BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Mourners laid to rest the last of 10 Black people killed in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket with a service on Saturday that became a call to action and an emotional plea to end the hate and violence that has wracked the nation.

The funeral for 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield — the oldest of the 10 people killed in the attack two weeks ago — included an impromptu speech by Vice President Kamala Harris. She attended the service at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Buffalo with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Harris told the mourners this is a moment in time for “all good people” to stand up to the injustice that happened at the Tops Friendly Market on May 14, as well as at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and in other mass shootings.

“This is a moment that requires all good people, all God-loving people to stand up and say we will not stand for this. Enough is enough,” said Harris, who wasn’t scheduled to speak and came to the microphone at the urging of the Rev. Al Sharpton. “We will come together based on what we all know we have in common, and we will not let those people who are motivated by hate separate us or make us feel fear.”

Following the funeral, Harris and Emhoff visited a memorial outside the supermarket. The vice president left a large bouquet of white flowers, and the pair paused to pray for several minutes. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden had placed flowers at the same memorial on May 17 and had visited with the victims’ families. Biden is expected to head to Texas for a visit this weekend with the families of victim’s of Tuesday’s school shooting.

Harris later told reporters that the administration is not “sitting around waiting to figure out what the solution looks like” to the nation’s gun violence problem.

“We know what works on that,” she said, reiterating support for background checks and a ban on assault weapons.

“Let’s have an assault weapons ban,” she said. “An assault weapon is a weapon of war with no place, no place in civil society. Background checks: Why should anyone be able to buy a weapon that can kill other human beings without at least knowing: Hey, that person committed a violent crime before, are they a threat against themselves or others?”

Harris said the nation has to come together, as well.

“We have to agree that if we are to be strong as a nation, we must stand strong, identifying our diversity as our unity,” she said.

It’s been a sad week of goodbyes for family and friends of the Buffalo shooting victims, a group that includes a restaurant worker who went to the market to buy his 3-year-old’s birthday cake; a father and die-hard Buffalo Bills fan who worked as a school bus aide; and a 32-year-old sister who moved to the city to help a brother battling leukemia.

Whitfield, a grandmother and mother of four, had been inside the supermarket after visiting her husband of 68 years in a nursing home when a gunman identified by police as 18-year-old Payton Gendron began the deadly onslaught.

Authorities said Gendron, who is white, targeted the store three hours from his home in Conklin because it is in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who delivered a fiery tribute to Whitfield at the beginning of the funeral service, called for all “accomplices” who aided and abetted “this monster” who opened fire in the supermarket to be held accountable, from the gun manufacturers and distributors to the parents of the suspect.

Crump said those those who “instructed and radicalized this young, insecure individual” should also be held to account for taking Whitfield from her family, the Buffalo community and the planet. He called her “one of the most angelic figures that we have ever known.”

“It is a sin that this young depraved man, not a boy, went and killed Ruth Whitfield and the ‘Buffalo 10,’” Crump said, referring to the victims.

Sharpton described being floored to learn the shooter live-streamed his assault on Twitch, noting how his mother had grown up in Alabama, where hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan once killed Black people.

Today, he said, white supremacists “are proud to practice racism.”

Sharpton made a pitch for gun control measures during his eulogy, saying all communities need to come together and “disarm the haters.”

“There is an epidemic of racial violence that is accommodated by gun laws that allow people to kill us,” he said. “You ain’t got to love us, but you shouldn’t have easy access to military weapons to kill us.”

In all, 13 people were shot in the attack which federal authorities are investigating as a hate crime. Three people survived.

Whitfield was the mother of former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield.

Gendron is charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bail. His attorney has entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.

Pool reports were contributed to this story. Haigh reported from Connecticut.

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McCarthy’s attorney, Elliot S. Berke, criticized the committee from all angles, claiming the subpoenas it issued to lawmakers are not constitutional or valid because it failed to meet certain legal requirements.

The Republican leader’s argument that the committee is not legal or constitutionally valid echoes those made by a number of subpoena targets who have attempted to make a legal claim that they do not need to comply. Judges have rejected that argument.

US District Court Judge Tim Kelly said in a recent case involving the committee’s request for documents from the Republican National Committee and one of its vendors that the request was well within its scope as a legislative body.

In addition to McCarthy, the panel subpoenaed four other House Republicans: GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Jordan, Biggs and Perry have also pushed back on subpoenas the committee has issued them.

Berke specifically focused on the make-up of the committee, claiming it was partisan in nature and did not have the necessary input from House Republicans in order to issue subpoenas to members of Congress.

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected McCarthy’s selection of Jordan and GOP Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana to serve on the committee, she would have accepted the Republican leader’s other three picks. Instead, McCarthy pulled the rest of his proposed members from consideration. Pelosi ultimately selected GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois to serve on the panel.

Narrowing in on the committee’s investigative focus, Berke accused the committee of using the federal government to “attack perceived political rivals” and warned its actions could “open Pandora’s box and damn this institution to partisan ‘investigations.'”

McCarthy, he said, has no new information to offer the committee, and he suggested the panel should ask Cheney, who served as GOP Conference Chair during the time period the committee wants to discuss with McCarhty, if it wants further insight into House Republican leadership.

