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A Tennessee court has overturned the conviction of a man who killed a Black transgender woman, ruling that a lower court “erred” by preventing the killer from using the victim’s trans identity in his defense.

Samuel Ward Jr. shot Paris Lee six times outside her Memphis home in June 2022, according to the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office. He then drove 30 minutes home, leaving her to die. Ward was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in May 2025.

But the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Jackson overturned that conviction on Monday and ordered a retrial. The trial court’s judge had disallowed the defense from presenting the victim’s identity as a transgender woman in its arguments.

“The trial court erred by excluding evidence of the victim’s assigned sex at birth, [and] the evidence was insufficient to support [Ward’s] conviction,” reads the Monday appellate court decision. “Because we conclude that the trial court erred… we reverse and remand this case for a new trial.”

The defense had argued it would be more reasonable for Ward to fear Lee if jurors knew she was assigned male at birth, and said jurors would be more prejudiced against Ward for killing a cisgender woman, according to Jamie Satterfield, an independent journalist who first reported the ruling.

The gay panic defenses has not gone away. Also, this rings of saying its not murder because transgender people aren't people.

Not only has Gov. Gavin Newsom vocally opposed the proposed California billionaire tax, but he also wants to prevent the state from ever passing a wealth tax in the future.

On Friday he endorsed Proposition 42, a ballot measure that would cancel out Proposition 40, the proposed billionaire tax. Prop. 42 would prohibit retroactive taxes like the one-time 5% tax on assets that would apply to any billionaire who lived in California on Jan. 1, 2026 if Prop. 40 passes.

But Prop. 42, funded and placed on the ballot by billionaire and Google co-founder Sergey Brin to defeat the billionaire tax, also would go further, by banning any new taxes on personal property.

That includes pensions and 401K accounts before retirees start drawing retirement income from them. It also includes other investments, financial assets, business holdings, art collections and all other forms of personal wealth that would be affected by the billionaire tax or any future wealth tax.

Newsom’s decision to support Prop. 42 runs counter to his own Democratic Party and some labor unions. It also aligns him with some of the wealthy tech donors with whom he’s maintained longstanding relationships dating back to his days as mayor of San Francisco.

It is nothing short of murder for pay. The media companies are guaranteed to already be selling ad space for it and it will bring in billions. And- we should all know already that the nazi organization known as MAGA have already claimed their share of it.

PLEASE- Do not watch this. Do not let them monetize executions.

This paves the way for judges to issue executions far more frequently and will result in the most colossally vile abuse of our legal system we will ever know.

DO NOT WATCH IT. DO NOT SUPPORT MONETIZING MURDER.

(EDIT: it’s been brought to my attention that people need their hand held so, what I am referring to here is that MAGA is going to use American military and social media to publicly execute someone. Whoever hosted it will absolutely profit from it and there is no way MAGA isn’t also going to take their cut)

On Tuesday night, Ottumwa resident, satanist, and former city council member Matt Dalbey took the podium to read an invocation to start a routine meeting of the council. “Thank you mayor, council. Let us pray,” Dalbey started. “Dear dark father, let us stand now unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds and darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferan impulse to eat off the tree of knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old.”

The prayer is a common one used by the Satanic Temple of Iowa. “Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not for their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations,” he continued. “Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true. Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of one or all. That which will not bend must break. And that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise.”“It is done. Hail Satan,” he finished.

Another citizen, a pastor named Rick Bick, rushed to the podium. “Let’s just reverse that curse that was just put on our city,” he said. “That ending with hail Satan and hail dark god. That’s not welcome here.”

“Mayor, that should be done at the end,” city councilor Cara Galloway said.

“It needs to be done now, OK.” Rick said. “I appreciate what Ms. Galloway is saying but that was a curse put on our city when he said ‘Hail Satan’ and the dark god and most of you know that. And we need to just stop and reverse it.”

“So what I’m gonna do now…I’m just gonna invite us into a 30 second time of prayer — time of silence.”

“No,” Galloway said. “We are at the consent agenda. I’m sorry, but it’s time to move forward. The invocation happened.”

“As mayor of this city…I’m going to ask right now that we do a moment of silence to reflect on whatever it is we need to reflect on at this time. And then we will move to the consent agenda,” mayor Benjamin Foote said.

Galloway spent the moment of silence with her head up and her arms crossed. An hour later, she spoke up. “Opening with an invocation means allowing viewpoints that may not reflect our own and responding to someone’s invocation is a slippery slope to putting a financial liability on the taxpayers and allowing others to object or respond. This is exactly why I had concerns about having an invocation when we first talked about it.”

PizzaCake | Bluesky

TW: Sexual Assault

There's a dozen other RPGs I could have used as well, but Pathfinder is the meme one.

ICE official, who was sleeping on man’s lawn and appeared ‘intoxicated’, faces felony charges, California police say

A 72-year-old man shot an off-duty Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official in California early on Friday morning after the “intoxicated and agitated” official assaulted him and his daughter on their property, local authorities allege.

The Fresno police department said that the ICE official was receiving medical care after being shot in the midsection. The official, identified as David Gonzalez, is facing felony charges for assaulting the father-daughter duo, Fresno police said.

It was not immediately clear for how Gonzalez had been with ICE and what exactly he did for ICE. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, referred all questions about Gonzalez to Fresno police.