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SAN BERNARDINO: Authorities widen search for missing woman Share Pin It 1 of 5 More Galleries Hastings Anyanwu, 26, said he lives in the unit directly above the one occupied by Sahray Astina Barber, 22, who was reported missing on Monday. DAVID BAUMAN , PHOTOS: DAVID BAUMAN, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Related article »

 Mounted police expanded their search Wednesday for a missing 22-year-old San Bernardino woman as detectives examined her belongings and Cal State San Bernardino released a composite sketch of a suspect in two attacks there.

 Police are trying to determine if the attacks and disappearance are related.

 “We probably have no less than 10, 15 detectives assigned to this case right now,” said Lt. Richard Lawhead, a spokesman for the San Bernardino Police Department.

 UPDATE: Search of hills called off Thursday as investigators follow up leads

 PREVIOUSLY REPORTED: Police 'not leaving any stone unturned'

 Detective Jerry Hanes of San Bernardino’s Mounted Enforcement Unit said the agency dispatched a pair of two-man teams to search from dawn to dusk the chaparral-and-sage backcountry north of CSUSB, both west and east of Devils Canyon Road.

 Wearing a cowboy hat and dark sunglasses above a handlebar mustache, Hanes rode out with Reserve Officer Eric Morales.

 “We’re covering every road, every trail and every rabbit path,” said Morales, a retired sergeant.

 However, as of Wednesday afternoon, Lawhead said searchers had uncovered no sign of Sahray Astina Barber, the missing art student who was last seen early Monday morning.

 Barber has been living at a 212-unit apartment complex on Northpark Boulevard, across the street from the campus of 19,000 students and 2,000 faculty and staff.

 Barber does not attend CSUSB, university officials said.

 But she is a student at the Art Institute of California-Inland Empire, where she studies graphic design.

 She is due to get an associate degree this spring and an award from a national organization during a ceremony Friday at the Mission Inn in Riverside, her parents, Stephen and Radena Barber, said.

 ‘STRANGE SET OF CIRCUMSTANCES’

 Concerning her disappearance, Lawhead said no one heard a scream or saw anything that suggests a struggle took place. ||||| Sahray Astina Barber, 22, was last seen 6 a.m. Monday. (Courtesy photo)

 SAN BERNARDINO >> Just a day after a female student reported being attacked at Cal State San Bernardino, police say a woman, who lives directly across the street from campus has gone missing.

 “We just want her back,” a tearful Stephen Barber, the missing woman’s father, said.

 • Video: Parents make plea for daughter’s safe return

 Sahray Astina Barber, 22, was last seen around 6 a.m. Monday as she made her way to work from her apartment located at 1505 West Northpark Blvd., directly across the street from the university, San Bernardino police officials said.

 When she didn’t show up at work at the The Art Institute where she is also a student, the police were called, said Lt. Rich Lawhead.

 “We are concerned due to the recent events at Cal State,” Lawhead said.

 Cal State president, Tomás D. Morales, sent an email to students and faculty Tuesday morning responding to Barber’s disappearance.

 “I regret the need to share another incident involving a law enforcement matter, but your safety and well-being preempts any other issue these days,” the email reads. “Late Monday afternoon, San Bernardino Police responded to a call at the nearby Sunrise Apartments regarding a missing female named Sahray Astina Barber. Her roommates had discovered several of her belongings scattered on the lawn outside their apartment. They contacted her work and found that she had not reported that day.”

 Morales went on to say Barber at no time worked at or attended Cal State San Bernardino, but a number of students live in the same apartments.

 The university community is still reeling after a series of violent incidents occurred on campus recently, including two attacks on women in a one-week period.

 In response to those recent attacks on campus, “University police staffing has been more than doubled, 24 hours a day,” according to Morales, “including bringing in additional officers from other CSU campuses to supplement our force.”

 Morales released a video Monday afternoon, addressing the violent incidents on campus.

 • Video: Police search bushes where woman went missing

 Police have not said whether the missing woman’s case is connected to the events on campus, but they are actively investigating the incidents. However, some students said they feel the incidents are too close in proximity and time to not be related.

 “It really does seem like they are connected in some way,” said freshman, Mayela Garcia, 18. “It’s very, very scary. Especially if you think that yesterday there were a whole bunch of police, helicopters and even news media, and this girl went missing in the middle of all that.”

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 Residents of the Sunrise Apartment complex, where Barber lived, were also on edge Tuesday.

 “Nothing like this, this big has happened here before,” said Shawn Hempstead who has lived in the complex for nine years. “It really hits close to home.”

 Hempstead and her neighbor, Any Gutierrez, were chatting about the incident as police took down the crime tape that surrounded a portion of the complex’s parking area.

 “I think everyone was already kind of scared because of the attacks at the school and now this just makes me really concerned,” Gutierrez said.

 The women said police went door to door Monday afternoon and asked residents if they had seen or heard anything earlier that morning.

 “Someone did say they heard some yelling,” said Gutierrez. “With all the joggers that go by, I think someone had to have seen something.”

 Barber is a graphic arts major who was getting ready to accept an award for her work this weekend.

 On Sunday afternoon, a woman was leaving the John M. Pfau Library at Cal State San Bernardino around 3 p.m. when a man grabbed her from behind, according to an email sent to students and staff. The attacker put his hand over her mouth and “said that he planned to take her to his car,” the email said.

 The woman fought the man off, and she then called for help.

 The school police crime log shows a woman was also attacked by a man inside Pfau Library last Wednesday evening. The woman reported the attack took place in the library’s north stairwell around 7:30 p.m., according to a school police report. She also escaped.

 On Monday, campus housing passed out whistles to students. Garcia said she went right over to get one.

 “Let me be clear — the safety of our campus community is our highest priority, and I have instructed our leadership team accordingly,” Morales said in the video.

 Barber is described as a white female, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, 125 pounds, with long red/brown straight hair and green eyes.

 Anyone who has seen Barber or has information about her whereabouts is asked to call San Bernardino police Detective Dan Han at 909-384-5623 or the San Bernardino Police Investigations Bureau at 909-384-5615. Refer to case number 2015-26028.

 Staff writer Doug Saunders contributed to this report. ||||| An art student went missing near the Cal State San Bernardino campus Monday, police said. The school has been dealing with a wave of violent crime. Beverly White reports for the NBC4 News at 11 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (Published Wednesday, Mar 11, 2015)

 An art student living in a Southern California college community that has been grappling with a wave of violent crime has disappeared, police said Tuesday.

 Sahray Astina Barber may have gone missing early Monday morning after leaving her apartment complex in the 1500 block of Northpark Boulevard in San Bernardino, officials with the San Bernardino Police Department said.

 Her parents say they are desperate to see their 22-year-old daughter again.

 "It’s just not like her to go off on her own like this," said Barber's father, Stephen Barber. "Sahray, we love you. We can’t wait to have you back in our arms."

