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WASHINGTON ― The man who opened fire on Republican lawmakers practicing for an upcoming baseball game on Wednesday was apparently a Bernie Sanders supporter outspoken in his distaste for the GOP, President Donald Trump and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
James Hodgkinson, a home inspector from Belleville, Illinois, died at a hospital in Washington, D.C., following a shootout with Capitol Police at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia.
Hodgkinson’s wife told ABC News that her husband had been living in Alexandria for two months. On Monday, Hodgkinson reportedly canceled his membership at a YMCA located near the scene of Wednesday’s shooting.
Hodgkinson visited the YMCA most mornings, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post. Both outlets reported Hodgkinson would frequently see former Alexandria Mayor William Euille at the gym, and the two would chat about things like politics or where to eat. Hodgkinson appeared to be living out of a gym bag, according to Euille, and would shower at the Y and sit for hours in the lobby on his laptop.
Two Facebook pages apparently belonging to Hodgkinson ― both now inaccessible to the public ― reveal strong political sentiments.
He once posted a petition on Facebook asking the Federal Elections Commission to open an election fraud investigation into Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. He wrote that Clinton was “Really a Republican in a Democratic Pant Suit!!!”
He also posted a photo of Sanders photoshopped into an Uncle Sam costume and joined a Facebook group stating that the “Road to Hell is Paved With Republicans.”
Charles Orear, a restaurant manager from St. Louis, told The Washington Post that he and Hodgkinson became friends while working on Sanders’ presidential campaign.
“He was this union tradesman, pretty stocky, and we stayed up talking politics,” Orear told the Post. “He was more on the really progressive side of things.”
Online court records suggest Hodgkinson had a history of violence. He was arrested in 2006 on suspicion of battery with intent to cause bodily harm. He was also charged with domestic battery, criminal damage of property and reckless discharge of a firearm during the incident.
Hodgkinson was accused of punching a woman in the face with “a closed fist,” according to a police report. When confronted by the woman’s boyfriend, Hodgkinson allegedly “walked outside with a shotgun and aimed it at [his] face” before hitting him over the head with a wooden stock. As the man fled, Hodgkinson fired a round in his direction, the report reads.
The incident was over Hodgkinson’s daughter, who had been at the home with the two victims when the incident occurred. After demanding she return home with him, Hodgkinson “became violent” and “grabbed [her] by the hair and pulled her off the floor” and began throwing her around the room, police said.
When another female in the house tried to leave, Hodgkinson allegedly turned off the woman’s car ignition, took out a pocket knife, and cut her seat belt as she tried backing out of the driveway. His wife, Suzanne Hodgkinson, then began “striking her arms and pulling her hair” to get her out of the vehicle.
“I’ll just call police and put you back into foster care,” Suzanne allegedly said before leaving the area.
Meanwhile, “James was choking [redacted] as she was holding on to the steering wheel of the vehicle,” the report reads. James then punched her in the face with a closed fist.
Hodgkinson was arrested, and his charges later dismissed.
Police recovered a pocket knife and a 12-gauge shotgun during the 2006 incident. In 1993, he was charged with a DUI and resisting arrest, the latter charge eventually dismissed.
Sanders issued a statement on Wednesday saying he was “sickened” by Hodgkinson’s “despicable” act.
“Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values,” Sanders said.
In 2012, Hodgkinson wrote several letters to his local newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat, calling for increased taxes on the wealthy and criticizing Republicans.
Hodgkinson criticized another letter writer by saying he “reminds me of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, but I’m sure he doesn’t bring in the millions of dollars those two do. They speak their lies and hatred and misdirection to anyone who will listen.”
Calling for higher marginal tax rates on the rich, Hodgkinson concluded by saying, “I believe anything near these rates would be fair and balanced. In rebuttal: I have never said ‘life sucks,’ only the policies of the Republicans.”
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Call it the cycle of insomnia. You stress about catching enough sleep, but that stress actually prevents you from snagging the quality snooze you need.
Unfortunately, that cycle can snowball out of control. When your body loses out on valuable deep and REM sleep, your happy hormones don’t get replenished. That’s when your stress hormones take over, ready to take their place.
The good news? There are a few steps you can take to break the sleep stress cycle. Take a look at the video above, created in partnership with Sleep Number, to learn how.
Just like diet and exercise, sleep is unique to each person and important for optimal health. Sleep Number® beds adjust on each side to your ideal level of firmness, comfort and support — your Sleep Number® setting. And when you add SleepIQ® technology you’ll know what to adjust for your best possible sleep.
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A gunman opened fire on a congressional baseball practice in Virginia on Wednesday morning, wounding at least five people, including Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), a Republican staffer and a pair of Capitol Hill police officers. The shooter was reportedly killed during the incident.
