With regard to Article 7 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights ... the Plaintiffs, based upon the evidence adduced at trial, proved that the 2021 Plan was drawn with “partisanship as predominant intent, to the exclusion of traditional redistricting criteria” … by the party in power, to suppress the voice of Republican voters. The right for all [to] political participation in Congressional elections … was violated by the 2021 Plan …

***

As result, this Court will enter declaratory judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs, declaring the 2021 Plan unconstitutional, and permanently enjoining its operation, and giving the General Assembly an opportunity to develop a new Congressional Plan that is constitutional.  A separate declaratory judgment will be entered as of today’s date.

Maryland’s recent history of partisan gerrymandering is no secret. [its 2011] congressional district map … remains one of the most notorious partisan gerrymanders in U.S. history. A federal district judge openly doubted that it could provide “fair and effective representation for all citizens.”  Another called it “absurd” to suggest ‘that there is a community of interest” in a district described as a “Rorschach-like eyesore.” [A federal appeals court] famously described the same district as “a broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate across the center of the state.”

All emails sent to and from Director Francis Collins related to “gain of function”, “hydroxychloroquine”, “HCQ”, and/or “Wuhan Institute of Virology”
 

Based on the recommendations from the DSMB [Data and Safety Monitoring Board of NIH] that met late today, NHLBI [National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute] is stopping … the randomized controlled trial comparing hydroxychloroquine vs. placebo/Standard of care in hospitalized patients with confirmed SARS-CoV2 infection. This was a scheduled interim analysis – actually the 4th in a series – looking at both safety and outcomes data. Bottom line: There was no harm signal. [Emphasis in original] However, based on the conditional power analysis there is less than a 1% probability that HCQ would prove more effective than standard of care even if we enrolled twice the number of patients. Therefore, we are concurring with the DSMB’s recommendation and stopping the trial in accordance with standard trial monitoring and oversight practices. The trial was almost completed (475 patients enrolled out of 510 target); however, based on these results there is no need to continue the study.
 

We write with strong concerns surrounding the Administration’s termination of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to EcoHealth Alliance on April 24, 2020.  In the letter communicating the grant’s termination, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, Dr. Michael Lauer, wrote that “At this time, NIH does not believe the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities.”  However, press reports indicate that the grant was canceled because a small portion of the funding was to be given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for on-the-ground sample collection and analysis.  Given the potential for this study to inform our knowledge of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission, it is deeply concerning that it may have been canceled for political reasons in the midst of the current pandemic.
 

All emails sent to and from members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee regarding adverse events, deaths and/or injuries caused by investigatory vaccines for the prevention or treatment of SARS-CoV-2 and/or COVID-19 currently produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and/or Johnson & Johnson.
 

The NYPD’s new anti-gun units hit the streets last week and not a moment too soon. New York City is in the midst of a staggering crime wave. Over the past weekend, 29 people were shot in 24 separate incidents, the Daily News reported. According to the latest NYPD statistics, major felonies in the city increased 58% in February 2022, in year over year comparisons to February 2021. Murders rose 10%. Felony assaults rose 22%. Rapes increased 35%. Robberies increased 56%. Hate crimes—largely against Jews and Asian-Americans—surged 189%. Crimes in the transit systems—mainly the subways—were up 73%.

New York is a city under siege. Every day brings a new horror story. A child is assaulted in Times Square. A young woman is stabbed to death in her Chinatown apartment. A senior citizen is hacked to death by a wheelchair-bound transgender two-time convicted murderer. A madman smears feces on a woman’s face in a subway station, is released on bail, and is arrested again after hurling a dumbbell through a window. A woman is shoved in front of a subway train and killed. Another woman is attacked with a hammer. A teen is shot to death in front of a Brooklyn high school. A baby is shot in the face in the Bronx. A teenage cashier at a Burger King in Manhattan is shot and killed during a robbery. Two police officers are killed by gunfire in Harlem.

At Judicial Watch, we warned for years that New York was slipping toward a crisis of crime and disorder. The reasons were not difficult to discern. Progressive policy makers were denigrating and defunding the police at every opportunity, dismantling successful policing units, decriminalizing quality-of-life crimes, emptying jails, and launching a disastrous program of bail reform.

Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York abandoned the successful policing strategy of enforcing quality-of-life laws. This was the “Broken Windows” theory of policing, a key factor in crime reduction during the mayoral tenure of Rudy Giuliani.

“Broken Windows” is a metaphor for urban decline. The building with an unrepaired broken window soon leads to the other windows being broken and more disorderly conduct. “A neighborhood where minor offenses go unchallenged soon becomes a breeding ground for more serious criminal activity and, ultimately, violence,” writes Giuliani police commissioner William Bratton and George Kelling, the father of Broken Windows theory.

New York decriminalized quality-of-life crimes under de Blasio. Public urination, public drinking, littering, and subway turnstile jumping were no longer illegal. Incidents of harassment, menacing, petty theft, public urination and public intoxication began to increase. That distant tremor in the urban air was the sound of windows breaking.

Meanwhile, progressives rammed through the state legislature in Albany a reform package that eliminated bail for a wide range of offenses—from assault, arson and child abuse to manslaughter, robbery and riot—and removed judicial discretion in holding suspects. The reform legislation took effect January 2020. Many more offenders walked. Some of them were poor first-time offenders on minor crimes who simply could not afford bail and deserved to walk; others were violent personalities or career criminals who did not. Crime rates jumped.