 Woman Believed to Have Vanished Near CSUSB

 Authorities continue to search for a young woman who may have vanished from her home near CSU San Bernardino. Tony Shin reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. (Published Tuesday, Mar 10, 2015)

 About 6 a.m., Barber, an Art Institute of California – Inland Empire graphic design student, was possibly heading to a nearby bus stop on her way to school, police said. Some of her personal belongings, including a laptop and her cellphone, were found in vegetation about 30 yards away from the bus stop.

 Searchers on motorcycle and horseback were searching for clues in the hills just north of Barber’s home, where she lives with two roommates, who reported her missing.

 Barber’s disappearance comes on the heels of a series of violent crimes at California State University, San Bernardino, which is across the street from her apartment.

 On Sunday, a female student fought of an attacker who tried to kidnap her on campus.

 CSUSB Students on High Alert After Attempted Kidnap

 Students at Cal State San Bernadino are on high alert after a series of violent crimes, including an attempted kidnapping over the weekend, in broad daylight. Tony Shin reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Monday, March 9, 2015. (Published Monday, Mar 9, 2015)

 An attempted rape, carjacking and a strong-arm robbery also took place in the last two weeks, a school spokesman said.

 Police said there's no known connection between the crimes and Barber's disappearance.

 "We are concerned due to recent events in the area, however we have no concrete evidence that for sure tells us there’s any kind of foul play right now," said San Bernardino Police Lt. Richard Lawhead.

 Barber’s parents said their daughter has some martial arts training.

 String of Violent Crimes Reported at CSU SB Campus

 Four violent crimes were reported in two weeks, including an attempted kidnapping and attempted rape, at an Inland Empire state university. Annette Arreola reports from San Bernardino for NBC4's News at Noon on Monday, March 9, 2015. (Published Monday, Mar 9, 2015)

 “She would have been able to handle herself, unless she was overwhelmed,” Barber’s father said.

 Police have questioned Barber’s ex-boyfriend and her roommates about her disappearance.

 Investigators said they don’t have any solid leads.

 “That laptop hopefully will have some evidence on it. It has been taken to the sheriff’s high-tech crime unit for analysis,” Lawhead said.

 Southern California Images in the News

 Barber was described as White, about 5-foot-8-inches tall, weighing 125 pounds. She has long red-brown straight hair and green eyes.

 Anyone with information was asked to call San Bernardino police at 909-384-5623. |||||
What is a summary?

– Police on horseback and dirt bikes are searching remote areas for a woman whose disappearance followed a series of violent attacks at Cal State San Bernardino. Sahray Astina Barber, a 22-year-old who studies and works at the Art Institute of California-Inland Empire, lives across the street from the university and was last seen around 6am Monday. The university emailed students about her disappearance, saying that her roommates found her belongings, including her phone and laptop, scattered on the lawn outside her apartment building and called police after discovering that she hadn't turned up to work that day, the San Bernardino Sun reports. "We're covering every road, every trail, and every rabbit path," one of the searchers scouring the hills tells the Press-Enterprise. Police say they haven't found firm evidence of foul play or established a connection between the disappearance and the wave of attacks at Cal State in the last few weeks, which include a carjacking, an attempted rape, and—the day before Barber vanished—an incident in which a female student fought off a man who tried to kidnap her, NBC reports. Police have released a composite sketch of a suspect in two of the Cal State attacks, who is described as a Hispanic male around 20 years old, according to the Press-Enterprise. The university says it has more than doubled its police presence, and Barber's father says, "We just want her back," the Sun reports. (An attempted kidnapping in Washington state was foiled by the snatched toddler's 8-year-old sister.)


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After a historic summit in Singapore, President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un signed a document committing to work together for peace. Other highlights included mutual compliments, handshakes and a lunch with prawn cocktail. Photo: Getty Images

 SINGAPORE—President Donald Trump declared a summit meeting with Kim Jong Un had gone better than expected as he emerged after nearly four hours of talks with the North Korean leader aimed at bringing about Pyongyang’s nuclear disarmament.

 The two men walked side-by-side outside the hotel on Sentosa Island where they met as Mr. Trump said they were “going right now for a signing,” without providing more details.

 “We... ||||| SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore could “work out very nicely” as officials from both countries sought to narrow differences on how to end a nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula.

 Kim, one of the world’s most reclusive leaders, made an evening tour of sites on Singapore’s waterfront, on the eve of the summit due to start on Tuesday at a nearby resort island.

 In a tweet early on Tuesday, just hours before the summit, Trump said staff-level meetings between the countries were “going well and quickly ... but in the end, that doesn’t matter. We will all know soon whether or not a real deal, unlike those of the past, can happen!”

 While Trump was optimistic about prospects for the summit between the old foes, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo injected a note of caution ahead of the first-ever meeting of sitting U.S. and North Korean leaders, saying it remained to be seen whether Kim was sincere about his willingness to denuclearize.

 Officials from the two sides held last-minute talks aimed at laying the groundwork for a meeting that was almost unthinkable just months ago when the two leaders were exchanging insults and threats that raised fears of war.

 But after a flurry of diplomatic overtures eased tension in recent months, the two leaders are now headed for a history-making handshake that U.S. officials hope could eventually lead to the dismantling of a North Korean nuclear program that threatens the United States.

 Offering a preview to reporters, Pompeo said it could provide “an unprecedented opportunity to change the trajectory of our relationship and bring peace and prosperity” to North Korea.

 However, he played down the possibility of a quick breakthrough and said the summit should set the framework for “the hard work that will follow”, insisting that North Korea had to move toward complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.

 North Korea, though, has shown little appetite for surrendering nuclear weapons it considers vital to the survival of Kim’s dynastic rule.

 Sanctions on North Korea would remain in place until that had happened, Pompeo said. “If diplomacy does not move in the right direction ... those measures will increase.”

 “North Korea has previously confirmed to us its willingness to denuclearize and we are eager to see if those words prove sincere,” he said.

 The White House later said discussions with North Korea had moved “more quickly than expected” and Trump would leave Singapore on Tuesday night, after the summit. He had earlier been scheduled to leave on Wednesday.

 Kim is due to leave on Tuesday afternoon, a source involved in the planning of his visit said on Sunday.

 Kim was not believed to have left his hotel since a meeting with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong soon after his arrival in the city on Sunday, but he ventured out on Monday evening.

 The Swiss-educated leader, who is believed to be 34, has not left his isolated country since taking office in 2011 other than to visit China and the South Korean side of the border Demilitarized Zone, which separates the two Koreas.

 His first stop was a waterfront park with futuristic installations, Gardens by the Bay, which boasts the largest glass greenhouse and tallest indoor waterfall in the world.

 He joined Singapore’s foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, who took a selfie, before stopping at the Marina Bay Sands hotel, which resembles a giant surfboard perched on three tall columns, for a look out over the bright lights of the city from its rooftop garden and swimming pool.

 On the way back to his hotel, Kim walked along a promenade near the Merlion, a giant statue, and fountain, of a mythical creature, half-lion, half-fish - Singapore’s unofficial mascot.

 The rare public appearance of Kim, waving and smiling to onlookers, adds to the more affable image of the young leader that has emerged since his summit in April with South Korean leader Moon Jae-in.