McCarthy and Cheney became public political rivals when the Republican leader supported a campaign to oust the Wyoming Republican from her leadership post because she outwardly criticized former President Donald Trump for the role he played in the attack.

McCarthy’s attorney in the letter also went as far as to say some members on the panel are overreaching by claiming to act like law enforcement. The panel has been clear that its role is not to prosecute any crimes, but to simply refer any crimes that its investigation uncovers, if any, to the Department of Justice.

“In composition, in conduct, in press releases, public statements, interviews, and correspondence, the Select Committee is clearly not acting within the confines of any legislative purpose,” Berke wrote. “Its only objective appears to be to attempt to score political points or damage its political opponents — acting like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee one day and the Department of Justice the next.”

Berke laid out McCarthy’s demands that he wants met before he will consider how to move forward with the subpoena. Those include: Outlining what topics and documents the panel plans on using in a deposition, providing the legal and constitutional rational for both, naming the ranking minority member was who was consulted in advance of issuing subpoenas to Republican lawmakers and who the ranking minority member and counsel would be in a deposition, and limiting any deposition to one hour per side, alternating between minority and majority counsel.

In its initial letter to McCarthy in January seeking his voluntary cooperation, the panel made clear it wanted to question him about his communications with Trump, White House staff and others in the week after the January 6 attack, “particularly regarding President Trump’s state of mind at that time.”

The committee also wanted to understand how McCarthy’s public comments since the attack had changed over time from critical of Trump to in defense of him and questioned whether Trump pressured him to change his tone when the pair met in late January 2021.

Since the panel’s letter to McCarthy, new audio revealed that in the days following the insurrection, the minority leader had considered asking Trump to resign. Audio has also exposed that McCarthy told Republican lawmakers on a private conference call that Trump had admitted bearing some responsibility for the deadly attack.

The panel first reached out to Jordan, one of Trump’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill, in December to learn more about communications he had with Trump on January 6, and with Trump allies who were stationed in the Willard Hotel war room in the days leading up to the attack.

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The administration is leaning toward sending the systems as part of a larger package of military and security assistance to Ukraine, which could be announced as soon as next week.

Senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have pleaded in recent weeks for the US and its allies to provide the Multiple Launch Rocket System, or MLRS. The US-made weapon systems can fire a barrage of rockets hundreds of kilometers — much farther than any of the systems Ukraine already has — which the Ukrainians argue could be a gamechanger in their war against Russia.

Another system Ukraine has asked for is the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS, a lighter wheeled system capable of firing many of the same types of ammunition as MLRS.

Russia has in recent weeks pummeled Ukraine in the east, where Ukraine is outmanned and outgunned, Ukrainian officials have said.

The Biden administration waivered for weeks, however, on whether to send the systems, amid concerns raised within the National Security Council that Ukraine could use the systems to carry out offensive attacks inside Russia, officials said.

The issue was at the top of the agenda at last week’s two meetings at the White House where deputy Cabinet members convened to discuss national security policy, officials said. At the heart of the matter was the same concern the administration has grappled with since the start of the war– whether sending increasingly heavy weaponry to Ukraine will be viewed by Russia as a provocation that could trigger some kind of retaliation against the US.

One major hang-up, the sources said, had been the rocket systems’ extensive range. The MLRS and its lighter-weight version, the HIMARS, can launch as far as 300km, or 186 miles, depending on the type of munition. They are fired from a mobile vehicle at land-based targets, which would allow the Ukrainians to more easily strike targets inside Russia.

Ukraine is already believed to have carried out numerous cross-border strikes inside Russia, which Ukrainian officials neither confirm nor deny. Russian officials have said publicly that any threat to their homeland would constitute a major escalation and have said that western countries are making themselves a legitimate target in the war by continuing to arm the Ukrainians.

Another major concern inside the Biden administration had been whether the US could afford to give away so many high-end weapons drawn from the military’s stockpiles, the sources said.

Asked on Monday whether the US would provide the systems, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demurred. “I don’t want to get ahead of where we are in the process of resourcing requirements,” he told reporters.

The administration had similar concerns about providing Ukraine with additional MiG-29 fighter jets, which some worried could allow the Ukrainians to take the fight into Russia. Ultimately, the US decided against backfilling Poland with new jets, which would have allowed the Poles to equip Ukraine with the soviet-era MiGs.

The debate about the MLRS is also similar to one that played out before the US decided to begin sending heavier, long-range Howitzers, to Ukraine last month. Weapons packages focused on anti-tank Javelin and short-range Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, as well as small arms and ammunition. At the time, the M777 Howitzers marked a significant increase in range and power over previous systems, but even those top out at around 25 kilometers or 18 miles in range. The MLRS can fire much further still than any of the artillery the US has sent to date.

One workaround could be to provide Ukraine with shorter-range rocket systems, officials said, which is also under consideration. It would not take too long to train the Ukrainians on any of the rocket launcher systems, officials told CNN — likely about two weeks, they said.

