kicking off the opioid epidemic that's killed 800,000+ Americans and counting, and now this one.

This one might be the most consequential, though – it has the potential to eliminate one third of the major crime-enabling bankruptcy judges serving today.

One down.

Two to go.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/16/texas-two-step/#david-jones

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[bitcoinversus]

Rhodium Enterprises Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

#Bitcoin miner Rhodium Enterprises files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing liabilities up to $100M.

Rhodium Enterprises, a prominent Bitcoin mining company, has officially filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas. The filing includes six subsidiaries, citing liabilities between $50 million and $100 million. Despite these challenges, the company’s assets are estimated to be valued between $100 million and $500…

[drdemonprince]

One thing that pisses me off about the project 2025 discourse is how painfully obvious it is that these people aren’t in any kind of community with southerners because this shit has been happening on the state level for over a decade. I’m from Texas where there aren’t gubernatorial term limits and governor Abbott would 10000% be considered a far right dictator if Texas was its own country. And this is all without the delusion that the DNC gives a single fuck about us. Even when Abbott or one of these governors do something illegal (like take over one of the biggest school districts in the country HISD to basically crystallize the school to prison pipeline or withhold disaster relief funds from cities with dem mayors who don’t suck his dick hard enough) the DOJ will give them a slap on the wrist and nobody intervenes. And when they do it’s to dump millions to keep actual progressives from getting into office.

Southern leftists are some of the best organizers around, even on the fucking electoral level my congressman is a socialist and we have a bunch of mutual friends in the Texas leftist organizing scene. And yeah fuck electoralism but if Texas can elect pro Palestinian socialists what’s everyone else’s excuse to keep pushing this lesser evil bullshit. Making the reality of political tyranny but also razor sharp organizing totally disappear from conversations about project 2025 does everything to obscure the real political reality and potential of this country. We have people on the ground already dealing with the worst case scenario for everything: abortion, trans healthcare, trans panic, censorship, immigration human rights abuses, constant threats of mass deportation, incredibly dangerous prison conditions, climate change, unionizing in the most legally hostile environments in the country. Idk it’s like….i wish people could really grasp this. It’s already been here. And that sucks but it also means……….any person can get involved in the resistance infrastructure that already exists.

fucking YES!! I love you for this anon. Thanks for the message.

[mariacallous]

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing dozens of new allegations of sexual assault in a series of civil lawsuits set to be filed.

At a press conference held on Tuesday, Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee said he is representing 120 accusers with allegations against the entertainment mogul that occurred over 20 years.

“We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors. We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates,” Buzbee said during the press conference.

“Many powerful people ... many dirty secrets,” the lawyer said of the allegations. He added that his team has “collected pictures, video, texts.”

Buzbee added that the allegations will include: “violent sexual assault or rape, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, dissemination of video recordings, sexual abuse of minors.”

“It’s a long list already, but because of the nature of this case, we are going to make sure damn sure we are right before we do that,” Buzbee continued. “These names will shock you.”

Buzbee said he’s had more than 3,000 individuals come forward to his office with accusations against Combs and that he plans to begin filing lawsuits in various states within the next 30 days. He added that they will name the other defendants at a later date.

Among this new group of accusers, Buzbee said, 62 % identify as African American, and that they hail from more than 25 states, with the majority from New York, California, Georgia and Florida.

Buzbee said that 25 of the accusers were minors at the time of the incidents occurring as early as 1991. Buzbee said that the events occurred at parties hosted by Combs, as well as auditions for people hoping to “break into the industry.”

NBC News has reached out Combs’ legal team for comment.

Combs is currently being detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York after prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Combs with sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution in an indictment unsealed last month.

Combs was denied bail twice, but on Monday his legal team, which now includes attorney Alexandra Shapiro alongside Teny Geragos and Marc Agnifilo, filed the first paperwork ahead of an appeal of the bail decision.

Buzbee has represented victims in several other high-profile lawsuits, including against BP in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He also represented individuals accusing NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual misconduct in 2021. That same year, he filed a 750-million dollar lawsuit against Travis Scott after a fatal crowd crush at the rapper’s Astroworld Festival.

Combs’ legal issues have been mounting since his ex-girlfriend, Cassandra “Cassie” Ventura, filed an explosive civil suit against him last year, accusing him of assault and sex trafficking over the course of their relationship. Combs, who has vehemently denied the accusations, settled with Ventura for an undisclosed amount. Several months later, surveillance video showing Combs brutally beating Ventura in the hallway of a Los Angeles hotel leaked, and the mogul apologized for his actions.

Since Ventura’s lawsuit, multiple other civil lawsuits have been filed against Combs — most recently one from Dawn Richard, a former member of the girl group Danity Kane who alleges Combs groped, assaulted, imprisoned and threatened her life. Combs has denied all claims against him, calling them “sickening allegations” from people looking for “a quick payday.”

Many of the lawsuits against Combs were filed in New York City, which has the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law allowing people to file lawsuits alleging sexual abuse even after the statute of limitations had passed.