 Just a few months ago, Kim was an international pariah accused of ordering the killing of his uncle, a half-brother and scores of officials suspected of disloyalty.

 Former U.S. National Basketball Association star Dennis Rodman arrived in Singapore late on Monday for the summit, saying he was “excited to be part of it”, although there has been no indication he would be involved in any official talks.

 “It should go fairly well, but people should not expect so much for the first time,” Rodman told reporters at the airport.

 “The doors are opening.”

 ‘INTERESTING MEETING’

 Trump arrived in Singapore on Sunday after a blow-up over trade with other members of the Group of Seven major industrialized nations that cast a cloud over his efforts to score a major foreign policy win in the nuclear talks.

 Although gaps remain over what denuclearization would entail, Trump sounded a positive note in a lunch meeting with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee.

 “We’ve got a very interesting meeting ... tomorrow, and I just think it’s going to work out very nicely,” Trump said.

 Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and Singapore's Education Minister Ong Ye Kung pose for a photo in Singapore June 11, 2018, in this photo obtained from social media. MANDATORY CREDIT. Vivian Balakrishnan's Twitter page/via REUTERS

 It was a far cry from last year when Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” and mocked Kim as “little rocket man,” and Kim denounced the U.S. president as the “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

 Trump and Kim are staying in separate hotels less that a kilometer apart in the famous Orchard Road area of Singapore, dotted with high-rise luxury apartment blocks, offices and glittering shopping malls.

 Commenting for the first time on the summit, North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said the two sides would exchange “wide-ranging and profound views” to re-set relations. It heralded the summit as part of a “changed era”.

 Discussions would focus on “the issue of building a permanent and durable peace-keeping mechanism on the Korean peninsula, the issue of realizing the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and other issues of mutual concern”, KCNA said.

 In the lead up to the summit, North Korea rejected any unilateral nuclear disarmament, and KCNA’s reference to denuclearization of the peninsula has historically meant it wants the United States to remove its “nuclear umbrella” protecting South Korea and Japan.

 RISK

 The White House said Trump would hold a one-on-one meeting with Kim on Tuesday on the small island of Sentosa. The two will later be joined by officials and have lunch together.

 Many experts on North Korea, one of the most insular and unpredictable countries in the world, remain skeptical Kim will ever completely abandon nuclear weapons. They believe Kim’s engagement is aimed at getting the United States to ease the crippling sanctions that have squeezed the impoverished country.

 Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, said there were signs that the gaps between the two sides were narrowing but there was also risk.

 “Trump is likely to declare the summit a victory irrespective of the outcome, but if the two sides fail to reach a common understanding of denuclearization it will put at risk any process that the summit kicks off,” he said.

 “The process could be doomed before it begins.”

 Trump initially touted the potential for a grand bargain with North Korea to rid itself of a nuclear missile program that has advanced rapidly to threaten the United States.

 But he has since lowered expectations, backing away from an original demand for North Korea’s swift denuclearization.

 He has said the talks would be more about starting a relationship with Kim for a negotiating process that would take more than one summit.

 Slideshow (25 Images) |||||

– The big summit is just hours away now, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is downplaying expectations of a huge breakthrough when President Trump and Kim Jong Un meet face to face. Their meeting "will set the framework for the hard work that will follow,” said Pompeo, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. “We’ll see how far we get." Pompeo reiterated that the US will not ease sanctions against North Korea for anything less than complete denuclearization. Coverage: The meeting: Trump and Kim will meet at 9pm Eastern on Singapore's Sentosa Island (that's 9am Tuesday in Singapore), shake hands, take a ceremonial walk, and then go behind closed doors for their meeting. It will be just the two of them and their interpreters, reports the Washington Post. No timetable is set on how long the session will last, but the White House has set aside two hours. Change of schedule: Kim took in some of the sights in Singapore Monday evening and was seen waving and smiling to onlookers, reports Reuters. President Trump, meanwhile, told reporters he is confident the summit is "going to work out quite nicely." Trump will head back to Washington Tuesday evening instead of Wednesday morning as originally scheduled, because talks are moving "more quickly than expected," per a White House statement. It didn't elaborate on what that meant.


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 Thank you for reading 5 free articles. You can come back at the end of your 30-day period for another 5 free articles, or you can purchase a subscription and continue to enjoy valuable local news and information. If you are a current 7-day subscriber you are granted an all-access pass to the website and digital newspaper replica. Please click Sign Up to subscribe, or Login if you are already a member.

 Thank you for reading 5 free articles. You can come back at the end of your 30-day period for another 5 free articles, or you can purchase a subscription and continue to enjoy valuable local news and information. If you are a current 7-day subscriber you are granted an all-access pass to the website and digital newspaper replica. Please click below to Get Started. ||||| A rally here by the Ku Klux Klan and its supporters to protest the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee encountered a loud and angry counterprotest Saturday afternoon.

 Members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is based in Pelham, N.C., near the Virginia border, gathered at Justice Park, situated in a quiet, leafy residential neighborhood in downtown Charlottesville. They shouted “white power,” and some wore white robes.

 About 30 Klansmen were escorted to and from the rally by police in riot gear who were out on a hot day to separate the rallygoers and approximately 1,000 counterprotesters who greeted them with jeers. Attempts by Klan leaders to address the crowd were repeatedly drowned out by boos and chants. Some of the Klan members arrived armed, carrying handguns in holsters at their belts.

 [KKK marchers say they will be armed Saturday at Charlottesville rally]

 The rally was held about a block away from Emancipation Park — the renamed Lee Park — where the statue of Lee astride a horse still stands. Charlottesville police reported that vandals had painted messages in green and red paint on the statue overnight.

 A statue of Robert E. Lee collects snow in Lee Park as snow falls on Monday, March 3, 2014 in Charlottesville, Va. (Ryan M. Kelly/AP)

 More than 100 officers from the Virginia State Police, Albemarle County police and University of Virginia police were prepared to assist Charlottesville police in maintaining order.

 After the Klan rally ended, police led several people away in handcuffs after a large group of counterprotesters remained near the vicinity of the park. Police asked those still gathered nearby to disperse. Wearing riot gear and gas masks, the police declared the counterprotesters “an unlawful assembly” and used gas canisters to compel them to leave the area.

 Police said Sunday that 22 people were arrested. Authorities said three people were hospitalized; two for heat related issues and one for an alcohol related issue.

 “I was pleased with the professionalism and commitment of our law enforcement partners as our safety plan was well executed. Officers traveled from near and far to assist the CPD in maintaining law and order during this difficult endeavor,” Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas said Sunday.

 “Hundreds of local citizens rose up in a non-violent protest against the hate that was being spewed in Justice Park,” Thomas said in a statement. “When Klan members arrived, the atmosphere quickly became emotionally charged. Several outside groups made it clear they would become confrontational; however, we were prepared for the unrest that occurred near the conclusion of the event which unfortunately resulted in a number of arrests. Order was quickly restored and our community remains safe.”

 Charlottesville, a city of close to 50,000 and home to the prestigious public flagship campus of the University of Virginia, had become increasingly tense as the rally approached. “A CITY ON EDGE” read the front-page headline in the local paper, the Daily Progress, on Saturday.