Every drawdown from existing inventories involves a review of its potential effect on US military readiness. With the previous drawdowns, the risk has been “relatively low,” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley on Monday. The military is watching “very, very carefully” to make sure the stockpiles don’t drop below levels that create a greater risk, he added.

The concern grows significantly with more capable, more expensive systems of which the US does not have as large a supply, the sources said.

Pentagon officials met with the CEO of Lockheed Martin last week to discuss supply and ramping up production of the MLRS, one source familiar with the meeting told CNN. The meeting was led by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante.

The UK is also still deciding whether to send the systems, two officials told CNN, and would like to do so in conjunction with the US.

Frustration has grown on the Ukrainian side with the US’ indecisiveness in recent weeks, because they believe that once the US sends the systems then other countries will quickly follow suit.

As recently as this week, the Pentagon had told Ukraine “we are working on it,” said one irritated Ukrainian official, who added that Ukraine is asking for an update on the decision “every hour.”

“We are in great need of weapons that will make it possible to engage the enemy over a long distance,” Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, said Thursday. “And this cannot be delayed, because the price of delay is measured by the lives of people who have protected the world from [Russian fascism].”

When Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was asked Thursday what his country’s most urgent needs are, he responded: “If you really care for Ukraine, weapons, weapons and weapons again.”

“My least favorite phrase is ‘We are working on it’; I hate it. I want to hear either ‘We got it’ or ‘It’s not going to happen,'” he added.

Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who was part of a congressional delegation trip to Kyiv earlier this month, told CNN he believes the systems could help Ukraine gain significant momentum against Russia.

“I think it could be a gamechanger, to be honest with you,” Crow said, not only for offensive attacks but also for defense. He explained that Russian conventional artillery, which has a range of about 50km, “would not get close” to Ukrainian urban centers if MLRS systems were positioned there. “So it would take away their siege tactics,” he said of the Russians.

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As the cycle of American gun violence took its latest turn on Tuesday, with at least 19 children and two teachers brutally murdered at an elementary school in the small town of Uvalde, Texas, the response from the Republican right came from an all too familiar playbook.

Thoughts and prayers, obfuscation and inaction.

Shortly after the shooting, Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who for well over a decade has led his party in vehemently blocking a raft of federal gun control measures, decried the “disgusting violence” in Uvalde and said: “The entire country is praying for the children, families, teachers, and staff and the first responders on the scene.”

But prayers aside, there remains little to no hope of commonsense gun control measures making their way into federal law, despite support from the majority of American voters.

Within hours of the bloodshed on Tuesday, many of the national Republican Party’s most outspoken voices on gun ownership recited talking points now rote in the aftermath of mass shootings.

Texas senator Ted Cruz, who also sent prayers to the community in Uvalde, castigated Democrats and members of the media during a brief interview with CNN. “Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind you see politicians try to politicize it,” he said. “You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”

His remarks were almost identical in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting in Florida back in 2018, which claimed the lives of 17 students and teachers. Despite a grassroots protest movement, in which hundreds of thousands of school children descended on Washington in a March for Our Lives, no federal legislation was passed. Jury selection in the death penalty trial of the Parkland shooter continues this week, a further marker of the trauma these mass shootings leave behind.

Meanwhile, Cruz is set to speak at the National Rifle Association leadership summit on Friday, in Houston, just 280 miles from Uvalde, alongside Donald Trump and Texas governor Greg Abbott.

Other senior Texas Republicans, who have presided over a series of measures aimed at loosening restrictions on firearm ownership in the state, reiterated calls to arm teachers, despite the fact the shooter engaged a number of armed officers as he successfully stormed the school building.

“We can’t stop bad people from doing bad things,” Texas attorney general Ken Paxton told Fox News on Tuesday. “We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly. That, in my opinion, is the best answer.”

Among other US Republican senators, perceived as more open to bipartisan agreement, the sentiment remained largely the same. North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told reporters on Tuesday he had not seen any indication in initial reports that suggested the shooter’s record “​​was in any way affected by Congress’s actions or inaction”.

Tillis continued to express skepticism over so-called “red flag laws” adopted by a handful of US states in the wake of Parkland, which aim to allow authorities to restrict gun ownership from individuals deemed a threat to public safety. In 2019 bipartisan efforts in the US Senate to support such laws failed and on Tuesday Tillis reiterated his concern that such laws were “overreach”.

While Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, passed two House gun control bills last year, which aimed to expand and strengthen background checks, there remains little to no hope of their passage through the split US Senate where 60 votes are required to pass legislation. On Tuesday, the conservative Democrat Joe Manchin also reiterated he did not support calls from within the party to reform senate filibuster rules, which could allow the passage of legislation with a simple majority.

There was no sign either that a new generation of Republican senators might offer any hope for bipartisan gun reform measures. At a victory party on Tuesday night in Georgia, the newly nominated, Trump-endorsed Senate candidate Herschel Walker evaded questions over the massacre.

Asked if he supported any new gun control measures in the aftermath, Walker responded: “What I like to … what I like to do, is see it and everything and stuff,” before being ushered away.

Supporters at the event reportedly booed as president Joe Biden’s address to the nation was broadcast, during which he asked: “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done? Why are we willing to live with this carnage?”

