The man who was convicted of assaulting then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in 2022 was re-sentenced to 30 years in prison on Tuesday, with no change in the original sentence after the case was reopened so he could speak during his sentencing hearing, local news reported.

David DePape was originally sentenced to 30 years in prison on May 17 for forcibly entering Pelosi’s home in San Francisco early on Oct. 28, 2022 and clubbing her husband Paul in the head with a hammer in a politically motivated attack.

During the original sentencing, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley failed to give DePape a chance to address the court, a “clear error” under the federal judicial rules, the judge wrote in a court filing the next day.

She also scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to resolve the issue, allowing DePape to speak on his own behalf. He did, apologizing for the attack, before Corley sentenced him again to 30 years in prison, reported ABC7, a local ABC affiliate in San Francisco.

In November, a jury found DePape guilty of attempting to kidnap a federal officer and assaulting an immediate family member of a federal officer. Prosecutors said the 44-year-old was driven by the far-right conspiracy theories known as QAnon.

Paul Pelosi, 82, suffered skull fractures and other injuries that have continued to affect him, according to a letter filed in court. In addition to dizziness and a metal plate that remains in his head, Pelosi said he has struggled with balance and has permanent nerve damage in his left hand.

Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives at the time of the attack, was in Washington when it occurred.

DePape still faces separate state charges stemming from the Pelosi break-in and attack, including attempted murder. Those charges carry a potential sentence of 13 years to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.

Mexico this weekend extradited to the U.S. Nestor Isidro Perez Salas, or “El Nini,” who headed security for the sons of ex-Sinaloa Cartel kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, one of the highest profile extraditions in recent years.

Seen by U.S. anti-narcotics agents as among the most ruthless Mexican drug figures, Perez was detained in November by the Mexican National Guard in the northwestern city of Culiacan, the Sinaloa Cartel’s heartland.

“We allege El Nini was one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s lead sicarios, or assassins, and was responsible for the murder, torture, and kidnapping of rivals and witnesses who threatened the cartel’s criminal drug trafficking enterprise,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

President Joe Biden thanked Mexico for cooperating.

“Our governments will continue to work together to attack the fentanyl and synthetic drug epidemic that is killing so many people in our homelands and globally, and to bring to justice the criminals and organizations producing, smuggling, and selling these lethal poisons in both of our countries,” Biden said in a statement.

The U.S. has accused Perez of leading the “Ninis,” a violent group of security personnel working for Ivan Archivaldo Guzman and other sons of jailed former Sinaloa kingpin, El Chapo.

Ivan and three other sons of El Chapo have become some of the most wanted targets for U.S. law enforcement since they emerged from their father’s shadow to head a powerful faction of the Sinaloa Cartel known as “Los Chapitos.” The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alleges Los Chapitos are the biggest fentanyl traffickers to the U.S.

Perez is one of the highest-profile extraditions during the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who assumed power in December 2018.

DEA chief Anne Milgram sent an internal memo to agency staff praising the extradition.

Milgram, in the memo reviewed by Reuters, described Perez’s Ninis outfit as a violent group that receives military-style training and is tasked with “kidnapping, torturing and killing anyone who oppose the Chapitos or anyone who endangers the Chapitos’ fentanyl operation.”

U.S. courts have indicted Perez on a slew of charges in relation to his alleged role at the helm of the Chapitos’ security apparatus, including cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy, possession of machine guns and witness retaliation.

President Joe Biden has “limited ability” to step up security at the U.S.-Mexico border via executive action, a top Democratic lawmaker said on Sunday, arguing that the issue should be addressed with legislation in Congress.

Senator Chris Murphy, the lead Democrat who negotiated a bipartisan border security bill introduced this year, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that U.S. courts would likely strike down sweeping action by Biden.

“The president has such limited ability to issue executive orders that would have an impact on the border. He can’t conjure resources out of thin air,” Murphy said. “If he were to try to shut down portions of the border, the courts would throw that out, I think, within a matter of weeks.”