Apart from the setting ― a tony neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C.― and the high-profile targets, the episode was sadly not all that remarkable. It was the 153rd mass shooting of the year, in just 165 days, according to a tally by the Gun Violence Archive, a not-for-profit organization that tracks shootings across the country. Hours later, the 154th appeared to be unfolding in San Francisco.
Mass shootings have only rarely made national headlines in 2017, but they are so far outpacing the rate seen in recent years.
Many of these incidents inflict more carnage than Wednesday’s shooting. Last week in Orlando, Florida, a gunman entered his former workplace and killed five employees, before turning the weapon on himself. The shooting attracted minimal media coverage at the time.
Although mass shootings often serve as a catalyst for broader discussions about guns, they are just a small piece of the much bloodier tapestry of gun violence in the U.S.
Gun Violence Archive has verified nearly 7,000 gun deaths so far this year, not including suicides, as well as more than 13,000 injuries. The overwhelming majority of this bloodshed passes without much publicity outside of local news.
Even Alexandria isn’t immune to the violence. A shooting at hotel there last month left one dead and two injured. It was the city’s first homicide of the year.
The number of mass shootings in the U.S. has become an increasingly heated point of debate over the past few years, as they’ve become more frequent.
The FBI doesn’t have an official definition of “mass shooting,” and there are disagreements over how to count them. The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people are shot (injured or killed) in a single event, at the same general time and location, not including the shooter.
Other sources like Mother Jones use a narrower definition. To be considered a mass shooting under the outlet’s guidelines, the perpetrator, or in rare cases perpetrators, must kill at least four people in a single location, usually a public place. Mother Jones also excludes most crimes that are primarily related to gang activity, armed robbery or domestic violence. Using their definition, there have been four mass shootings so far this year. Wednesday’s incidents are not among them.
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HuffPost laid off over three-dozen employees Wednesday, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, as part of broader corporate cutbacks.
The creation of a new Verizon digital unit called Oath, following the acquisition of Yahoo, is expected to result in roughly 2,100 layoffs. Verizon owns AOL, HuffPost’s parent company.
Writers Guild of America, East, HuffPost’s union, said Wednesday that they were notified of 39 members being laid off.
“Like many of their peers across the industry, HuffPost employees unionized to ensure that they have a seat at the table as enormous corporations merge and restructure,” the union said in a statement. “The unit members who have been laid off will receive a collectively-bargained severance package that includes two months’ salary plus a week of pay for each year of service and continued health benefits.”
The HuffPost layoffs come as Lydia Polgreen, who took over as editor-in-chief earlier this year, is assembling a newsroom leadership team, which includes former Daily News Editor-in-Chief Jim Rich, and charting a new editorial vision. She recently oversaw a rebranding of the site, which was co-founded by Arianna Huffington, who left the company in August.
On Wednesday morning, Polgreen visited HuffPost’s D.C. bureau, which is significantly smaller than the New York headquarters and was hit hard by the cuts. More than six journalists who work in or report to the bureau were laid off, including senior military correspondent David Wood. He won the site’s first and only Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for a multimedia series on military veterans.
Polgreen is expected to address staff in New York on Wednesday afternoon.
The news about HuffPost’s layoffs followed shortly after Vocativ laid off its entire editorial team in a shift to an all-video strategy. Time Inc., the publisher behind titles such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People, laid off 300 employees on Monday.
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As most of us in the LGBTQ community now realize, complacency is no longer an option and social progress that seemed inevitable is no longer a given. Nonetheless, the march towards LGBTQ equality continues.
Less than twenty years ago, Gothenburg was known as the most virulently homophobic city in Sweden. Back then, it wasn’t so easy to be gay in Gothenburg, according to Alex Snäckerström, who recalls those years as daunting. Located on the West Coast of Sweden and celebrated for its natural beauty, Gothenburg remained a challenge for LGBTQ people.
Yet today, Gothenburg is widely recognized as one of the world’s most progressive cities for LGBTQ people. A city of canals and green spaces, Gothenburg hosts Sweden’s second largest Pride festival, a five-day cultural festival known as West Pride. For two weeks at the beginning of summer, more than 1,000 rainbow flags fly from the official flagpoles of municipal buildings, hotels, and restaurants, as well as Gothenburg’s trams and buses. And in 2018, Gothenburg will co-host EuroPride 2018 with Stockholm for a three-week international cultural festival.
Those who remember a less tolerant Gothenburg attribute the change to a variety of factors. As Snäckerström states, the catalyst for LGBTQ activism commenced with a horrific event in the early 1990s, which galvanized the city and, particularly, its LGBTQ population. Ultimately, the LGBTQ community began working directly with the city government, focusing on outreach.