The president was far from alone in expressing indignation on the legislative paralysis in Congress.

During an impassioned speech on the senate floor on Tuesday, Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy invoked the memory of the Sandy Hook massacre almost 10 years ago in his home state as he urged his colleagues to engage with reform efforts.

“What are we doing?” Murphy said. “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate? Why do you go through all the hassle of getting this job, of putting yourself in a position of authority, if your answer is that as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?”

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TOKYO — President Biden on Wednesday is expected to issue an executive order aimed at reforming federal policing on the second anniversary of the death of George Floyd, who died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis police officer, people familiar with the matter said.

The order will direct all federal agencies to revise their use-of-force policies, create a national registry of officers fired for misconduct, use grants to encourage state and local police to tighten restrictions on chokeholds and no-knock warrants and restrict the transfer of most military equipment to law enforcement agencies, the people said. They asked for anonymity to discuss the details of the order before it is announced.

The White House and the Justice Department have been working on the order since last year, when efforts to strike a bipartisan compromise on a national policing overhaul failed in the Senate. Mr. Biden’s executive order is expected to be more limited than that bill, a sign of the balancing act the president is trying to navigate on criminal justice.

While the death of Mr. Floyd and the national protest movement it inspired helped drastically shift public opinion on matters of race and policing in summer 2020, Republicans have also launched political attacks that portray Democrats as the enemies of law enforcement.

The order is unlikely to please either side entirely — many progressive activists still want stronger limits and accountability measures for the police even as a rise in violent crime in some cities has become a Republican attack line heading into the midterm elections.

But officials believe the order, whose final text has been closely held after the leak of an earlier draft early this year, will get some support from both activists and police.

Mr. Biden plans to sign the new executive order, alongside relatives of Mr. Floyd and police officials, in what is expected to be among his first official acts after he returns from a diplomatic trip to South Korea and Japan this week.

Police groups had been particularly upset by several items in the earlier 18-page draft order when it became public in January, leading them to complain that the White House had given them only a perfunctory chance at input. They threatened to pull their support, leading to a major reset in the process by the White House’s domestic policy council, led by Susan Rice.

In the months since, the White House has worked more closely with police and Justice Department officials who have greater experience straddling the line between police reform and running law enforcement agencies, as the administration has elevated a more centrist position on criminal justice.

“The White House did significant outreach with us and tried to listen to our concerns,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a bipartisan think tank that focuses on police practices. “This final executive order is substantively different from the original version, and that’s made a big difference to many of us in law enforcement.”

Mr. Biden has repeatedly emphasized a message of investing in, rather than defunding, the police — wading into a national debate about whether the government should give police departments more resources or spend the money on mental health care and other social services instead.

One of the changes reflected in the executive order, according to the people familiar with the final version, centered on what it would say about standards for using force.

The administration has taken out language that would have allowed federal law enforcement agents to use deadly force only “as a last resort when there is no reasonable alternative, in other words only when necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily injury or death.” The earlier version would also have encouraged state and local police to adopt the same standard using federal discretionary grants.

Law enforcement officials complained that the standard would allow second-guessing in hindsight of decisions by officers in exigent circumstances. The final order instead refers to a Justice Department policy issued this week that says officers may shoot suspects when they have “a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.”

Jim Pasco, the executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he thought new use-of-force language would “bring more clarity and better guidance to officers” but without causing them to become so risk-averse that they fail to protect themselves and others when necessary.

“It’s not a question of stricter or less strict,” Mr. Pasco said. “It’s a question of better framed. And a better-constructed definition of the use of force.”

He added: “It’s not a sea change.”

Udi Ofer, the deputy national political director of the American Civil Liberties Union, offered cautious support for the Justice Department policy, saying much would depend on how it was carried out.

“Correct implementation of this standard will be pivotal for its success,” he said. “We have seen jurisdictions with strong standards where officers still resort to the use of deadly force, so just having these words on paper will not be enough. The entire culture and mentality needs to change to bring these words to life, and to save lives.”

The administration will also include guidance on screening inherent bias among the rank and file, including those potentially harboring white supremacist views, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some provisions in the order would build off previous efforts by the Justice Department, including mandating that federal law enforcement agents wear body cameras. The order would also direct the government to expand data collection, including use-of-force incidents across the country, and would attempt to standardize and improve credentialing of police agencies.

Katie Benner contributed reporting from Washington.

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Saying it wants to further strengthen women’s ability to decide “if and when they want children,” Québec Solidaire is proposing a program that would create free access to all forms of contraception.

The party says it would like to include “all hormonal contraception” in public RAMQ coverage.

It would also like to facilitate the distribution of barrier methods, such as condoms.

“Pill, condom, IUD, diaphragm… whatever the method, a supportive government will make contraception free in Quebec,” the party later added in a tweet.

In a press release, party co-spokesperson Manon Massé said she was worried about the recent setbacks in access to abortion in the United States.

The best reaction, she argued, is to “keep moving forward to allow women to be in full control of their lives.”

The Solidaire co-spokesperson said she fears that economic constraints deprive people of access to contraception, and that the recent significant increase in the cost of living is accentuating this risk for many low-income women.