[necromelli]

growing up, I always pictured district four down south. like, Louisiana + Mississippi typa beat. maybe even a lil bit of the Florida panhandle and/or little bit of Texas. and maybe I'm biased bc I'm from the south.

so, stripping away from canon geographics + culture from the West Coast, can you imagine country boy! Finnick Odair?

he's a master at knots, nets, and traps still. he can fish like no one's business. that's all still the same. but now you've got crawdad fishing. warm water almost all year round except for a few short months where it's sweltering during the day and freezing at night. you've got swamps and water birds now too — ducks, geese, pheasants just past the borders. Finnick breaking the rules by going into the marshes to catch said birds, just because it's fun.

Finnick who has an accent, a little southern twang in his voice. Finnick who has no problems working in the day, even after winning his games, because that's just how he grew up. Johnny down the street didn't get to fish because he's sick? Finnick's out there before dawn, catching as many crawdads as he can fit in his net. you've got some bass thrown in there, maybe some oysters, too. Community is everything in a southern town.

Finnick 'god bless her heart' Odair talking to the Capitol women. He's got that southern charm, that way old Baptist church ladies gossip and sound so damn sweet. He's so sarcastic but none of the posh capitol people pick on it. Saying "no, you are as cute as a button, I promise!" to Capitol women because they just swoon over the compliment, not realizing that Finnick is calling them childish and immature.

old southern mama! mags who gifts finnick his own little cowboy hat after he wins his games. and Finnick, who refuses to let the women touch it because not only is it from mags, there's that unspoken rule about wearing a cowboy's hat. (Iykyk)

[follow-up-news]

Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing a wave of new sexual assault and rape accusations. NBC News has obtained five new civil lawsuits filed Sunday in the Southern District of New York by Texas-based attorney Tony Buzbee. The suits do not name any of the plaintiffs. The five suits include allegations Combs sexually assaulted or raped the plaintiffs in separate incidents from 2000 to 2022. Two of the plaintiffs are men and three are women, including a woman who alleged Combs raped her when she was 13 years old, according to the suits. Combs is also accused of drugging one of the men and the three women, according to the suits. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Alyssa Tirrell at MMFA:

Dr. Eithan Haim, a former medical resident at Texas Children's Hospital, was indicted in May for allegedly illegally accessing trans patients’ records, which he subsequently shared with Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo.  Right-wing media figures have since defended Haim and brought him in for interviews, often equating the care allegedly provided at Texas Children's Hospital — such as the prescription of "puberty blockers" — with harm or mutilation and alleging that Haim is the target of political persecution.  The campaign has successfully raised both Haim's profile and at least $888,865, which he claims will be used for both his legal defense and “offensive legal action against those who have abused their professional responsibility in service of radical transgender ideology.” 

Haim allegedly illegally accessed trans patients’ records

On February 18, 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion that qualified youth gender-affirming care as "child abuse", prompting Texas Children's Hospital to announce that it would stop proving such care. Although the opinion was not legally binding, the hospital released a statement announcing that it would stop prescribing gender-affirming hormone therapies. The statement, which also alluded to recent measures that Gov. Greg Abbott had taken against families of children receiving gender-affirming care, added that “this step was taken to safeguard our healthcare professionals and impacted families from potential legal ramifications.” [Office of the Attorney General of Texas, 2/18/22; American Civil Liberties Union, 2/23/22; The Washington Post, 3/8/22]

In late spring 2023, Dr. Eithan Haim allegedly accessed the records of trans patients at Texas Children's Hospital and shared them with Manhattan Institute senior fellow Chris Rufo. Haim, a resident at Baylor College of Medicine who had previously conducted rotations at Texas Children's Hospital, shared redacted files with Rufo that allegedly demonstrated that the hospital was continuing to provide gender-affirming services to minors. [Houston Public Media, 6/10/24; U.S. Attorney's Office, Southern District of Texas, 6/17/24; United States District Court of the Southern District of Texas, 5/29/24]

On June 2, 2023, a Texas bill restricting gender-affirming care for children was signed into law. S.B. 14 prohibited “the provision to certain children of procedures and treatments for gender transitioning, gender reassignment, or gender dysphoria” as well as “the use of public money or public assistance to provide those procedures and treatments.” The law went into effect on September 1 of that year. [Texas legislature, 6/2/23]

[...]

Right-wing media figures platformed Haim in solo interviews, where he defended himself 

Since January 2024, with the revelation of his identity, Eithan Haim has appeared as a guest alongside many prominent right-wing media figures. In these interviews Haim neither claimed to have worked directly with trans patients nor disputed sharing the documents with Chris Rufo. Instead, Haim often alleged that he was being unfairly targeted and defended his case on the grounds that the care allegedly provided at Texas Children's Hospital was harmful to pediatric patients. 

Right-wing media defend Dr. Eithan Haim’s HIPAA-violating ways of illegally accessing trans patients’ records while at Texas Children’s Hospital in which he shared those records with far-right anti-LGBTQ+ agitator Christopher Rufo.

[leohtttbriar]

Energy Transfer is one of the Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Texas, and Warren is its extremely politically connected co-founder. Warren is also one of the most generous donors in the Texas (and national) conservative political scene, and has funneled huge donations to politicians like Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Warren’s investments, unfortunately, seem to have paid off. In 2021, Energy Transfer and its execs profiteered $2.4 billion off of the February collapse of Texas’ electric grid, which resulted in the deaths of at least 246 Texans. Governor Abbott subsequently, and successfully, steered scrutiny away from Energy Transfer and other energy companies who were either responsible for or profited from the crash. Mere months later, Warren sent Abbott’s campaign a million-dollar check.