 [White nationalist Richard Spencer leads torch-bearing protesters defending Lee statue]

 1 of 18 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Photos from the scene of a Ku Klux Klan rally and counterprotest in Charlottesville, Va. View Photos Klansmen were escorted to and from a rally by police in riot gear to protect them from about 1,000 counterprotesters who greeted them with jeers of “shame.” The rally was held to protest the city’s decision this year to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public park and rename that park. Caption Klansmen arriving and departing from the rally were escorted by police in riot gear to protect them from about 1,000 counterprotesters, who greeted them with jeers of “Shame!” The rally was held to protest the city’s decision this year to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from a public park and rename that park. July 8, 2017 Members of the Ku Klux Klan arrive for a rally in Charlottesville, Va., to protest the planned removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

 City leaders organized diversionary events elsewhere in the city and encouraged residents and visitors not to confront the KKK members directly. While many took that advice, others wanted to make sure the rally participants heard their voices.

 “It is important for me to be here because the Klan was ignored in the 1920s, and they metastasized,” said Jalane Schmidt, a professor at the University of Virginia who has been among those leading the call for the Lee statue removal. “They need to know that their ideology is not acceptable.”

 “I teach about slavery and African American history, and it’s important to face the Klan and to face the demons of our collective history and our original sin of slavery. We do it on behalf of our ancestors who were terrorized by them.”

 Though the council voted to remove the statue, a court order has stopped the city from acting on that decision until a hearing next month. Some observers predict a protracted legal battle that would further delay the removal.

 In an editorial last month, city councilwoman Kristin Szakos said the council voted to remove the statue and join a “growing group of cities around the nation that have decided that they no longer want to give pride of place to tributes to the Confederate Lost Cause erected in the early part of the 20th century.”

 [The Ku Klux Klan was dead. The first Hollywood blockbuster revived it.]

 The Klan says the city’s decision to remove the Lee statue is part of a wider effort to get rid of white history.

 “They’re trying to erase the white culture right out of the history books,” Klan member James Moore said Thursday.

 Brandi Fisher, of Ridgeley, W.Va., drove hours to attend the rally.

 “I don’t agree with everything the Klan believes, but I do believe our history should not be taken away,” said Fisher, 41. “Are we going to remove the Washington and Jefferson memorials because they were slave owners?”

 Ezra Israel, 32, who is African American, says the statue should stay up as a reminder of slavery and the people who supported it.

 “It’s hiding history to take it down,” he said as he made his way to the rally. “We need to leave it up so people can see it and see that we were oppressed and we’re still a product of that today.”

 Toung Nguyen, an immigrant from Vietnam who moved to Charlottesville as a child in the early 1980s, said he believes the money that will be spent on removing the statue could be better used improving the local school system. But he says racism has gotten worse in the last couple of years and he understands why many believe the statue needs to go.

 “It’s just disappointing that we still have to deal with this kind of nonsense,” Nguyen said. “Our country feels like it’s going full circle.”

 Charlottesville is already planning for another protest next month. Several white nationalist groups have a permit for an Aug. 12 rally also calling for the council’s decision on the statue to be reversed.

 T. Rees Shapiro contributed to this report. |||||
A summary of this is?

– Between 30 and 50 members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in support of controversial Confederate statues on Saturday in Charlottesville, Va., but the Washington Post reports that their shouts of "white power" were drowned out by more than 1,000 counterprotesters. More than 100 cops in riot gear escorted Klansmen to and from the 45-minute rally, held in protest of the city's plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. Police later declared an "unlawful assembly" when counterprotesters refused to leave, reports the Daily Progress, and used tear gas to make their point; 23 were arrested. "It is important for me to be here because the Klan was ignored in the 1920s, and they metastasized," says a protester. "They need to know that their ideology is not acceptable." (Here's why Charlottesville is the latest flashpoint in alt-right wars.)


News article:

Old hat — but maybe not Lincoln’s old hat

 The purported-but-maybe-not hat once owned (possibly) by Abraham Lincoln is shown at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum back in 2012, when the Chicago Sun-Times first raised questions about its lineage. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

 Maybe it’s just a hat.

 That’s one takeaway from two investigations — one done with cloak-and-dagger-like secrecy — into the scuffed, slightly crumpled hat that its Springfield guardians have long insisted belonged to Abraham Lincoln.

 The stovepipe hat is the big draw — valued at $6.5 million — at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, but the investigations suggest there’s little evidence to connect it to the nation’s 16th president, according to a WBEZ radio story out this week.

 For now, the hat is not on display — though it hasn’t been for months, a museum spokesman said.

 “It is delicate, and too much exposure to light and fluctuations in heat and humidity can damage it, so we don’t often have it out in public,” Chris Wills, communications director, said in an email to the Chicago Sun-Times. He added that there are no plans to display it again “until we finish our new round of research and can decide the most accurate way to present it to visitors.”

 For its story, WBEZ looked at a “previously undisclosed FBI analysis” and another investigation done by “top curators” from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Chicago History Museum.

 The Smithsonian and Chicago museums’ 2013 report found inadequate documentation to say, among other things, whether Lincoln had ever owned the hat. A 2015 FBI analysis included comparing DNA samples from the beaver-fur chapeau with Lincoln’s blood-spattered handkerchief and other items from the night of his assassination. The federal agents didn’t find a match, the station reported.

 The DNA testing was apparently done with the sort of secrecy you might find in the pages of a spy novel, according to WBEZ’s report.

 While at the presidential museum, FBI agents were encouraged by a staff member there to disguise themselves as a news crew, the radio station reported.

 “There was just a level of secrecy by our foundation, helped by at that point a member of our staff, to do that DNA testing that just seemed … very, very strange to me,” Alan Lowe, the Lincoln museum’s executive director since July 2016, told WBEZ.

 Lowe said he only recently saw a copy of the Smithsonian and Chicago museums’ full report, when one of the report’s authors shared it with him. Both reports were commissioned by the library’s foundation, which acquired the hat and other artifacts in 2007.

 In an emailed statement to the Chicago Sun-Times, Lowe expressed frustration he’d only recently learned about the reports, but also sought to downplay their significance.

 “It is important to understand that neither of these initiatives produced new evidence about the hat’s origins,” Lowe said. “The DNA testing was inconclusive, as expected with an item that has been handled by many people over 180 years.”

 Nick Kalm, vice chairman of the foundation, told the Chicago Sun-Times the museum has been fully informed all along.

 Lowe and his predecessors were all told about a foundation report detailing what had been done to verify the authenticity of the hat.

 “Nobody requested to review the report or any underlying documents, which would have included the report from the Smithsonian and Chicago History Museum and, eventually, the FBI report,” Kalm said.

 James Cornelius, who had been curator of the museum’s Lincoln collection, has been discharged, Wills said, but his departure did not involve the foundation or the hat. He called the timing “purely coincidental.” Cornelius’ last day at the museum was March 9.

 Questions about the origin of the hat, first reported by the Sun-Times in 2012, led to the early calls for the DNA testing. (Those stories were by Dave McKinney, who also wrote the latest report for WBEZ.)