Québec Solidaire says it’s inspired by a recommendation from the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, which sees free contraception as a way to reduce the cost of health care related to unwanted pregnancies.

In Quebec, that overall bill — the amount needed in relation to unwanted pregnancies — adds up to several tens of millions of dollars per year.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 23, 2022, with files from CTV News.

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By Rachel Janfaza, CNN

Six weeks postpartum, Rochelle Garza was on the frontlines of an abortion rights rally in Dallas.

“I will be damned if my daughter grows up in a state where she cannot control her own body,” the Democratic candidate for Texas attorney general said into a megaphone.

Abortion rights had already been top of mind for Texas Democrats during the state’s March 1 primary elections, as Democratic candidates and political operatives pointed to the Lone Star State’s controversial six-week abortion ban as a warning sign for what life could look like in a post-Roe America.

But, two months later, the issue became much more pressing: a Supreme Court draft majority opinion that would overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision had been leaked.

“I know that everyone is angry. We should be angry because this is an attack on our health care. Because abortion is health care. Reproductive freedom is a human right,” Garza said on May 3.

In the weeks since then, abortion rights has become even more central to two key Texas runoff primaries. Voting will end in those races on Tuesday.

In the runoff for the Democratic nomination for state attorney general, Garza, a civil rights attorney who previously won a case granting a detained 17-year-old immigrant the right to an abortion, is facing off against former Galveston mayor and trial attorney Joe Jaworski, who is also pro-abortion rights but lacks the same backing of abortion rights groups that Garza has.

“Women and all people who care about equal rights, even if they’re not women, should be angry, alarmed and motivated,” Jaworski said in an interview with CNN Friday. “Reproductive choice, at least protected by the federal constitution, is over, and this ought to be a wake-up call, a motivating call for voters, whether you’re a woman or not.”

The issue has also come to the forefront of the blockbuster Democratic primary runoff for Texas’s 28th Congressional District, where Jessica Cisneros, a 28-year-old immigration attorney, is facing Rep. Henry Cuellar. Cuellar, a political institution in South Texas, is the last remaining anti-abortion rights House Democrat and was the only member of his party in the lower chamber last fall to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights even if the Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade.

Jamarr Brown, co-executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, told CNN that after the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion, the party will be “following the primary runoff results to see if there are any indicators of this issue moving the electorate.”

“This issue is a reminder of what is at stake in this election — that we must fight extremism by Republicans in Texas and across the country when they attack our fundamental freedoms,” Brown said.

Cisneros prioritizes abortion in South Texas

Days after the Supreme Court draft decision was leaked, Cisneros posted a video on Twitter asking Democratic leadership to retract their support for Cuellar.

“At every turn, my congressman has stood in opposition to the Democratic Party agenda. From being anti-union to being anti-choice and with the House majority on the line, Cuellar could very much be the deciding vote on the future of reproductive rights in this country and we just cannot afford that risk,” she said.

Asked during a press conference earlier this month about her support for Cuellar, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doubled down on her backing of the incumbent congressman, saying that while Cuellar is an abortion rights opponent, the Democratic Party was able to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act without his vote.

“I’m supporting Henry Cuellar. He’s a valued member of our caucus,” Pelosi said at a May 12 press conference, adding later, “He is not pro choice, but we didn’t need him.”

Cuellar is also backed by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, who stumped for Cuellar in San Antonio, Texas, the same day Cisneros released her statement asking for party leadership to reconsider their stance.

For months, Cisneros has been talking about the differentiation between her and Cuellar when it comes to abortion rights.

“He doubled down on his anti-choice stance and said abortion wasn’t health care. This is why I’m running, because our community deserves someone who will always fight tooth and nail for our health care,” Cisneros previously told CNN in a statement.

Cuellar, according to the Laredo Morning Times, said in a Zoom event last year that he had backed “millions of dollars on health care for women,” but that abortion was “not a health issue.”

“For me,” Cisneros said, “knowing how many people are being affected and have lost their right to health care, you just can’t be a bystander.”

“As a lifelong Catholic, I have always been pro-life. As a Catholic, I do not support abortion, however, we cannot have an outright ban. There must be exceptions in the case of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother,” Cuellar said in a statement after the draft opinion leaked.

“Additionally, my faith does not allow me to support extreme positions such as late term or partial birth abortions. My faith is clear: abortion must be rare & safe,” Cuellar said.

CNN reached out to Cuellar’s campaign and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee but did not immediately receive a response for comment.

Both Texas Democratic attorney general candidates vow to not criminalize abortion seekers or providers

Both Garza and Jaworski told CNN that if elected, they would not criminalize women for seeking an abortion or abortion providers.

“My commitment is to fighting for everyone’s constitutional right and being the people’s attorney and looking out for the people, and that does include making sure that we do not criminalize women or providers or anyone for making a healthy decision. I make that commitment that I am not going to criminalize anyone or force criminality for someone making a decision for themselves,” Garza said in an interview Thursday.

Likewise, asked if he would criminalize people who sought an abortion or abortion providers in the state, Jaworski said, “I would not.”