Warren and other Energy Transfer leaders and lawyers now seem poised to manipulate the system in favor of the pipeline company once again, this time in the federal courts. 

Prior to the recent raging pipeline fire in Texas, Energy Transfer was behind a very different disaster unfolding at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that often acts as a watchdog for labor unions and regularly fields and reviews complaints from union members nationwide. In 2022, an unidentified employee of Energy Transfer’s subsidiary La Grange Acquisition filed an unfair labor practice charge against the company, alleging that it had retaliated against him for complaining about unsafe working conditions, including “radioactive material and hazardous dust in work areas.” The NLRB opened an administrative case, investigating those claims and the subsequent allegation that he was fired in part for filing the complaint.

In 2024, Energy Transfer sued the NLRB, seeking to halt the administrative proceedings and joining SpaceX, Amazon, and other corporations in basically arguing that the board’s foundational structure is unconstitutional. That argument threatens the basic function of the NLRB (and other agencies like it) and could have sweeping consequences for its ability to conduct investigations or engage in basic enforcement actions for violations of labor rules and regulations. 

That suit ultimately landed in front of Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown of the Southern District of Texas—a Trump appointee—who issued a preliminary injunction against the NLRB’s investigation into Energy Transfer in order to allow the company’s suit against the NLRB to proceed. 

Though the NLRB has nearly 90 years of case law supporting its structure and administrative court reviews, Brown’s ruling cited instead a recent Fifth Circuit ruling, Jarkesy v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which held that the SEC’s structure and enforcement procedures were unconstitutional. In July of this year, the Supreme Court partially affirmed Jarkesy, but remained silent on the Fifth Circuit’s ruling on the (un)constitutionality of the SEC’s administrative law judges, a structure that the commission shares with the NLRB—and many other federal agencies. 

When the Supreme Court does not affirm nor reject an aspect of a ruling issued by a lower court, the lower court’s ruling is functionally left in place, which now poses a serious threat to the basic functionality of the SEC and other federal regulatory agencies that are mandated to act as watchdogs over unscrupulous corporations and in defense of the public interest. Contradictory rulings on the issue from other federal judges have highlighted the conflicting precedents that have allowed the Fifth Circuit to activate an issue that had been deemed settled for decades. 

[...]

An NPR investigation just this year found that he, along with two other Southern District of Texas judges, had failed to file a required form disclosing his attendance of a privately funded seminar. 

The case is far from settled, and it will now be heard by the Fifth Circuit with the NLRB’s appeal of Brown’s earlier ruling. What happens next is yet to be seen, but with the foundation of the government agency that historically has protected labor union members’ rights in the hands of a notoriously partisan court that previously attacked it, the outlook is not promising. 

[covid-safer-hotties]

New XEC COVID subvariant poses potential threat heading into winter. Doctors urge vaccinations - Published Sept 23, 2024

By Rong-Gong Lin II

A new coronavirus subvariant is gaining steam and drawing more attention as a potential threat heading into late autumn and winter — a development that threatens to reverse recent promising transmission trends and is prompting doctors to renew their calls for residents to get an updated vaccine.

XEC, which was first detected in Germany, is gaining traction in Western Europe, said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Like virtually all coronavirus strains that have emerged in the past few years, it’s a member of the sprawling Omicron family — and a hybrid between two previously documented subvariants, KP.3 and KS.1.1.

Past surges have tended “to move from Western Europe to the East Coast to the West Coast of the U.S.,” Hudson said. “So if this does take off more and more as we get towards the colder weather months, this probably would be the variant that will potentially take hold.”

XEC hasn’t been widely seen nationally so far. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, KP.3.1.1, a descendant of the FLiRT subvariants, is the dominant circulating strain nationwide. For the two-week period ending Sept. 14, KP.3.1.1 was estimated to comprise 52.7% of the nation’s coronavirus specimens.

XEC, by comparison, isn’t yet being tracked on the CDC’s variant website. A subvariant needs to make up an estimated 1% or more of coronavirus cases nationwide to qualify.

But there are estimates that XEC makes up 13% of coronavirus samples in Germany and 7% in Britain, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert.

“We’ll have to see how things go. If this does take off, probably we would start to see it more like November, December time,” Hudson said. “So like after Halloween — when the weather will probably get more reliably cool here, people start to go indoors more often — that’s when we’re more likely to see this potentially take hold.”

Any fall or winter resurgence, which has become a reliable occurrence ever since the emergence of COVID-19, would follow a prolonged summer surge that surprised doctors and experts with its strength.

One silver lining, though, is that the timing and strength of the summer COVID surge probably means it could be a couple of months before many people become more susceptible to reinfection, Chin-Hong said.

Last winter’s COVID peak in California — in terms of viral levels in wastewater — was the first week of January.

After the surprisingly strong summer surge, COVID is now declining or probably declining in 22 states, including California and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, the CDC said Friday.

The COVID trend is stable or uncertain in another 22 states, including Florida and New York. COVID is projected to be growing or probably growing in New Jersey, Washington and Massachusetts, and there was no data for the three remaining states.

Still, new COVID infections remain relatively high in many parts of the country. Coronavirus levels in wastewater are still considered “high” or “very high” in 40 states, including California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the CDC said Friday. They were categorized as “low” or “minimal” in six states, including New York, Michigan, Nevada and Hawaii.