West Pride’s Executive Director Rebecka Adin states that “the work on improving the living conditions of LGBTQ people is based on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The starting point is that all people are born free and equal in value and that human rights are universal, indivisible, and mutually reinforcing.”
It’s important to remember that this declaration was adopted by the General Assembly of the UN in 1948—as a direct response to the two world wars fought primarily in Europe.
In keeping with the city’s renewed activism, Sweden’s first municipal LGBTQ Council was founded in Gothenburg in 2013. The first of its kind in Sweden, the Council includes six politicians representing the political parties in government and 13 representatives from LGBT Gothenburg. Once a year, the Council holds a public meeting where everyone is offered an opportunity to suggest how Gothenburg might become a more open and inclusive city.
As Adin states, “The real change occurred with the creation of the LGBTQ Council when the municipal government decided to investigate the situation of the LGBTQ community in Gothenburg. The board invited West Pride to discuss what needed to be done and the result was that all the committees and boards in the city presented plans designed for implementing equality.”
The chairperson of Gothenburg’s LGBTQ Council, Mariya Voyvodova, emigrated to Sweden from Bulgaria and became actively involved with LGBTQ activism in Gothenburg in support of her lesbian sister. Utilizing a norm critical approach, the Council focuses on LGBTQ issues and human rights.
One year after the inception of Gothenburg’s LGBTQ Council, the non-profit organization RFSL (the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights) measured municipalities throughout Sweden for their commitment to LGBTQ equality and awarded first place to Gothenburg, thanks to its LGBTQ Council and its ongoing educational outreach programs.
As Snäckerström contends, “Here in Gothenburg, we have caught the politicians’ ears alongside their respect. The LGBTQ Council, which was formed by activists working together with politicians, is unique for Sweden. The result, which has been a focus on human rights, and specifically, LGBTQ rights, has earned the support and respect from a wide range of political parties.”
Founded in 2007, West Pride attracts more than 125,000 visitors to Gothenburg for a five-day festival of celebration and education. More than 250 events are listed in the West Pride program.
West Pride’s Executive Director Rebecka Adin believes that West Pride has been integral to Gothenburg’s more socially progressive stance. “We are constantly educating and working to inform the public through various institutions, boards, and agencies to ensure that there is awareness of LGBTQ life in Gothenburg. In the fall of 2016, the LGBTQ Council presented a plan that, hopefully, will be implemented to ensure that equality for all is an accepted part of Gothenburg’s blueprint.”
According to Snäckerström, who is currently the coordinator for EuroPride 2018, “Gothenburg has a strong civil rights movement in the form of organizations, activists, and self-organized groups that are very active in demanding rights for all inhabitants of Gothenburg.”
In a world where LGBT equality often appears as a distant dream, Gothenburg’s commitment to human rights and its upcoming role as co-host of EuroPride 2018 is a heartening reminder that progress is still happening.
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Comedy writer Willy Appelman isn’t sure if he’s ready for this kind of responsibility. These things need constant attention. They’ll probably keep you up all night. Of course we’re talking about fidget spinners, that thing that’s really popular now for almost no logical reason.
Welcome the newest member of the family!
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Legendary actress Diane Keaton has been entertaining the masses for almost 50 years. Her appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Monday was no exception.
First off, girlfriend came equipped with her own bottle of wine, from which she took random swigs throughout her interview.
Then when host Jimmy Kimmel mentioned Keaton being honored with the American Film Institute’s 45th Life Achievement Award, Keaton really pumped up the volume.
The 71-year-old actress decided to name the celebrities who are, and those who are not, her friends among those in attendance at the award ceremony.
It’s extremely amusing.
Even though Keaton told Kimmel, “I don’t really have any friends,” when pressed, she did admit that Martin Short and Steve Martin are her actual, real-life buddies.
But when asked about Meryl Streep, who showed up to the ceremony dressed like Keaton’s iconic character Annie Hall, Keaton had an interesting answer.
“I love her! But I don’t see her very often,” Keaton said. “She doesn’t call.”
Then she moved on to Reese Witherspoon, and when Kimmel asked if she was a friend, Keaton responded with:
I met Reese when she was 14 and I directed her in a TV movie. Yeah, I did. She was just a kid, a kid!
“Did you know then that she was going to be a star?” Kimmel asked.
“There was no question, great-looking, great talent.”
“Yet still not a friend?” Kimmel asked.
“No, not a friend,” Keaton said.
There was also a very intentionally funny bit about a “very funny, and very attractive” Sarah Silverman who also spoke at Keaton’s ceremony. “She’s a woman, by the way,” Keaton said to Kimmel, who dated Silverman twice between 2002 and 2009.
“I know that, I know that quite well,” Kimmel said in response to a very confused Keaton.
Aw, Diane, keep doing you, girl!
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