He added that he does not think prosecuting abortion is within the purview of the state’s attorney general.

“In fact, I don’t think it would be the Texas attorney general’s province to initiate prosecution, even if I felt like doing it, which I don’t,” Jaworski said Friday, adding that he believes the decision will come down to “local decision making authority.”

As an attorney in private practice, Garza — who previously told CNN her candidacy for attorney general was in part inspired by Texas’ six-week abortion ban — fought in court against Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton‘s efforts to insert himself in a case to help the Trump administration prevent her client, a detained 17-year-old immigrant, from accessing an abortion. Garza and the ACLU won that case.

“This is what we need in the office. Somebody who practices what they preach. I’m a civil rights lawyer,” she said.

For his part, Jaworski told CNN he is uniquely positioned to serve as attorney general because of his litigation experience. But Jaworski has never previously fought for abortion in court.

“I’ve not had occasion to fight for reproductive choice in court, but I have had two major victories on difficult cases,” Jaworski said, detailing cases regarding workers’ rights and public housing in the state of Texas.

Jaworski told CNN that he believes the issue of reproductive rights in Texas must be looked at from an equal rights perspective and could come down to the equal protection clause of the Texas constitution.

He added that the fight for reproductive rights in Texas will require a sincere commitment to voting rights as well, in part due to Texans role in voting for state Supreme Court justices.

The Democratic nominee will take on the victor of the Republican primary race. Paxton, who won reelection by under 4 percentage points in 2018, is seeking a third term this year and has a primary runoff of his own against George P. Bush to get through on Tuesday. Texans haven’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since 1994.

National and local abortion rights groups weigh-in

The high-profile races have attracted the attention of national and local organizations, many of whom advocate for abortion rights.

Both Cisneros and Garza are supported by EMILY’s List, the influential Democratic political committee that backs pro- abortion rights women for public office.

For its part, EMILY’s List’s independent expenditure arm “WOMEN VOTE!” has put out mailers, television ads and digital ads for Cisneros ahead of the runoff, Christina Reynolds, vice president of communications for EMILY’s List, told CNN.

While Reynolds noted the group’s concerted push for Cisneros, she highlighted the work of the organization to support Cisneros during both of the past two cycles. EMILY’s List also backed Cisneros in 2020, when she challenged Cuellar for the first time.

Asked about whether or not the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion has changed the stakes of the race in Texas’ 28th congressional district, “It’s not a new issue here. It potentially makes it more real that this is going to happen,” Reynolds told CNN, referring to the possibility of a post-Roe America.

“Both [Cisneros and Garza] talked about [abortion] beforehand, before the decision, and continue to talk about and raise with voters since the draft opinion leaked,” she said.

Additionally, Cisneros is backed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund, while Garza has the support of by Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, the local wing of the national abortion rights advocacy group.

Dyana Limon-Mercado, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes emphasized that throughout the state, more Texans are talking about the need for abortion rights.

“We know a majority of Americans already believe that Roe should stay in place and abortion should continue to be legal, even among Catholic voters, Hispanic voters, women of all socioeconomic backgrounds,” she said.

“Now, what I think you see, is more different types of voters talking about it. Maybe people who their number one issue maybe has been education or the economy and other stuff like that, this conversation has really started to dominate on politics up and down the ballot.”

Ana Ramon, who is the interim executive director of Annie’s List, a Texas-based group that backs progressive, pro-abortion rights women at the state level, told CNN that across the state, voters are emphasizing abortion rights as a top issue.

“We have definitely heard of interesting conversations at the doors. It’s more on the grassroots level where people are talking to our endorsed candidates about abortion and access,” Ramon said.

“Everything is at stake, people’s lives are at stake. We know that women and Texas families, they are more likely to die of gynecological cancers, gynecological disease, if they don’t have access to the resources and services they need,” she said. “This is no longer about policies it’s about people.”

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By Jim Acosta, CNN

A former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “covered new ground” this week in her deposition before the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, a source familiar with the meeting said.

Cassidy Hutchinson was subpoenaed to appear in front of the committee on Tuesday. It was her third session answering the panel’s questions.

The source familiar with Hutchinson’s deposition declined to offer many details about the meeting to avoid getting ahead of the committee’s findings from its investigation into the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

But the source said Hutchinson spent time going over “new ground” during the session.

During her second meeting with the committee, Hutchinson disclosed that Meadows was directly warned of potential violence on January 6.

She also told the panel that GOP members of Congress discussed ways to overturn the election results, despite warnings from the White House counsel’s office that those proposals were not lawful.

“I know that people had brought information forward to (Meadows) that had indicated that there could be violence on the 6th,” she previously told the committee. “But, again, I’m not sure if he — what he did with that information internally,” the committee said she had testified.

According to the source, Hutchinson believes she is being forced to testify as a result of Meadows’ refusal to comply with a subpoena from the committee. The committee has narrowed what it wants to ask Meadows, CNN previously reported, as it has continued to press for more documents and testimony from the key January 6 witness in the Trump White House.

The House committee had sought out Hutchinson last year when it subpoenaed a group of former officials with close ties to Trump. Hutchinson was a special assistant for legislative affairs and an adviser to Meadows. Hutchinson was also privy to Meadows’ efforts to speak to others about investigating fraud after the 2020 election.