In Los Angeles County, coronavirus indicators are on a downward trend. For the 10-day period that ended Sept. 7, the most recent available, coronavirus levels in wastewater were at 56% of last winter’s peak. That’s down from the 10-day period that ended Aug. 24, when viral levels were at 75% of last winter’s peak.

An average of 239 coronavirus cases a day were reported for the week that ended Sept. 15, down 31% from the prior week. Officially reported coronavirus cases are an undercount, as they don’t factor in tests done at home or account for the fact that many people aren’t testing at all when sick. But the trends are still useful in determining how a COVID wave is progressing.

The share of emergency department visits classified as coronavirus-related in L.A. County was 2.8% for the week that ended Sept. 15, down from 3.5% the prior week.

The average number of COVID-19 deaths, however, is rising — an expected development given the surge in illness and the lag in reporting fatalities. An average of 4.9 COVID deaths were reported per day for the week that ended Aug. 27 in L.A. County, up from the prior week’s number of 4.3.

COVID levels in the wastewater of the San Francisco Bay Area are also settling down. Coronavirus levels were considered medium in the sewersheds of San José and Palo Alto, and low in Sunnyvale and Gilroy, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department said.

The rate at which coronavirus tests are coming back positive is falling in California. For the week that ended Sept. 16, 8.9% of reported coronavirus tests — typically those done at medical facilities — returned positive results. The seasonal peak was 12.8%, for the week that ended Aug. 10, according to the latest data.

It remains unclear how bad this winter’s respiratory virus season will be. COVID isn’t the only game in town, as health officials also are closely monitoring flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

The CDC in late August forecasted that this fall-and-winter season will either be similar to last year, or perhaps slightly less potent. But that forecast could be overly optimistic, the agency warned, if some assumptions are off — such as if fewer people get vaccinated than expected.

The situation may be improved because people may still have some residual immunity from flu and RSV, Chin-Hong said, which flared up the past couple of winters. Also helping matters is the rollout of vaccines against RSV, which became available last year.

Still, every winter carries its own respiratory illness risk. Circulation of a type of flu that’s different than the ones included in the vaccine would make those shots less effective, for instance.

And the experience from parts of the Southern Hemisphere for their winter suggests the respiratory virus season could be active here, Hudson said.

“Australia — they had a pretty robust and early flu season, and we are already starting to see a couple of cases of flu here in the U.S., which is pretty darn early,” Hudson said.

The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older get the updated COVID-19 and flu vaccines. The immunizations are widely available, and the best time to get vaccinated is in September and October, the CDC says.

After a coronavirus infection, people may consider waiting three months to get the latest COVID vaccination, according to the CDC. But people can also choose to get it as soon as they feel better.

“I always have hope. And if folks get vaccinated — this is the perfect time now to get vaccinated against flu, get the new COVID shot — we could potentially tamp down on what will certainly be another more typical fall-and-winter surge. But I think the jury is out in terms of how bad it is going to be,” Hudson said.

Getting vaccinated “means fewer sick days and more time with your loved ones. We are stronger when we are all protected against respiratory diseases,” Dr. Tomás Aragón, the director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement.

Older or immunocompromised people who haven’t been vaccinated in more than a year are at highest risk for severe COVID illness and death, officials say.

Data show that people who got last year’s updated COVID vaccine were 54% less likely to get the disease between mid-September 2023 through January, according to the CDC.

A flu vaccine that’s well matched to the circulating viruses can also reduce the likelihood of becoming sick enough to require a doctor’s visit — by 40% to 60%, the CDC said.

There are needle-free options for getting the flu vaccine, such as FluMist, which has been available for many years as a nasal spray for non-pregnant people ages 2 to 49. On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved at-home use of FluMist — meaning adults can administer the vaccine to themselves or their children.

A prescription will still be needed for the at-home option, which is expected to be available starting fall 2025.

COVID remains a greater risk to public health than the flu, the CDC says. Since Oct. 1, at least 55,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported nationally. At least 25,000 flu deaths are estimated over that same time period. Flu death estimates are expected to be updated in October or November.

The CDC recommends RSV vaccinations for all adults age 75 and older, as well as those ages 60 to 74 who are at increased risk for severe disease. The RSV vaccine, however, is not annual, so people who got one last year don’t need to get another one at this time.

An RSV vaccine is also available for expectant mothers at weeks 32 to 36 of pregnancy to pass protection to their fetuses. An RSV antibody is available for babies and some young children, too.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it will again make four free COVID tests available through the mail for households. You can register at covidtests.gov starting at the end of September.

Besides getting vaccinated, California health officials urged people to take other steps to prevent getting sick and infecting others. They include staying home when sick, testing for COVID and flu if you’re sick, wearing a mask in indoor public settings, washing hands, covering cough and sneezes, and ventilating indoor spaces.

[lboogie1906]

Willie M. Pickett (December 5, 1870 – April 2, 1932) was a cowboy, rodeo, Wild West show performer, and actor. In 1989, he was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame. He invented the technique of bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground

He was born in the Jenks Branch community of Williamson County, Texas. He was the second of 13 children born to Thomas Jefferson Pickett, a former enslaved person, and Mary “Janie” Gilbert. By 1888, the family had moved to Taylor, Texas.