 The hat was part of a major assortment of Lincoln memorabilia bought by the foundation in 2007 from a California Lincoln collector.

 The recent revelations come as the financially troubled foundation is trying to raise money to avoid having to sell its trove of Lincoln artifacts. ||||| A stovepipe hat that reputedly belonged to Abraham Lincoln is one of the most historically sacred objects displayed at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, but there’s insufficient evidence to prove it ever actually belonged to the former president.

 That’s the finding from a previously undisclosed FBI analysis and another report obtained by WBEZ. They were part of a highly secretive effort to authenticate the hat by the foundation charged with acquiring artifacts for the Lincoln museum.

 The efforts by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation involved a DNA assessment by the FBI and a report by top curators from the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Chicago History Museum. Those historians ultimately encouraged the Lincoln museum to “soften its claim about the hat.”

 The focus of all the attention is a beaver fur hat in Lincoln’s size. It is the $6.5 million centerpiece of a major $25 million acquisition of Lincoln artifacts in 2007 by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, a nonprofit that operates independently of the Springfield, Illinois museum.

 The financially troubled foundation, whose board members include former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar, is now seeking millions of dollars in state taxpayer support and private donations to repay $9.7 million in outstanding loans on the purchase of the hat and 1,600 Lincoln-related artifacts. Details about the foundation’s efforts to authenticate the hat are being reported for the first time by WBEZ.

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 The foundation said it summarized the findings by the FBI and historians for the museum’s current leadership and Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration while lobbying unsuccessfully for state subsidies earlier this year. However, the foundation did not give the full reports to current museum officials or Rauner’s office.

 Gift to an Illinois farmer?

 Earlier leadership at the museum stridently maintained Lincoln gave the hat to a southern Illinois farmer in 1858 as a token of gratitude. That account differed from a 1958 affidavit from a descendent of the farmer, who said Lincoln offered the hat when the farmer visited Lincoln in Washington at some point after 1861.

 But a Nov. 4, 2013 report written by officials at the Smithsonian and Chicago History Museum concluded there is inadequate documentation to support either assertion or to say categorically that Lincoln even owned the hat.

 “For an artifact of such prominence, and one that the museum wishes to highlight and promote, the current documentation is insufficient to claim that the hat formerly belonged to President Abraham Lincoln,” historians Harry Rubenstein and Russell Lewis wrote.

 The Lincoln museum’s current executive director, Alan Lowe, said he did not see their full report until last month when Lewis shared a copy of the long-shelved report.

 The hat is one of only three in the world that is housed in museums and believed to have a direct Lincoln lineage. One is in the Smithsonian. Another is housed at the Vermont estate that once belonged to Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln. The other is in Springfield.

 In the world of Lincolniana, it’s hard to fathom a more valuable artifact than Lincoln’s stovepipe hat. In 2007, an appraiser valued the hat now in Springfield at $6.5 million and used adjectives like “transcendent” to describe its apparent majesty.

 It once belonged to Louise Taper, a wealthy West Coast collector who sat on the Lincoln foundation board when the purchase occurred but is no longer a member.

 In an interview, Nick Kalm, the foundation’s vice chairman, said his organization is still satisfied that the hat is Lincoln’s and that nothing uncovered by the FBI testing or museum curators disproves that. He went on to note that with some historic relics, “leaps of faith” sometimes exist in determining their authenticity.

 “There was nothing in their findings that would further either confirm the provenance of the hat or undermine it,” Kalm said.

 Kalm said the foundation and an internal committee it established to explore the hat’s authenticity deserve credit for studying the issue, including the extraordinary step of contacting the FBI’s Crime Laboratory in Quantico, Va.

 “To do a full and complete and accurate story on this, I think you have to include the fact this independent committee decided to take the ultimate scientific step to try to confirm the provenance of the hat,” Kalm said.

 Bringing in the FBI

 The foundation in 2014 reached out to the FBI to conduct a DNA analysis on the hat. Two tests were performed in 2015, comparing DNA samples from the hat itself with Lincoln’s blood-spattered handkerchief, gloves, and shirt from the night of his assassination, and two tufts of Lincoln’s hair, among other things.

 “The majority of the DNA recovered from the Taper hat was consistent with being contemporary DNA from an individual who had recently handled the item,” the July 19, 2017 FBI report said. “No other conclusions could be drawn from the limited quantity of remaining DNA data recovered as part of the mixture.”

 Kalm described those results as disappointing.

 Federal investigators did not charge the foundation for the work but insisted on “strict confidentiality regarding the testing and its outcome,” documents obtained by WBEZ show.

 Underscoring the secrecy, federal agents were encouraged by the museum’s former Lincoln curator, James Cornelius, to “disguise themselves as a news crew” when they entered the museum, Lowe told WBEZ, based on internal correspondence only recently discovered.

 Lowe described the overall secrecy surrounding the FBI testing as a form of “subterfuge.”

 “I think there was just a level of secrecy by our foundation, helped by at that point a member of our staff, to do that DNA testing that just seemed … very, very strange to me,” Lowe told WBEZ.

 Cornelius could not be reached, and the FBI late Tuesday declined comment on the agency’s analysis on the foundation’s stovepipe hat.

 The FBI’s involvement came after the foundation had secretly authorized the Rubenstein-Lewis report after questions about the hat’s authenticity were first raised by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2012.

 Rubenstein was chair and curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History’s Division of Political History, and Lewis is executive vice president and chief historian at the Chicago History Museum.

 Rubenstein and Lewis, who declined interview requests from WBEZ, urged the foundation in their report to “soften its claim about the hat” and to undertake “a significant research project to confirm and inform its assumptions about the hat.”

 The pair also encouraged the museum to “simply not use the hat for exhibitions and publications until research is completed” and to consider asking Taper to take back the hat.

 “The museum might want to consider asking the seller to take back the hat if greater documentation is not found,” they wrote. “It is one thing to accept the hat into the collection with limited documentation but another to purchase an item at a considerable expense without significant supporting evidence.

 “If the donor truly believes in the artifact and supports the museum then maybe they can be persuaded to make the hat a donation,” Rubenstein and Lewis wrote.

 Taper did not respond to an interview request from WBEZ.

 In a letter turned over to WBEZ as part of an open records request, Lowe angrily told the foundation’s top officials that he was “shocked” to have not been given the report.

 “I have been on the front lines defending the provenance of the hat, but I have been doing that not having all the available information. This is unacceptable. We simply cannot operate that way,” Lowe wrote to foundation CEO Carla Knorowski and foundation Chairman Ray McCaskey.

 In that letter, Lowe also told Knorowski and McCaskey that he had unearthed a document at the museum from former state historian Thomas Schwartz, who had arranged a 1988 tour of Lincoln artifacts and borrowed the hat from an earlier owner as part of that tour. Taper purchased the hat from that previous owner for an undisclosed price in 1990.

 In 1988, Schwartz valued the hat at $15,000, a far cry from its $6.5 million appraisal in 2007, Lowe told WBEZ.