According to text messages relayed by the January 6 committee, Donald Trump Jr., Fox News personalities and lawmakers unsuccessfully implored Meadows on January 6 to get President Donald Trump to stop the violence unfurling at the US Capitol.

In December, the House voted to hold Meadows in contempt over his refusal to appear before the January 6 panel, referring the matter to the Justice Department.

The source said Hutchinson is likely to appear before the committee again, perhaps during the panel’s upcoming public hearings expected this summer.

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At the time, the judge, David O. Carter of Federal District Court for the Central District of California, ordered the release of more than 100 of Mr. Eastman’s emails; Mr. Eastman turned them over to the House committee as he continued to fight the release of others.

Among the documents that Mr. Eastman turned over was a draft memo written for Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, that recommended that Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from contested states in his role overseeing the certification by Congress of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6.

In their filing, Mr. Eastman’s lawyers wrote that their client disagreed with Judge Carter’s conclusion that he had undermined democracy, arguing that Mr. Eastman truly believed the election was stolen. The filing cited the work of conservative media figures — including the new film “2000 Mules” by Dinesh D’Souza, which fact checkers have described as misleading — as evidence that widespread fraud occurred in the election.

“If, as seemed clear to Dr. Eastman and his client at the time, there was illegality and fraud in the election of sufficient magnitude to have altered the outcome of the election, then far from ‘undermining’ democracy, Dr. Eastman’s actions and advice must be seen for what they were — a legitimate attempt to prevent a stolen election,” Mr. Eastman’s lawyers wrote. “Perhaps Dr. Eastman was wrong about that. But even if he was, being wrong about factual claims is not and never has been criminal.”

They added, “Dr. Eastman’s position remains that his legal theories, controversial though they may have been, were not unlawful.”

In the filing, Mr. Eastman said he began working for Mr. Trump two months before the 2020 election at the invitation of Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who the Jan. 6 committee said “promoted false claims of election fraud to members of Congress” and participated in a call in which Mr. Trump tried to pressure Georgia’s secretary of state to “‘find’ enough votes to reverse his loss there.”

Mr. Eastman, Ms. Mitchell and others began preparing to fight the election results well before Election Day, but the effort “kicked into high gear” on Nov. 7 — four days after the election — when Mr. Eastman met with Mr. Trump’s campaign team in Philadelphia to assist with the preparation of an election challenge, the filing said.

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CUMMING, Ga. — In October 1912, after the raped and brutalized body of Mae Crow, a white 18-year-old, was laid to rest beside the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, the white men of Forsyth County went on a rampage, driving its 1,098 Black citizens — about 10 percent of the population — from Forsyth’s borders.

They had already dragged 24-year-old Rob Edwards, a Black man, from a jail cell in the Cumming town square, beaten him with crowbars, riddled his corpse with bullets and hoisted him over a telephone pole yardarm. Two Black teens, Ernest Knox, 16, and Oscar Daniel, 18, would hang after the most specious of trials.

But the citizens of this county north of Atlanta were not done. For much of the 20th century, they would guard Forsyth’s borders as the city to the south encroached, through violence, intimidation and a menacing understanding in Greater Atlanta that this county was to remain for whites only.

The people who drove Forsyth’s Black residents from their homes and farms had no name for their hatred, no “Great Replacement” or “White Genocide” theories. But the notion that other races were plotting to “replace” the rightful inhabitants of the county took murderous form more than a century ago, said Patrick Phillips, whose attention-getting 2016 book “Blood at the Root” chronicled the racial cleansing of the county he grew up in — and his own awakening to the fact of his all-white childhood.

A small group of Black farmers were starting to prosper, acquire land and outdo some of their white neighbors, Mr. Phillips said.

They had to go.

If those who carried out mass shootings in Buffalo, Pittsburgh, El Paso and Christchurch, New Zealand, showed how deadly such beliefs could be in the hands of a single, well-armed killer, the Forsyth County of 1912 showed what a more organized operation of terror could accomplish.

But a century later, Forsyth County also refutes white supremacists who believe that, as Payton Gendron, the charged Buffalo gunman, put it: “Diversity is not a strength.” The county’s whites-only century was one of stagnation and isolation. Only after the sprawl of Greater Atlanta eventually overwhelmed Forsyth’s defenses in the late 1990s and 2000s did this county boom.

“It put a stigma on Forsyth County for many, many years, and for some, it still exists,” said Jason May, 48, the white owner of a real estate company just off the Cumming town square.

And booming it is.

Its population is now over 260,000 — up from 45,000 when the vestiges of all-white Forsyth began falling away. The Black population, at 2.2 percent in 2000, is still only 4.4 percent — Alpharetta, just over the Fulton County line, is 12 percent Black. But other demographic groups have grown substantially, including immigrants. Asians, particularly Indian Americans, represent 15.5 percent, and Hispanics 9.7 percent. Household median income, at $112,834, just surpassed Calvert County, Md., to become the 13th highest in the country. It was $44,162 in 1993, or $89,500 in current dollars.