He married Maggie Turner (1890), the formerly enslaved daughter of a white southern plantation owner. The couple had nine children.

In 1971, he was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. In 1989, he was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.

Concert promoter Lu Vason founded the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo in 1984. The touring rodeo celebrates Black cowboys.

In 1987, a statue of him performing his signature “bulldogging” maneuver, was presented to the city of Fort Worth. The statue is installed in the Fort Worth Stockyards Historic District.

The USPS chose to include him in the Legends of the West commemorative sheet unveiled in December 1993. His family informed the Postal Service that the likeness was incorrect. Its source material was a misidentified photograph of Bill Pickett’s brother and fellow cowboy star, Ben Pickett. In October 1994, the USPS released corrected stamps based on the poster for The Bull-Dogger. In They Die by Dawn (2013) he is portrayed by Bokeem Woodbine.

In March 2015, the Taylor City Council announced that a street that leads to the rodeo arena would be renamed to honor him.

On June 2, 2017, a new statue of him was unveiled in his hometown of Taylor. It is prominently displayed at the intersection of 2nd and Main Streets downtown.

On August 6, 2018, he was inducted into the Jim Thorpe Association’s Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. In The Harder They Fall, his role was played by actor Edi Gathegi. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Emily Yoffe

Published: Jun 11, 2024

Eithan Haim, 34, is at the beginning of his career as a surgeon. He and his wife are expecting their first child in the fall. And now he is facing a four-count federal felony indictment for blowing the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital, where he worked while a resident. 

At TCH, he discovered the hospital was secretly continuing gender transition treatments on minors—including hormonal intervention on patients as young as 11 years old—after publicly declaring, in March of 2022, it would no longer provide such services.

The hospital unwillingly backed away from the treatments under pressure from the Texas governor and attorney general. But Haim found not only were the treatments continuing—the program appeared to be expanding. He recorded several online presentations by medical staff encouraging the transition of children—one social worker described how she deliberately did not make note of such treatment in the medical charts of patients to avoid leaving a paper trail. Haim told me, “They were talking publicly about how they were concealing what they were doing. You can’t take care of your patient without trust. For me as a doctor, to not do something about this was unconscionable.”

Haim, like a growing number of medical professionals around the world, had grave doubts about the safety and efficacy of the explosively growing business of youth gender transition medicine. When he looked into it, he found that children distressed about their biological sex often had multiple mental health challenges—conditions that were being ignored in the rush to put vulnerable young people on hormones, and even to perform surgical interventions. These treatments are profoundly life-altering, with a high risk of rendering a young person sterile. In the last few years, a growing number of countries have investigated these treatments for young people, found the evidence wanting, and have effectively banned interventions such as puberty blockers—drugs that prevent children from entering puberty.

Haim felt he had to act, but he knew the career risks of speaking out could be enormous. He contacted conservative journalist Christopher Rufo, who published an exposé without naming Haim. Before giving Rufo evidence that puberty blockers were still being surgically implanted in young patients, Haim made sure the patient’s names and other identifying information were redacted. This was both to protect patient privacy, and himself from violating the law known as HIPAA, which protects individual patient identities while also allowing various uses of medical information. The story Haim gave to Rufo was published May 16, 2023. The next day, the Texas legislature voted to ban the medical gender transition of minors.

Haim says there was no immediate aftermath: “Everything went quiet. I was anonymous and went on with my life.” Then June 23 of last year, the day Haim was to graduate from his residency, two federal agents from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed up at his house to have a little chat. Haim’s wife, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, a different division of the U.S. Attorney’s office than the one that has indicted her husband, advised him not to talk. 

As Haim later wrote in City Journal, “Before leaving, they handed me a letter revealing that I was a ‘potential target’ of an investigation involving alleged violation of federal criminal law related to medical records.” Haim then went public about the threat facing him in an interview with Rufo. (The U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas did not respond to a request for comment.)

Haim was indicted last week, but, as of this writing, he and his attorneys do not yet know the precise nature of the charges. One of his lawyers, Mark Lytle, told me it’s very unusual to bring felony charges for an alleged HIPAA violation unless there is a significant underlying crime, such as a hospital clerk selling a celebrity’s medical records. He said the indictment of Haim seems politically motivated. “The government is entering into the town square on the culture wars and didn’t like what Eithan had to say,” said Lytle. “I think they are looking to make an example of him.” Haim is raising money for his legal fees through this GiveSendGo account.

Haim told me despite the peril he is now facing he has no regrets about blowing the whistle and is committed to fighting the federal charges. He said, “If we don’t fight back, what world are we delivering our children into?”

--

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Top 10 Politicians 2024

DISCLAIMER: This list is for 'politicians I'd like to fuck' and is purely based on appearance, not politics. If you don't agree with my selection, either scroll onwards, post your own idea of a PILF, or try another blog. People are tired of hearing weak minded, mentally broken people wine about reality.

#10. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

An American politician serving as the senior United States senator from South Carolina, a seat he has held since 2003. Of course I’ve got my senate bottom bitch, Sen. Graham here. I kinda understand all the political hate, but I think he’s a mature southern gentleman from my state and I’d love to beat his ass like he stole something from me. And when I’m done with him, I’ll send him over to the next guy as I know I’m not the only one who’d fuck him.

#9. Rick Pate (R-AL)

An American politician serving as the 30th Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries in Alabama. He just looks like a guy I could spend a weekend with… fucking like rabbits.