 “I’d like to ask Ms. Taper and Mr. Schwartz, ‘Why between 1988 and 2007, what new thing did you see that led you to change the possible value of that from $15,000 to $6.5 million?’ Certainly, that means somewhere along the point, you saw something that was a slam dunk by saying that this belonged to Abraham Lincoln. And if you didn’t, why did you do that?”

 WBEZ was interested in posing that question to Schwartz, now director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa, but he ignored an interview request.

 In 2007, prior to the foundation’s purchase of the hat and other artifacts from Taper, an appraiser acknowledged he did not investigate the provenance of the hat. Instead, he based his evaluation on “prior in-depth research” by the museum.

 In their 2013 report, Rubenstein and Lewis said they couldn’t find any evidence of that research.

 “It is not clear that the museum conducted prior-in-depth research. No research notes have been available that support the hat’s authenticity, and basic questions, such as who made the hat remain unanswered,” they said.

 Lowe said he has authorized an internal investigation at the museum into the questions raised by Rubenstein and Lewis and has no plans to display the hat until that inquiry is complete.

 A call for hearings

 Informed of the foundation’s withholding of the full reports, a key Republican lawmaker whose legislative district includes the Lincoln presidential museum reacted angrily and called for legislative hearings.

 “I think it’s unconscionable that the foundation would hide this from folks when they’re out there pitching members of the General Assembly, when they’re out there pitching members of the public, to raise funds for the Taper collection,” said state Rep. Tim Butler, a Springfield Republican.

 “I can’t understand why the foundation staff would not bring this forward and have an open discussion about the provenance of the hat. It’s very disturbing to me, and I certainly think the foundation needs to be held accountable for their actions on why they’ve kept this from the public,” Butler said.

 Late Tuesday, a top Rauner aide characterized the Taper collection as an integral part of the Lincoln museum’s “continued success” but said the administration continues to “gather relevant information” from the foundation about how it intends to repay the loan. Earlier in the day, WBEZ provided Rauner’s office with a copy of the full FBI report commissioned by the foundation, which is the first time the aide had seen it in its entirety.

 “As good stewards of the taxpayers’ money, absent full disclosure and a responsible business plan from the foundation, we have not and cannot provide any state resources,” Rauner spokeswoman Patty Schuh said in a statement.

 Kalm, with the foundation, said it informed earlier museum staff about the Rubenstein-Lewis report in 2014 and that Lowe was “verbally informed” about that report last January but that he didn’t request a copy of it then.

 Kalm said he did not believe his organization, as a not-for-profit, had been under any obligation to turn over the full FBI or curators’ reports to the current museum staff or the Rauner administration while embarking on a fundraising effort.

 “If we’d gotten a conclusive finding … you can bet we’d have been shouting that from the rooftops. Right? I think you can appreciate that. The fact they were not able to get not only no DNA from President Lincoln or anyone else from the 1850s or 1860s, we didn’t really have anything to talk about there,” Kalm said.

 “What would we talk about? It would be like talking about a baseball game that was rained out,” he said.

 Dave McKinney covers state government and politics. Follow him on Twitter at @davemckinney.

  |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– It could be a $6.5 million hat—but it might also not be. WBEZ reports that the crown jewel of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum's collection, Lincoln's stovepipe hat, one of just three thought to still exist, may not have belonged to the 16th president after all. Two reports obtained by the station found insufficient evidence to tie it to Lincoln. One was a 2013 report penned by top curators with the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and Chicago History Museum who sought to establish its historical provenance: The Springfield, Ill., museum had maintained that Lincoln gave the hat to an Illinois farmer in 1858, though a century later a descendant said the hat was given in 1861 during a visit to DC. The report found "the current documentation is insufficient" to support either story and suggested the museum "soften its claims" or even try to return the hat. It was acquired in 2007 as part of a mammoth $25 million purchase of Lincoln items by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, which runs separately from the museum. The foundation in 2014 asked the FBI to see if DNA analysis could establish a tie to Lincoln. It relied on DNA from Lincoln's hair and blood-spattered items from his assassination but found a "limited quantity of remaining DNA data" in the hat; most of what it recovered "was consistent with being contemporary DNA from an individual who had recently handled the item." The story gets thornier: Alan Lowe—the museum's executive director since July 2016, per the Chicago Sun-Times—only recently learned about the reports, a timeline that he called "unacceptable" in a letter to the foundation. The foundation itself is mired in financial troubles tied to its 2007 buy, which currently has it $9.7 million in debt.


– A second inquest into Amy Winehouse's death has ended with the same conclusion as the first: The singer died after drinking too much alcohol. The second coroner also ruled it a "death by misadventure," or accidental alcohol poisoning, and confirmed that Winehouse's blood alcohol level was five times the legal limit for driving, Sky News reports. The second inquest was ordered after the original coroner was found not to have the correct qualifications for her position, but the verdict had not been expected to change. The second coroner noted that "two empty vodka bottles were on the floor" next to Winehouse's bed when the singer was found, the BBC reports. Winehouse's doctor said in a written statement that she'd seen her the night before her death. "She specifically said she did not want to die." But Winehouse "was genuinely unwilling to follow the advice of doctors, being someone who wanted to do things her own way."

Expand this summary.

Image caption Winehouse told her doctor she did not want to die

 Singer Amy Winehouse died after drinking too much alcohol, a second inquest has confirmed.

 Winehouse, 27, was found dead at her home in Camden, north London, in 2011.

 The verdict is identical to the first hearing which had to be repeated after the deputy coroner was found to lack the relevant experience.

 The deputy coroner had been hired by her husband, senior coroner for inner north London area, but had not been a registered lawyer for five years.

 Dr Shirley Radcliffe, St Pancras Coroner, recorded a verdict of misadventure, the same as the original inquest in October 2011. The hearing also heard the same evidence as the first inquest.

 Alcohol toxicity

 She specifically said she did not want to die Dr Christina Romete, Amy Winehouse's GP

 The hearing was told the star was more than five times the legal drink-drive limit when she died, having 416mg of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood in her system - the legal driving limit is 80mg.

 Dr Radcliffe said the star died from "alcohol toxicity", adding it was "a level of alcohol commonly associated with fatality".

 She said Winehouse "voluntarily consumed alcohol" and added "two empty vodka bottles were on the floor" beside her bed when her body was discovered.

 In a written statement, Winehouse's GP, Dr Christina Romete, said she saw her patient the night before her death. "She specifically said she did not want to die," said Dr Romete.

 Eating disorder

 The doctor added: "She was genuinely unwilling to follow the advice of doctors, being someone who wanted to do things her own way."

 The doctor's statement also revealed Winehouse struggled with an eating disorder, where she made herself sick.

 In a written statement, Winehouse's live-in security guard Andrew Morris spoke about the moment he realised she was dead.

 "I was upset and shaken," he said. "She's like a sister to me."

 Det Insp Les Newman confirmed there were no suspicious circumstances over the death.

 The inquest was told the post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as alcohol toxicity and the singer probably suffered a respiratory arrest.

 Disciplinary proceedings

 The move to hold another inquest came after an investigation found that Suzanne Greenaway, who oversaw the first inquest, did not have the correct qualifications for the role.