Biden, a Democrat seeking another term in Nov. 5 elections, has said his administration is looking at executive actions to potentially block migrants at the border after Republicans rejected the bipartisan Senate bill this year. Republicans spurned the measure after former President Donald Trump, Biden’s Republican challenger, came out against it.

Senate Republicans blocked the bill again last week and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said it “doesn’t secure the border” and “incentivizes further illegal immigration.”

The number of migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has dropped this year compared with a monthly record high in December, a trend U.S. officials partly attribute to increased enforcement by Mexico.

Murphy said the decrease was due to “smart, effective diplomacy between the United States and the Mexican government” but warned that the dropoff may not be permanent and that illegal crossings remain high compared with a decade ago.

“We have to just recognize that without updating the laws of this country, without surging more resources to the border, we can’t count on the numbers staying as low as they are today,” Murphy said.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean Pierre said last week that the Senate bill would deliver “significant policy changes, resources, and personnel needed to secure our border and make our country safer.”

Migrants and asylum seekers transit through Mexico to the U.S. to escape violence, economic distress and negative impacts of climate change, according the United Nations.

The chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles told a U.S. House panel on Thursday that the school should have been ready to immediately remove an encampment of pro-Palestinian activists that became the site of a violent clash with counter-protesters last month.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block was one of three U.S. university leaders who testified at a hearing of the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives’ Education Committee into the wave of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that has unfolded on American campuses over the past two months.

“With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk,” Block told the panel.

UCLA was the site of an April 30 overnight mob attack on pro-Palestinian activists that was one of the most violent scenes of the recent protests. The university on Wednesday removed the head of its campus police for its handling of the protests, which included inaction during the attack and the arrests by state and local police of 210 people the next night.

“The recent images from UCLA are appalling. What is more appalling is that it was completely preventable,” said Ilhan Omar, a Democratic congresswoman on the panel. “You, the UCLA leadership and law enforcement stood by for hours as the mob of agitators gathered near the encampment with the clear intention to cause violence.”

Block disputed that assertion.

On dozens of campuses throughout the country, students set up tents and held rallies to call on President Joe Biden to do more to end the fighting in Gaza and to demand that their universities divest from companies that back Israel’s government. Some protesters have adopted antisemitic rhetoric, leading some Jewish students to fear for their safety.

The heads of Northwestern University in Illinois and Rutgers University of New Jersey also testified at the sixth event the committee and its subcommittees have held on schools’ responses to tensions that have flared since Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking more than 250 hostages.

Nearly 36,000 Palestinians have been killed and 80,000 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Israel’s military says 286 Israeli soldiers have also been killed.

Democrats Divided

Biden’s handling of the war and the protests over it have deeply divided Democrats, a Reuters/Ipsos poll this month found, fraying the coalition that he relied on four years ago to defeat Republican Donald Trump.

House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx said that each university had failed to enforce its own rules, preserve campus safety and protect Jewish students.

“Today’s hearing is the beginning, not the end, of the committee’s investigation of your institutions,” Foxx told the university presidents.

Some of the most contentious questioning was aimed at Michael Schill, the president of Northwestern, which reached an agreement with protesters to end their demonstration. The Anti-Defamation League, a group dedicated to fighting antisemitism, has criticized the university for that agreement.

“President Schill, we’ve heard accounts of horrific violence and harassment of Jewish students on your campus, but you admitted you have not suspended a single student since Oct. 7 for antisemitic conduct,” said Foxx. “You’ve refused to answer basic questions on topics.”

The presidents of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania resigned after backlash over their testimony in front of the panel in December about antisemitism on campus.

“No one should be intimidated, harassed or assaulted just simply for who they are or who they worship,” said Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the committee.

Judges on California’s top court on Tuesday considered whether voters had the power to allow app-based services such as Uber and Lyft to classify drivers in the state as independent contractors rather than as employees with greater benefits.

The seven-member California Supreme Court heard oral arguments in San Francisco in a lawsuit by the Service Employees International Union and four drivers who say a 2020 ballot measure known as Proposition 22 was unconstitutional.