#8. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

An American politician and attorney serving as the junior United States Senator for Texas since 2013. Honestly, Ted’s here and this high only to piss off liberal, super political fuckers who can’t separate looks from politics. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t want him naked in my bed with my jizz all over his face.

#7. Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA 15th District) 

An American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district since 2019. Nice and manly, he looks like he would be a champion in bed.

#6. Gov. J. B. Pritzker (D-IL)

An American businessman, philanthropist, attorney, venture capitalist, and politician serving as the 43rd governor of Illinois since 2019. J. B. seems like the type that could be had. Nothing to base that on other than he has a look of a guy that if you get him in the right situation, cock will be in that mouth and ass. Plus, he’s rich. I’m not saying that’s a reason to date him. Just a nice side benefit.

#5. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE 2nd District) 

An American politician and retired military officer serving as the U.S. representative for Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district since 2017. Handsome, nice tits and body. This man is husband material. Better yet, trophy husband material. The type of guy you can walk into a room with him on your arm, telling everyone “Yeah… I’m fucking this.”

#4. Michael G. Strain (R-LA)

Mike is a short chub with nice tits and a body that was made for bottoming. How could I not be in lust.

#3. Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe (R-MO)

An American politician serving as the 48th lieutenant governor of Missouri, having been in office since June 18, 2018. Mike embodies all-American masculinity and has many male fans here on tumblr who'd happily follow the Lt Gov. into any seedy roadside motel for oral service and a nice tight ass to breed.

#2. Rep. Michael (R-IL 12th District) 

An American politician. This man is almost perfect. The only thing wrong with him is that he isn’t in my bed. Nice build, nice dresser and a very handsome face.

#1. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT)

An American politician serving as the senior United States Senator from Montana, in office since 2007. If you didn’t know that Jon would be my #1, you must be a new follower.

[mariacallous]

On Tuesday morning, celebrities like Stephen Curry, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kerry Washington used their social media platforms to mark National Voter Registration Day, a nonpartisan effort to get Americans to sign up to vote in November’s election.

But at the same time, a group of MAGA influencers were rolling out a very different message about voting to their followers.

“Millions of illegals have been crossing our southern border, many of them who are coming are drug traffickers and sex traffickers. But what I’m worried about is the illegal voting,” Danielle D'Souza Gill said in an Instagram video she shared to her 255,000 followers, alongside the hashtag #OnlyCitizensVote. D’Souza Gill is the daughter of election conspiracist and right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza and wife to Brandon Gill, a Trump-endorsed election denier who recently won the GOP nomination to run for Congress in Texas’ 26th district.

Her video about immigrants voting is not a one-off. It’s part of a coordinated effort called “National Only Citizens Vote” week that has been rolling out since Monday. The campaign has been coordinated by a network of election denial groups who created the Only Citizens Vote Coalition to centralize their efforts. A WIRED review of recordings of half a dozen meetings to plan out “National Only Citizens Vote” week has revealed that the organizers, guest speakers, and volunteers who are participating are pushing conspiracies about immigrants, planning to post threatening signs at polling places, and blaming the “evil left” for stealing the election even before a vote has been cast.

The coalition was spearheaded by Cleta Mitchell, a former Trump adviser and attorney who was on the infamous call in 2020 when Trump asked Georgia state officials to reverse the election results. Mitchell has personally hosted online Zoom calls for the last several months where hundreds of local volunteers were given marching orders about how to spread the conspiracy about immigrants voting.

For the week, the coalition created a website filled with resources including PowerPoint presentations, handouts, posters, and printable signs in Spanish and English warning: “If you are NOT a citizen of the United States of America, it is ILLEGAL for you to vote.” Across platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, volunteers and GOP influencers with huge followings have been encouraged to post memes and videos pushing the conspiracy. The campaign also incorporates offline activities, encouraging supporters to attend flag-waving events on street corners, hand out bumper stickers and yard signs, write to their local representatives, and seek airtime on local TV and radio stations to spread the conspiracy.

Monday was dedicated to “shining a light” on noncitizen voting, Tuesday “celebrated citizenship, and Wednesday focused on “federal action.” Friday is, unironically it seems, dedicated to “protecting noncitizen voters” when the activists will push the message that voting when not a citizen could get you deported.

It’s the culmination of the last six months of work from election denial groups like Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network, which has been spreading election conspiracies for the last four years, as well as organizations like the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Transparency Initiative, a group headed up by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli and backed by far-right billionaire Dick Uihlein. Their work hasn’t been in a vacuum: Former president Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers, conservative activists, and right-wing pundits have been strenuously pushing the lie that a flood of immigrants pose a threat to the integrity of the 2024 elections.

The connective tissue between the Trump campaign and the grassroots activists spreading the conspiracy is the Election Integrity Network, a group established in the wake of the 2020 election by Mitchell. The Election Integrity Network, which earlier this year was involved in mass voter roll challenges, has established a huge network of regional, state, and county-level groups with tens of thousands of activists who attend regular online information sessions about everything from poll worker recruitment to media training.

In recent weeks, Mitchell and her staff have been laser-focused on the threat of noncitizens voting, according to WIRED’s review of recordings of more than half a dozen meetings. In a series of online webinars, each attended by hundreds of volunteers, Mitchell and her colleagues have spoken at length about the supposed threat posed by immigrants, while providing no evidence to back up their claims.

