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A California woman who's suspected in the killings of her three children gave an interview to KGET this Friday, saying that she drowned her children in order to protect them from their father who she claims was abusive.
"I drowned them," she said in the interview which took place at the Lerdo Pre-Trial Facility in Kern County.
"I did it as softly, I don't know how to explain it, but I hugged them and I kissed them and I was apologizing the whole time," she said. "I loved my kids."
The children's father, Erik Denton, said in court papers filed earlier this year that Carrillo was increasingly delusional and that the children were in danger when with their mother.
"I wish my kids were alive, yes," she said. "Do I wish that I didn't have to do that? Yes. But I prefer them not being tortured and abused on a regular basis for for the rest of their lives."'
Watch the full interview below:
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An Ohio man has been arrested after he was found with an unloaded semi-automatic gun, ammunition and a gas mask in a bag, according to News 4.
The man was apprehended by officers at the subway station in New York City's Times Square this Friday.
The man was spotted by law enforcement as he took the unloaded weapon out of his bag and placed it on the ground. He was taken into custody after being questioned by the officers. Officers later found that he had a loaded magazine clip in his bag.
Speaking to authorities the man said he was from Ohio and claimed it was legal for him to have the weapon.
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'Nightmare scenario' for democracy: 'Desperate' GOP may sink to new depths to fight election reform
April 16, 2021
While Republicans in state legislatures are proposing voter suppression bills all around the U.S., Democrats are pushing the For the People Act at the federal level — a comprehensive voting rights bill that has passed in the U.S. House of Representatives but now faces a steep uphill climb in the U.S. Senate. Democrats have a narrow majority and must contend with the filibuster for most legislation. Far-right pundits have been railing against the act, known as HR1, on conservative media outlets like Fox News, Fox Business and Newsmax, and observers warn Republicans will take extreme efforts to fight any such reforms.
Some of these tactics were highlighted analysis by Crooked Media's Brian Beutler and on the Democracy Docket website.
Beutler contemplates various scenarios and how they could affect voting rights if they come to pass. Some scenarios to consider, Beutler writes, include 82-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer's seat on the U.S. Supreme Court becoming available, Democrats losing their narrow Senate majority, and the court attacking voting reforms if Democrats somehow manage to get them passed in the Senate.
"Here's a nightmare scenario I encourage everyone — but particularly, Breyer and Senate Democrats — to imagine having to endure," Beutler writes. "Through illness or untimely death, Democrats' 50-50 Senate 'majority' becomes a 49-50 Senate minority. They don't retain the seat. Joe Biden loses reelection. We're all left hoping Breyer can survive into his 90s so that the Supreme Court doesn't swing from 6-3 to 7-2. Mitch McConnell gets Charlie Kirk fitted for a robe."
He continues: "Now consider this less speculative nightmare scenario. Democrats let bygones be bygones, leave court reform out of their larger democracy-reform project, change the filibuster rules, pass both HR 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — and the existing Supreme Court takes a hatchet to it. We should know to expect this, because Republicans declared the For the People Act 'unconstitutional' sight unseen, as a kind of bat signal to their allies on the courts to make sure democracy reform can't take effect."
Beutler adds, "We can't know in advance which provisions of these bills the Supreme Court would invalidate, but it's trivially easy to step into the shoes of conservative justices and extend the same pseudo-constitutional arguments they've used to degrade American election law over the last decade to new reforms. Campaign-finance regulations? Well, those obviously violate the 1st Amendment. Non-partisan gerrymandering? The federal government can't dictate that kind of thing to the states!"
Nightmare scenario from @brianbeutler: Dems pass pro-democracy reforms, and Supreme Court guts them:… https://t.co/i1Z1GBpPHt— Greg Sargent (@Greg Sargent)1618588659.0
But Democrats don't just face dangers from the right-wing Supreme Court. Republicans controlling key state legislatures, oftened heavily gerrymandered to protect their majorities from swings in public opinion, are actively considering how to thwart efforts to make elections fairer.
Democracy Docket, in a "legislation alert" published this week, describes Texas House Bill 4507 — which has been proposed by Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives and would "essentially create a two-tiered voter registration system, in an effort to evade federal voting rights protections that could pass into law this year."
Democracy Docket explains, "HB 4507 establishes two different registration processes: one for federal elections, which would be required to comply with national legislation such as the For the People Act — and one for state elections, which Texas Republicans claim could ignore these federal requirements. Any voter registering to vote in a federal election would not be automatically registered for local and state elections, unless they meet the much stricter and more exclusionary requirements of Texas' election code. Instead, they would have to apply and register again separately for their local elections."
On Twitter, attorney Marc E. Elias, founder of Democracy Docket, described HB 4507 as an example of "how desperate Republicans are to prevent all voters from participating in elections":
As HR1/S1 moved closer to passage, this is a tactic to watch for in a number of red states. It shows how desperate… https://t.co/hPOlkZhUGA— Marc E. Elias (@Marc E. Elias)1618514787.0
After liberal Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent tweeted Beutler's Crooked Media column, law professor and election law expert Rick Hasan noted:
There's lots that can be done in the careful drafting of these election reform measures that can bolster their cons… https://t.co/YBWBCWuHDN— Rick Hasen (@Rick Hasen)1618592016.0
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