The measure exempts app-based drivers from a 2019 state law that narrowed the circumstances in which many workers can be treated as contractors.

Whether gig workers should be treated as employees or contractors is a crucial issue for the ride service industry, Employees are entitled to the minimum wage, overtime pay, reimbursements for expenses and other protections that do not extend to independent contractors, who as a result can cost companies up to 30% less, according to several studies.

Uber, Lyft and other app-based services spent more than $200 million on a campaign to pass Prop. 22 and have said that without it, the increased costs could force them to stop doing business in California, the largest U.S. state.

Prop. 22, which was passed in November 2020 by nearly 60% of voters in California, allows app-based transportation services to classify drivers as independent contractors as long as they are paid at least 120% of the minimum wage while passengers are in the car and drivers receive expense reimbursements and subsidies to pay for health insurance.

A lower appeals court last year rejected SEIU’s argument that Prop. 22 improperly limited the legislature’s exclusive power to regulate the state’s workers’ compensation system by barring app-based drivers from receiving those benefits, which are only granted to employees.

Most of Tuesday’s arguments revolved around whether that authority, outlined in the state constitution, was truly exclusive.

At least three judges suggested that California’s constitution requires the legislature to share lawmaking power with the electorate, just as it mandates that bills must be presented to the governor before they become law.

They told SEIU’s lawyer Scott Kronland that if the legislature disapproves of Prop 22 it could pass laws extending benefits to app-based drivers.

“Prop. 22 … only speaks of the classification as employees or independent contractors for the purposes of the labor code,” Justice Goodwin Liu said, referring to California employment law. “But the labor code is not frozen in time.”

Kronland told the court that a provision in Prop. 22 barring any amendments would make it difficult for lawmakers to counteract the measure.

At the same time, the judges seemed skeptical of some arguments by the state and Protect App-Based Drivers and Services, an industry-backed group that intervened in the case to defend Prop. 22.

Two judges suggested that giving voters control over the workers’ compensation system meant that they could eliminate it altogether, which would seem to infringe on the “plenary” — or absolute — power that the constitution grants to the legislature.

That “turns ‘plenary’ into ‘it’s plenary until it’s nothing.’ That doesn’t feel very plenary to me,” Justice Joshua Groban said.

Nationwide Battle

California is just one front in a nationwide legal battle over the classification of gig drivers and other contract workers. Lawmakers in Minnesota passed a measure over the weekend that would set a minimum wage of $1.28 per mile and 31 cents per minute for gig drivers, replacing a higher minimum adopted by Minneapolis that spurred Uber and Lyft to threaten to cease operating in the city.

Earlier this month, the top court in Massachusetts heard arguments over whether competing ballot proposals that would redefine the relationship between app-based companies and drivers should be allowed to go before voters in November. One proposal supported by industry groups mirrors Prop. 22, while another would allow drivers to unionize.

Last week a trial kicked off in a lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general accusing Uber and Lyft of unlawfully classifying drivers as contractors to avoid treating them as employees entitled to a minimum wage, overtime and earned sick time.

The California Supreme Court typically issues rulings within 90 days of hearing arguments.

Updated at 5:45 p.m., Tuesday, May 21, 2024

President Joe Biden on Monday urged Republican leaders in the House and Senate to support a revived bipartisan bill on border security, even as House Speaker Mike Johnson declared the bill would be “dead on arrival.”

Democrats are again trying to pass the Border Act, which they say would reform U.S. asylum laws, hire thousands of border agents and help curtail fentanyl smuggling.

Record numbers of migrants have been caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office in 2021 and border security has become one of the leading presidential campaign issues ahead of the Nov. 5 election that will pit Biden against former President Donald Trump.

In February, a version of the bill stalled in the Senate after Trump told Republicans not to support it even though it contained several border-security measures they had sought. Biden and other Democrats said Trump undercut the bill in order to keep the border debate alive during the campaign.

Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday announced the Senate would seek to pass the new bill this week, after which the White House said it strongly supported the legislation.

In the president’s calls to Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Biden asked congressional Republicans to “stop playing politics” and quickly pass the legislation, the White House said.

Before the president reached out, leaders of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives called the bill politically motivated.

“Should it reach the House, the bill would be dead on arrival,” Johnson and other Republicans said in a statement.

The previous legislation was tied to U.S. foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel, but this bill would stand alone, Schumer said.

Over half of U.S. voters oppose putting immigrants in the country illegally into detention camps while awaiting deportation, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, suggesting Americans may be wary of harsher enforcement plans Donald Trump is considering.

Some 54% of registered voters opposed the use of detention camps while 36% supported such a move and 10% said they did not know or did not respond, the poll found. Still, 56% said most or all immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported.

Republican presidential candidate Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a central plank of his reelection campaign against Democratic President Joe Biden. Immigration has emerged as a top issue for voters, particularly Republicans, in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election. 

The New York Times reported last year that former President Trump, if reelected, planned to build large camps to hold immigrants pending a possible deportation.

In an interview with Time Magazine published in April, Trump said he would consider using camps but that “there wouldn’t be that much of a need for them” because people would be rapidly deported.

Tom Homan, a former Trump immigration official who could join a second administration, said tents would be needed as more immigrants in the U.S. illegally are arrested and held for deportation, exceeding existing detention space.

“We’re going to have to hold them someplace,” he said in an interview.

Homan said the tents would adhere to detention standards set by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and that they would not be “concentration camps.”

Homan said that National Guard troops could potentially support deportation operations but that law enforcement officers would need to make arrests.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not comment on the possible use of camps in a statement to Reuters but said Trump would “marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation in American history.”

Biden defeated Trump in 2020 vowing to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies but struggled with record numbers of migrants caught crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. Biden has toughened his approach to the border in the run-up to the election.

Biden campaign spokesperson Maca Casado said in a statement that Americans “want border security and immigration solutions, not the cruel, ineffective chaos Donald Trump is offering.”

ICE stepped up deportations at the end of last year, with 66,000 people removed from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2023, according to agency statistics, a far more aggressive pace than other years under Biden.

Some 85% of Republican voters in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said most or all immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported, compared to 26% of Democrats and 61% of independents.

But fewer voters agreed with a statement that immigrants in the country illegally should be arrested and put in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings. 

Some 62% of registered Republican said they agreed, compared to 12% of Democrats and 35% of independents. 

The poll, conducted online, surveyed 3,208 registered voters nationwide. It had margins of error of about 2 percentage points for responses from all registered voters, about 3 points for registered Republicans and Democrats and about 4 points for independents.

CalPERS, the biggest public pension plan in the United States, said on Monday it would vote against all Exxon Mobil board members at its upcoming annual meeting on May 29, citing the oil major’s legal action against activist investors.

Exxon, which is frequently the focus of critical shareholder resolutions, filed a lawsuit earlier this year seeking to block a vote on a climate proposal submitted by two small activist investors, sidestepping the usual regulatory process to fend off similar measures.

The investors withdrew their resolution but Exxon continued the lawsuit, seeking legal costs and other relief.

CalPERS, which has about $490 billion in assets under management, said in a statement the legal action could diminish investor rights.

Its vote is “more than symbolic”, even though there is no alternative slate of directors, CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost told reporters. She aimed to send a message to the board that “if they don’t want to do the governance they should step aside,” Frost said.

Exxon said in a statement its “efforts are intended to get clarity on the rules to foster an environment for open and meaningful shareholder dialogue.”

The company added it had engaged with CalPERS, which it considered had made a “poor fiduciary decision.”

CalPERS holds 8.45 million Exxon shares, giving it a stake of about 0.19%, according to LSEG data. It has been influential in previous director elections, notably in 2021 when it backed a successful board challenge aiming to position the firm better for the energy transition.