“The noncitizen voting has become one of the top talking points this election cycle, despite effectively zero evidence of it being a widespread problem. They're just going on vibes,” Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director at Documented, tells WIRED. “It's become a centerpiece of MAGA-oriented messaging in the run-up to the 2024 election, embraced by everybody from Donald Trump, House speaker Mike Johnson, to Elon Musk, in part because it links together two of the right's biggest talking points for this election: immigration and the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.”

All the available evidence suggests that noncitizen voting accounts for a vanishingly small fraction of a percent of the votes cast in US elections. The GOP push to suggest this is a problem echoes much of the rhetoric around the great replacement conspiracy, which falsely suggests that a “cabal of global elites” is encouraging people of color to immigrate and replace white voters. Experts also believe the narrative is being seeded as a scare tactic designed to lay the groundwork for Trump and his allies to once again question the outcome of the vote.

The push to make immigrant voting an issue began to gather steam in April when, standing alongside Trump at Mar-a-Lago, House speaker Mike Johnson said he was working on some voter suppression legislation to make it illegal for noncitizens to vote—which it already is. That legislation became the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act—better known as the SAVE Act—which not only seeks to make it illegal for noncitizens to vote (again, it is already illegal) but to also introduce a requirement for people registering to vote to provide documentary proof that they are citizens.

According to a June survey by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, this measure would disenfranchise one in 10 voters, or around 18 million people, who for various reasons have difficulty accessing the documents like passports and birth certificates necessary to prove they are citizens. The White House dismissed the bill in July as “​​based on easily disproven falsehoods.”

These claims have made it to the mainstream: Last month, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo posted on X about a friend of a friend who claims to have seen “a massive line of immigrants getting licenses and had a tent and table outside the front door of the DMV registering them to vote.” The claims were quickly debunked, with Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson Sergeant William Lockridge telling The Fort Worth Star-Telegram that “none of it is true” and that the claims were “kind of racist.”

X owner Elon Musk has also helped the conspiracy theory go viral. In July, he wrote on X that the Democratic party’s “goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible.” Trump even repeated the claim last week during the presidential debate. “Our elections are bad,” said Trump. “And lots of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote.”

Now, as Trump’s acolytes push this lie at a hyper-local level, experts are concerned about the danger to voters and nonvoters alike.

“There is the potential for intimidation that results from these efforts, [such as] the [Election Integrity Network] activists showing up at the polls and calling into question the eligibility of non-English speakers or nonwhite voters,” Fischer says.

Many of the volunteers participating in the calls organized by the Election Integrity Network also repeated rumors and conspiracies, some in relation to the claims that pro-Democrat NGOs were registering immigrants across the country.

“I would also like to see something like television ads or billboards in Spanish specifically warning, if you are not a citizen and you vote, that is a felony and you would be subject to immediate deportation, something like that, very crisply stated,” an attendee named Pat said at one meeting. She added that the message should be targeted directly at Spanish-speaking communities, resulting in “a lot of people saying, ‘I'm not going to the polls.’”

In some cases, speakers voiced entirely new conspiracies. One woman named Patty King from Tennessee, on a call on August 22, claimed they had “identified illegal immigrants that have registered through the homeless shelters. I have over 564 of them,” adding in the next breath: “Proving that and then proving that they voted is another very big problem.”

A number of participants on the calls self-identified as election officials, poll workers, and representatives of their local Republican Party.

One attendee on a recent call was Deanna De’Liberto, who was recently named by her local Republican Party as the presidential elector for North Carolina's 5th District. De’Liberto raised a conspiracy about immigrants skewing the electoral maps in favor of the Democrats.

The meetings have also featured a number of prominent guest speakers, including Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project. The Heritage Foundation, the ultra-conservative group behind the dystopian Project 2025 plan, has been at the forefront of pushing the lie that noncitizens are voting in huge numbers. The group has also posted a number of “explosive” undercover videos claiming to show how noncitizens can obtain fake documents; a recent New York Times investigation debunked the claims made in a number of those videos.

“[The Biden administration] is mobilizing this huge, targeted, [get out the vote] government-funded operation at their preferred demographics, which obviously includes illegal aliens,” Howell told those listening, without providing any evidence to back up this claim.

And just last week, representative Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas who is the main sponsor of the SAVE Act in the House, spoke to the weekly meeting, answering questions from attendees and urging them all to continue pushing the conspiracy theory. Days earlier, Mitchell had appeared at a Judiciary Committee Hearing chaired by Roy on Capitol Hill, discussing the very same topic.

While the activists behind Only Citizens Vote week claim the initiative is meant to be about protecting US democracy, the reality is that pushing these conspiracies disenfranchises voters, or worse.

Last month, officers from Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit conducted early morning raids on the homes of Latino civil rights activists, including multiple members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), as part of “ongoing election integrity investigations.” While the press release announcing the raids did not mention noncitizens specifically, Paxton has been among the loudest voices pushing the conspiracy about immigrants voting.

The noncitizen voting conspiracy “is certainly part of the reason that Latino nonprofit organizations, civic leaders, and LULAC members were targeted,” Juan Proaño, the CEO of LULAC, told WIRED about his organization’s members being attacked. “This is setting a precedent in the courts to normalize these tactics, so they can be copied in other Republican states.”