 She was appointed in July 2009 by her husband, Andrew Reid after she had worked as a solicitor and barrister in Australia.

 But she stepped down in November 2011 when it emerged that she did not have the requisite five years' experience in the Law Society.

 Dr Reid resigned from his position last month after the Office for Judicial Complaints launched disciplinary proceedings against him.

 Other inquests conducted by Ms Greenaway have also been reheard. ||||| Troubled singer Amy Winehouse accidentally drank herself to death at her north London home, a coroner has confirmed.

 Dr Shirley Radcliffe recorded a verdict of death by misadventure at St Pancras Coroners Court.

 The inquest, which originally concluded in October 2011, had to be re-opened after it emerged the first coroner had not been properly qualified.

 But in a hearing that lasted just 40 minutes, Dr Radcliffe verdict matched that of the original inquest.

 The singer drank herself to death by accident at the age of 27

 She said Winehouse had "at no time been considered depressed or suicidal" and on the day of her death had been described as "her usual bubbly self".

 The court heard there had been no suspicious circumstances and no evidence of illicit drugs in the 27-year-old's system - but the level of alcohol in her blood had been over five times the drink-drive limit.

 Two empty vodka bottles were found on the floor of her bedroom.

 The coroner concluded: "I'm satisfied on the balance of probability that Amy voluntarily consumed a large amount of alcohol in a deliberate act that took an unexpected turn and led to the death of a talented young woman at such an early age."

 None of Winehouse's family were present, having made it clear they were happy with the first inquest which they said had brought them "some relief to have finally found out what had happened to Amy".

 But that verdict, delivered by deputy assistant coroner Suzanne Greenaway, could not stand after it was found she had been wrongfully appointed by the area's senior coroner, who was also her husband.

 Dr Andrew Reid has now resigned from his post after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him.

 His wife, who did not have the necessary experience, has also stepped down. |||||


Article:
The lawyer told the Louisiana jury that the state would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Robert McCoy had committed a gruesome triple homicide in 2008, murdering the son, mother and stepfather of his estranged wife.

 "There is no way reasonably possible that you can listen to the evidence in this case and not come to any other conclusion than Robert McCoy was the cause of these individuals' deaths," said lawyer Larry English.

 But here's the twist: English was not the prosecutor in the case. He was McCoy's defense attorney. And McCoy vehemently proclaimed his innocence.

 [Supreme Court embarks on what could be ‘momentous’ term]

 The Supreme Court last week said that it would review McCoy's conviction — he was subsequently sentenced to death — to answer what sounds more like a typo than a contested question of law:

 Does it violate the Constitution for a defense counsel to concede a client's guilt over the accused's express objection?

 "It happens more often than you think it would," said Lawrence J. Fox, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School who filed a brief on McCoy's behalf for the Ethics Bureau at Yale.

 It occurs mostly in capital cases, Fox said, when lawyers think that it would be impossible to convince a jury that a client is not guilty. The theory is that by creating some trust with jurors, it might be possible to get a conviction on a lesser murder charge that does not carry a death sentence.

 "They think the most important thing is to save the client's life," Fox said.

 But that misunderstands the lawyer's role, he said.

 "The decision over whether to concede guilt at trial is ultimately the defendant's to make," Fox's brief to the court states. "It goes to the very heart of the right to put on a defense — a right that personally belongs to the accused."

 McCoy's attorneys at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center said that English's actions — allowed by the trial judge and unanimously upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court — did not fulfill the Sixth Amendment's promise that the accused have "assistance of counsel for his defense."

 "It is inconceivable that the Framers intended that the assistance of counsel should come at the price of defense counsel being authorized to tell the jury that the accused is guilty, even over the accused's protestations of his own innocence," the center's Richard Bourke wrote in McCoy's petition to the Supreme Court.

 There's little doubt that the state had a pretty compelling case against McCoy, who was looking for his wife, who had gone into protective seclusion after McCoy had allegedly threatened to kill her and himself.

 In a 911 call, McCoy's mother-in-law, Christine Colston Young, could be heard screaming: "She ain't here, Robert. I don't know where she is. The detectives have her." A gunshot was then heard on the 911 tape, and the call was disconnected.

 A car later found to be McCoy's was seen leaving the area, and police officers discovered in the abandoned vehicle the phone that Young had used. Eventually, McCoy was arrested in Idaho, after hitchhiking rides from truckers. The gun used in the killings was found with him. In custody, McCoy tried to hang himself.

 But he maintained his innocence, alleging a conspiracy among local police officers to commit the murders and frame him. His first public defender attorney was let go because of differences between the two, and then his parents paid English $5,000 to represent their son.

 But English, who was not certified in capital cases, was of the mind that there was no way to convince a jury that McCoy was telling the truth.

 English declined to be interviewed. But when lawyers were attempting to get a new trial for McCoy, he testified, "I'm a seasoned criminal trial lawyer, had been doing this for a number of years, and I had never had a case where the evidence was so overwhelming against a client."

 After English informed McCoy that he was going to tell the jury that McCoy was guilty, and McCoy objected, they told Judge Jeff Cox of their disagreement. But Cox said he was not going to again delay the trial and would not allow McCoy to replace English or represent himself.

 When English made his opening statement to the jury, McCoy again objected.

 "Judge Cox, Mr. English is simply selling me out, Judge Cox," McCoy said from the defense table.

 English's strategy did not work, in part because Louisiana does not allow the kind of limited-mental-capacity defense that the lawyer pursued. McCoy was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

 The Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld English's strategy and the trial judge's decisions.

 "Admitting guilt in an attempt to avoid the imposition of the death penalty appears to constitute reasonable trial strategy," the court concluded.

 But McCoy's petition said the Louisiana decision is an outlier. State supreme courts across the country have considered the issue, McCoy's petition says, and all came out the opposite way.

 The Louisiana justices based their decision on a 2004 Supreme Court case, Florida v. Nixon, that said it was not necessarily ineffective counsel for a lawyer to concede guilt when a client is informed of the strategy and "neither consents or objects."

 But McCoy's petition says the case is quite different here: McCoy objected at every step of the process. And it said the Louisiana court misinterpreted another Supreme Court precedent, one requiring defense attorneys to challenge the state's evidence against a client. English instead agreed with it, the petition said.

 "This is not the counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment but a far more sinister character unimagined in our constitution," the petition states.

 McCoy v. Louisiana is to be heard at the Supreme Court sometime in 2018. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

 / Updated By Jon Schuppe

 On trial for his life, Robert McCoy claimed he was the innocent victim of a police conspiracy ─ despite a mountain of evidence that he had killed three members of his estranged wife's family in northwestern Louisiana.

 But his lawyer, Larry English, saw the case as unwinnable, and decided to focus on sparing McCoy from execution. English outlined his strategy: admit guilt from the start, then ask the jury for mercy.

 McCoy refused. English insisted. They argued, behind closed doors, before the judge and in front of the jury. McCoy tried to fire English, but the judge said it was too late. In August 2011, the jury convicted McCoy of first-degree murder, and sentenced him to die.