Frost said she had spoken to Exxon CEO Darren Woods and as far as she knew as of now the litigation was still moving forward.

Activist groups have been asking CalPERS to divest from Exxon for years. Frost said she wanted to distinguish between engagement to ask Exxon to change its climate policy, and to encourage it to drop this lawsuit.

“I want to keep our attention on the shareholder aspects of Exxon’s decision,” she said. “The problem with divestment when you are CalPERS is you completely lose your voice.”

Proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended shareholders vote against re-electing Exxon’s lead independent director, citing what it called the firm’s “unusual and aggressive tactics”.

But Exxon has won support from business lobby groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, which said the case “exemplifies activist groups’ takeover of the shareholder proposal process to score ideological points”.

John Eastman, the first of 18 defendants accused of illegally seeking to claim Arizona’s 2020 electoral votes for then-U.S. President Donald Trump to appear before a state judge, pleaded not guilty on Friday.

The former dean of the Chapman University law school in Orange County is one of several people — including fellow former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — accused of plotting to assemble a slate of pro-Trump electors who falsely claimed to represent the Southwestern battleground state’s legitimate electoral votes.

More accused individuals are due to be arraigned next week.

The case stems from the attempt by Trump, a Republican, and his allies to pressure election officials in several states to overturn the presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. The pair will face off again in the Nov. 5 election.

“I, of course, pled not guilty,” Eastman told reporters outside of court following Friday’s hearing.

“I had zero communications with the electors in Arizona, zero involvement in any of the election litigation in Arizona or legislative hearings, and I’m confident that with the laws faithfully applied, I will be fully exonerated at the end of this process.”

In the past several months, Republican officials and Trump allies have been charged in four states, accused of falsely representing themselves as legitimate presidential electors to be tallied by Congress in its certification of the 2020 results.

A spokesperson for Giuliani has previously criticized the Arizona prosecution as political. A lawyer for Meadows did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters on Friday.

Trump is not one of those charged in the Arizona case but court papers list “a former U.S. president,” referring to him, as an unindicted co-conspirator.

The man who broke into former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home in 2022 and assaulted her husband with a hammer was sentenced on Friday to 30 years in prison, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

In a politically motivated attack, David DePape forcibly entered Pelosi’s home in San Francisco early in the morning on Oct. 28, 2022, just a week before that year’s congressional elections. At the time, Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, was in Washington.

DePape, who according to prosecutors was driven by the far-right conspiracy theories known as QAnon, acknowledged in trial testimony that his intention was to take Pelosi hostage.

DePape, 44, confronted Pelosi’s husband, Paul, and clubbed him over the head with a hammer before police who had been called to the scene were able to subdue the attacker. A jury found DePape guilty in November of attempting to kidnap a federal officer and assaulting an immediate family member of a federal officer.

Paul Pelosi, 82, suffered skull fractures and other injuries that have continued to affect him, as he described in a letter to the judge ahead of Friday’s sentencing. In addition to dizziness and a metal plate that remains in his head, Pelosi said he struggles with balance and has permanent nerve damage in his left hand.

In a separate letter, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who was the first woman to be elected House speaker, urged the judge to impose a “very long” punishment.

She noted that DePape reportedly shouted “Where’s Nancy?” upon breaking into her home, echoing what some intruders yelled inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building seeking to overturn President Joe Biden’s election.

DePape was convicted by a jury in November

Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco federal court to sentence DePape, a Canadian national living illegally in the U.S., to 40 years in prison.

In court papers, the Justice Department argued that while he was not convicted of a terrorism crime, his offenses nevertheless met the definition because he was aiming to affect the government through “intimidation or coercion.” Prosecutors also said DePape had not shown remorse for his actions.

DePape’s court-appointed defense lawyer had asked for a sentence of 14 years, saying he had become “unmoored” in the years leading up to the attack due in part to an abusive relationship.

DePape still faces separate state charges stemming from the Pelosi break-in and attack, including attempted murder, that carry a potential sentence of 13 years to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.