“There’s a reason Joe Biden brought people here illegally,” Paxton said on The Joe Pags Show last month. “I’m convinced that that’s how they’re going to do it this time, they’re going to use the illegal vote. Why were they brought in, why did he bring in 14 million people? He brought them here to vote.”

“It's hard to think of anything more intimidating than having someone who's involved in civic activism and voter turnout have their home raided, and it appears that those raids have been motivated by these noncitizen-voting conspiracy theories,” Fischer says.

Beyond all the bluster and divisive rhetoric, another possible reason that the GOP is so focused on this non-issue, experts believe, is that they are simply laying the groundwork to question the outcome of November’s vote.

“Why is it happening now?’ Michael Waldman, CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, said last month during a House committee hearing on the SAVE Act. “It’s being pushed preemptively, I believe, to set the stage for undermining the legitimacy of the 2024 election this year. The Big Lie is being pre-deployed.”

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Vanessa Gilmore

Judge Vanessa Gilmore was born in 1956 in St. Albans, New York. In 1994, Gilmore was appointed to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. At the time, she was the youngest sitting federal judge in the country. During her time on the bench, Gilmore presided over several high-profile cases, including litigation stemming from the Enron scandal. She retired from the bench in 2022. Gilmore is the co-author if A Boy Named Rocky, a book for the children of incarcerated parents, and has written three other books.

Image source: United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas

[follow-up-news]

Jay-Z, the rapper whose real name is Shawn Carter, was accused of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, allegedly along with Sean "Diddy" Combs, in 2000, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court on Sunday. The anonymous plaintiff, identified as "Jane Doe," said the assault took place at an MTV Video Music Awards after-party. According to the accuser, an unidentified female celebrity stood by and watched Combs and Carter take turns raping the minor, and that no one at the party attempted to stop the assault.  NBC News was the first to report the accusations against Carter. The lawsuit was initially filed in October in the District Court of the Southern District of New York, with Combs named a defendant. It was refiled on Sunday to include Carter. Tony Buzbee, the Texas attorney who filed the complaint, has filed several lawsuits against Combs in recent months accusing the hip-hop mogul of physical assault and rape. Buzbee's lawsuit accused Carter of filing his own lawsuit against Buzbee, which Buzbee called "frivolous." None of the accusers have been named, and Jay-Z is the first high-profile defendant Buzbee has listed besides Combs.

[beardedmrbean]

Las Vegas police on Tuesday arrested eight teenagers on murder charges in connection with the death of Jonathan Lewis, a 17-year-old who was pummeled by a mob of his classmates in an alley outside their high school, authorities said.

The eight suspects charged with murder are between 13 and 17 years old, said Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Jason Johansson in a news conference on Tuesday. Police along with the district attorney's office are beginning the process to charge them as adults. Johansson added that there's no evidence indicating the attack was "a hate crime."

On Nov. 1, students from Rancho High School, including Jonathan, met in an alley just across the street from the campus to fight over "stolen wireless headphones and, possibly, a stolen marijuana vape pen," Johansson said. Police believe the items were stolen from Jonathan's friend but once they were all in the alley, it was Jonathan who fought instead.

Johansson said as soon as the first punch was thrown, 10 people swarmed Jonathan, pulled him to the ground and began kicking, punching and stomping him.

After the fight, a passerby found the teenager unconscious in the alley and carried him to the school, where staff performed CPR. First responders rushed him to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, where it was soon determined that he had suffered "non-survivable head trauma," Johansson said. Jonathan died several days later.

Police search for two more suspects, ask public for help

Videos of the incident – called "extremely disturbing" and "void of humanity" by police officials – circulated social media and were used by investigators to identify eight of the 10 suspects. On Tuesday, police and the FBI coordinated arrests of the eight students and executed search warrants at nine homes throughout Las Vegas. Johansson said clothing worn by teenagers in the video and cellphones were recovered.

Las Vegas police will be releasing photos of the remaining suspects and urged the public to assist investigators in identifying them. Johansson asked that people submit footage of the incident to police and called on parents to speak with their children about the videos, which have been shared widely across multiple social media platforms.

"If you're a mentor with youth, if you're a parent, you have to assume that your kids have seen this video ... don't put your head in the sand," Johansson said. "Please talk with your kids about it and explain – people need to know right from wrong and that this act was heinous."

Jonathan's father seeks 'deeper justice'

Jonathan Lewis Sr., an electrician who lives in Austin, Texas, said his son was "a hero" who stuck up for his friend.

"That's just the kind of person he was," Lewis, 38, told USA TODAY. He described his son as an avid hip-hop fan who liked to make digital art.

Lewis said when he got the phone call that Jonathan was attacked and in the hospital, he could "could barely walk."

His family arranged to get him a flight to Las Vegas, where he and Jonathan's mother stayed at their son's bedside for days. During that time, they started planning a foundation that would address youth violence issues through counseling, mentorships and after-school programs.

Lewis created a website for the foundation, Team Jonathan, and is beginning to work on what he hopes becomes a nonprofit that'll prevent incidents like what happened to his son.

"Justice is a much much deeper issue to me than these children go to prison," Lewis said. "This is an all-encompassing issue that involves all of humanity and how we behave and the lack of empathy and compassion that we have. I just feel like my son's legacy deserves a deeper justice."