“Diversity can never be bad in my book; I’m sorry,” said Barbra Curtiss, 71, a white businesswoman whose real estate company off the Cumming town square includes a banner welcoming her newest agent, Maria Zaragosa, along with “Spanglish” services. “Diversity — it’s just like death and taxes. You’re not going to be able to stop it, no matter what. No matter how much hate speech, how many mass shootings, it’s not going to stop.”

Ms. Curtiss, who moved to Forsyth County in 1984, knew of its whites-only status while living in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, when her husband at the time — a “racist,” she said — wanted to move to an all-white county. Three years later, in 1987, a small group of local and Atlanta-based civil rights activists, led by Hosea Williams, boarded buses from Atlanta for Forsyth County to mark the 75th anniversary of the Black expulsion. They were met with confederate flags and signs proclaiming “Racial Purity is Forsyth’s Security” and “Forsyth Stays White.” And when they tried to march into Cumming, they were pelted with stones, bottles and bricks, until they retreated to their buses, back to Atlanta.

A few weeks later, this time with national media attention, helicopters overhead, and a phalanx of National Guardsmen clearing their path, the marchers returned in far larger numbers — this time with Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Andrew Young and Oprah Winfrey, to name a few.

Among the marchers was Miguel Marcelli, a Black Atlanta firefighter, who in 1980 had made the mistake of joining his girlfriend’s company picnic on the Forsyth County banks of Lake Lanier, and nearly paid with his life after the couple was ambushed as they headed home. They were less than a mile from the grave of Mae Crow. In November 1986, five Hispanic construction workers were beaten and told they would be killed if they didn’t leave the county immediately.

Yet for all the publicity, Forsyth remained nearly all white. Ms. Curtiss recalled her first nonwhite customer, “a little Hispanic guy” in the early 2000s, who came to her after other real estate brokers refused their services.

“All I remember was that it was heart-wrenching, because he said nobody else would give him the time of day,” she said.

Tony Shivers, 72, remembers exactly when the first Black man was hired by the town of Cumming: It was 30 years ago, and he was that man. He was laying pipe for a contractor in Cumming; the city liked his work, and took him on at the water treatment plant. There was a sign outside the sheriff’s office, warning Black people — using a racial slur — that they had better not be caught by the dogcatcher in Forsyth County after dark.

His friends in Atlanta had told him he was crazy to go to Forsyth County, and he said he remembered incidents when he was told to go back where he belonged. But he had been in the Marines. He wasn’t going to be intimidated.

Many in the county do not know its history. Ms. Zaragosa said she was unaware of the county’s past. Instead, she struck a note that many others here do: “Our main focus is on business,” she said, just two months into her job at the real estate agency, which, like others, advertises: “Se habla Español.”

For others, the stories are inescapable. The county has not tried to bury its history: A plaque on the Cumming town square tells the story of Mr. Edward’s lynching and the racial cleansing that followed.

“The loss of Black-owned property in order to flee arbitrary mob violence was common during this era, and Forsyth’s Black residents left behind their homes and farms to escape, taking with them only what they could carry,” it reads.

Indeed, much of Forsyth’s per capita wealth was generated by the vast run-up in value of properties that had sat in the possession of Forsyth’s old families for a century — much of that property taken from someone else.

Outside Cherians International Fresh Market, an Asian grocery store on Cumming’s outskirts, Avani Vallabhaneni spoke to the perseverance of Forsyth’s newcomers. When she and her husband arrived 12 years ago, she said, she heard neighbors stage-whispering behind her back that she should go back to where she came from. Her husband, who travels for work, once showed his business card to a knowing Georgian, who marveled that he lived in Cumming.

But she had her two children in Forsyth County, and the Indian population has grown so much, she said, that she does not hear those whispers anymore.

Others do still hear similar whispers today, however — though race is not necessarily the irritant.

Like the Rev. Bogdan Maruszak, the pastor of a small flock of immigrants. He started his Ukrainian Orthodox Church in a trailer, on a plot of land outside Cumming, in 2000, bringing together Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians and others, all of them white, to forbidding territory in North Georgia, where he made ends meet opening a body shop. He knew vaguely of Forsyth’s history.

“I was thinking about it, but I wasn’t nervous,” the Ukrainian-Polish immigrant said over iced tea and lemonade just over the Fulton County line in Johns Creek.

With the war in Ukraine heightening fears of genocide and the mass shooting in Buffalo focusing attention on “white replacement,” Rev. Maruszak said, it is incumbent on all of Forsyth County, not only its newcomers, to speak out, and to speak up for those who are threatened.

“We cannot be passively observing,” he said. “We can do something. We should react.”

That can’t be taken for granted, said Mr. Phillips, the author of “Blood at the Root.”

Forsyth’s progress and its remarkable prosperity may be proof that white supremacy is a hindrance, he said, but the county should not be credited with the epiphany. Atlanta’s sprawl spread steadily northward until the wave “finally broke over Forsyth County,” he said.

“What you would like to believe,” Mr. Phillips said, “is that there was some moral change, that people saw the error of their ways, and a light switch clicked.”

But that, he said, isn’t what happened.

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