The public backlash was swift. In November 2021, New York elected a new mayor, a former police officer who had campaigned on a platform of public safety, Eric Adams. The new mayor’s plans include a refreshed version of the successful but controversial NYPD anti-crime unit, which was disbanded in 2020 in the midst of social justice protests. The new six-person anti-gun units, launched last week, will aggressively tackle gun crime in New York. About 170 police officers have been deployed so far, focusing on high crime areas, with 300 more to follow.

Adams also is advocating for reform of radical bail laws, tougher gun possession charges for youthful offenders, and a crackdown on transit crime with an increased police presence in the subways.

Initially stunned by the Adams electoral victory, New York’s powerful progressive factions have begun to push back hard on the new mayor. Adams’ appeal to Democratic leaders in Albany for bail reform—largely focused on giving judges more discretion to hold potentially violent offenders—was quickly shot down. Progressive politicians in New York argue that there is not a proven connection between the new bail laws and increased crime; conservatives disagree.

Adams, meanwhile, gained an important ally in the bail reform fight: New York Governor Kathy Hochul. The former lieutenant governor took over after Andrew Cuomo resigned. Last week, she sent the state legislature a “confidential” ten-point public safety plan that backed the Adams proposal to give judges more discretion in setting bail. The plan quickly leaked, infuriating the Left. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hochul will be asking the voters for a full term as governor in November.

Back in New York City, the new NYPD anti-gun teams acted quickly, making the first arrest just two hours into the first patrol—an alleged member of the Bloods crime gang with a loaded 9mm handgun. By the end of the first week, the anti-gun units had arrested thirty more suspects and taken ten illegal guns off the streets.

In a scandalous example of leftwing dominance in higher education, a public university in New York will hold an event next month featuring a convicted cop killer promoted by the taxpayer-funded institution as a “political prisoner.” The April 6 event at State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport is titled “History of Black Resistance, U.S. Political Prisoners & Genocide: A Conversation with Jalil Muntaqim” and the school’s announcement conveniently omits Muntaqim’s crimes, though it mentions he “was an avid educator” in prison. Formerly known as Anthony Bottom, Muntaqim was convicted for the murder of two New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in 1971. At the time he was a member of the radical Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army.

Muntaqim and two of his Black Liberation Army comrades ambushed and killed the officers, Waverly Jones, who was black, and Joseph Piagentini in Harlem. The officers were on foot patrol in a public housing complex. As they returned to their police vehicle, the three suspects attacked them from behind and shot them. Jones was killed instantly after getting shot in the back of the head. Piagentini was shot multiple times and died on the way to the hospital. One of the cop murderers died in prison, the other was granted parole in 2018 and Muntaqim was paroled in 2020, after being denied parole 11 times and serving nearly five decades. Piagentini’s widow was rightfully outraged that her husband’s murderer was freed, saying this in a local news report: “My husband, they shot him, there were 22 bullet holes in my husband, and Bottom [Muntaqim] just kept on shooting,” she said. “My husband looked at him, turned and said ‘I have a wife, I have children,’ but he continued to shoot.”

The media has downplayed Muntaqim’s crimes, instead celebrating him as an author, activist, and local civil rights organizer who is featured in a documentary released just weeks ago. In a review of the film, titled “Conversations: The Black Radical Tradition,” one media outlet describes the film as “first-hand accounts of Black resistance in America in the 20th and 21st centuries from more than a dozen activists, scholars, politicians, writers, and others involved in resistance and community-building movements.” In the article Muntaqim says “there has been an unbroken history of resistance against white supremacy, institutional racism, and capitalist exploitation of our communities, but the engagement in activism has at times gone dormant. So it’s important for us to understand the history and resurrect that tradition of resistance.” Another newspaper article describes the cop killer fondly: “During his incarceration, Muntaqim became a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a mentor, a scholar, a several-times-over published author and a faith leader.”

SUNY Brockport was actually going to compensate the felon to appear at the upcoming event, but public outrage forced university officials to revoke the payment. They have, however, refused calls to cancel Muntaqim’s appearance, which is being billed by the school as an “intellectual conversation” about his time with the Black Panthers and as a political prisoner. In a letter published by a local news outlet in the aftermath of the public outrage, SUNY Brockport President Heidi Macpherson explains that Muntaqim was invited by a faculty member who was approved for a “Promoting Excellence in Diversity” grant. “We do not support the violence exhibited in Mr. Muntaqim’s previous crimes, and his presence on campus does not imply endorsement of his views or past actions,” Macpherson, writes, adding that his appearance will provide an opportunity to learn about his perspective and what may have contributed to his past experiences. Macpherson assures individuals will have the opportunity to ask difficult questions such as “why he chooses to identify as a former political prisoner.”

At least one New York state legislator blasted the university, issuing a statement saying that it is incredibly inappropriate and downright wrong to give Muntaqim a platform at a taxpayer-funded institution. “What type of message would we be sending to young college students to call someone who played a role in the assassination of two members of law enforcement a “political prisoner?” What message does it send to criminal justice majors on campus? What message does it send to our law enforcement?” Academic freedom and diversity are important, the lawmaker, Assemblyman Josh Jensen writes, but “granting this opportunity to a convicted cop killer is wholly misguided.” In its promotional material, the university portrays Muntaqim as a civil rights hero, stating that he was a teen activist for the NAACP and Black Panther Party at age 18. The school further describes him as a “grandfather, father, mentor to many, and loving human being.”