 Robert McCoy, who is on death row for a triple murder. Bossier Parish Sheriff's Office

 More than six years later, McCoy sits on Louisiana's death row and is still fighting. He wants a new trial, arguing that his constitutional rights as a criminal defendant ─ specifically, the ability to mount his own defense ─ were violated. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the case, which explores the boundaries of two tenets of the American justice system: the adversarial relationship between the government and the accused, and a defendant's ability to make decisions about his fate.

 The plan English embraced is not uncommon in today's courtrooms. Defense lawyers often choose to concede that their client is guilty to avoid a worse outcome. It happens often in death penalty cases, when the defendant appears likely to be convicted, and the same jury charged with deciding guilt also chooses punishment. In those cases, the lawyer may decide that it would appear insincere to argue in the first phase that the defendant didn't commit the crime, then turn around and ask for leniency.

 Related: How America’s justice system runs on the exchange of money for freedom

 "The stakes get really high when what you're facing is a likely guilty verdict with a likely death penalty, especially when you say 'I didn't do it,'" said Ernie Lewis, executive director of the National Association for Public Defense.

 Typically the client goes along with the plan.

 McCoy, accused of fatally shooting his estranged wife's mother, stepfather and teen-age son in May 2008, wanted nothing to do with it.

 "Your Honor, this is unconstitutional for you to keep an attorney on my case when this attorney is completely selling me out."

 English, who had been hired by McCoy's parents and was not certified to try capital cases, told the Bossier Parish jury in his opening statement that "Mr. McCoy committed these crimes." English called his client "crazy" and argued for a lighter verdict of second-degree murder.

 McCoy interrupted.

 "Your Honor, this is unconstitutional for you to keep an attorney on my case when this attorney is completely selling me out," he told the judge.

 The trial continued. McCoy defied English and took the stand in his own defense, testifying that he was out of state at the time of the murders and blaming a police-led drug ring for committing them. Then English gave his closing arguments, saying that McCoy was guilty, but only of second-degree murder, because of mental deficiencies.

 Larry English, who was Robert McCoy's lawyer. Dash Media PR

 Later, after McCoy was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die, English reflected on his decisions in an affidavit. He said he'd become "convinced that the evidence against Robert McCoy was overwhelming" and that his client was paranoid and delusional.

 "I felt that as long as I was his attorney of record it was my ethical duty to do what I thought was best to save his life even though what he wanted me to do was to get him acquitted in the guilt phase," English said.

 McCoy set about appealing his conviction, claiming he was denied his constitutional rights to the assistance of counsel and due process. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled against him.

 "Given the circumstances of this crime and the overwhelming evidence incriminating the defendant, admitting guilt in an attempt to avoid the imposition of the death penalty appears to constitute reasonable trial strategy," the Louisiana justices ruled.

 Related: Louisiana is shedding its reputation as U.S.’s biggest jailer

 The Louisiana court relied in part on a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a Florida case that permitted a concession of guilt when a defendant was unresponsive to his lawyer's questions. But it did not address the situation in which a defendant explicitly disagrees ─ a test of the limits of a defendant's autonomy as outlined in the Constitution.

 "A lawyer uses whatever strategies are available to them that are ethical and what the law permits him to do."

 "It is inconceivable that the framers intended that the assistance of counsel should come at the price of defense counsel being authorized to tell the jury that the accused is guilty, even over the accused’s protestations of his own innocence," Richard Bourke, director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, wrote in McCoy's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 The high court agreed in October to hear the case.

 McCoy’s new lawyers say the concept of attorneys going against their client’s wishes by admitting guilt is rare, but less so in Louisiana, where courts have accepted it. English said after the trial that he'd relied on a 2002 state court ruling on a similar case, from adjacent Caddo Parish, that supported the practice.

 “This is really a Louisiana rule that grew out of Caddo Parish,” Bourke said.

 The Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (LACDL) complained in a brief supporting McCoy that the local courts had turned the right to assistance of counsel "into the state's cudgel." The LACDL said that "an uncomfortable number of death sentences in Louisiana are the result of defendants representing themselves or defendants expressly objecting to their lawyers' concessions of guilt."

 Related: Cash Bail, a Centerpiece of the Justice System, Is Facing Its Undoing

 McCoy's ex-wife, Yolanda Colston, did not respond to requests for comment.

 English, who left his full-time law practice to work in New York real estate development, declined in a recent interview to talk about specifics of the case. But he said he generally did not regret the way he represented clients, saying he did his best to advocate their best interests.

 "A lawyer uses whatever strategies are available to them that are ethical and what the law permits him to do," English said.

 Eleven states filed a joint brief in support of Louisiana, saying the case "presents a textbook example of a reasonable strategic concession."

 But many lawyers say English served McCoy poorly. Among the groups who have filed briefs in support of McCoy are the the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the American Bar Association, several prominent law professors and Yale Law School's Ethics Bureau.

 "Mr. English acted in clear violation of his ethical obligations as a lawyer as well as Mr. McCoy's constitutional rights," the professors and Ethics Bureau said in a joint brief.

 Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed.

 "If the strategy doesn't work, it's the client who is held responsible," Joy told NBC News. "The lawyer goes home. The client goes to prison or death row." |||||Summary:

– The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in a death row case, but this one has an unusual element. The case involves Robert McCoy, who is currently on Louisiana's death row after being convicted of a triple homicide back in 2011. McCoy has always maintained his innocence, but his attorney, Robert English, defied McCoy's wishes during the trial and told the jury that McCoy was guilty—figuring it was the only hope of avoiding a death sentence, explains NBC News. The gambit didn't work, however. McCoy was convicted and sentenced to death, and now McCoy is arguing that his constitutional right to mount a defense was violated. More background and developments: The crime: McCoy is accused of killing his estranged wife's teenage son, mother, and stepfather, while searching for his wife, and the Washington Post reports that prosecutors had compelling evidence. On a 911 call, McCoy's mother-in-law could be heard saying, "She ain’t here, Robert. I don’t know where she is," before a gunshot rings out and the call is disconnected. Witnesses saw McCoy's car leaving the area, and cops later found the phone his mother-in-law used to call 911 in the vehicle.


Well, that's one way to get into an Ivy League school.

 According to an email survey of more than 1,300 incoming Harvard students, the Harvard Crimson reports, 10% of the campus' new freshman class have cheated on tests and 42% have cheated on homework.

 That's probably going to be unwelcome news for the 377-year-old university, which is still recovering from a 2012 scandal in which more than 100 students were accused of cheating on a take-home exam for an introductory-level class on Congress.

 Also

 Then, in March, Harvard Quiz Bowl teams that won four championships between 2009 and 2011 also had wins vacated because of a cheating scandal involving one student.

 The Crimson's survey also reported that 8% of the incoming class expected to get jobs in the finance industry.

 [Updated at 10:21 p.m.: "Even though this is a national problem, the numbers reported from the student newspaper’s informal survey align with the decision Harvard College made last year to take action," Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal said in an email, adding that the school was addressing cheating through faculty and presentations to students, with a joint committee also addressing cheating. "At the end of this process, we hope that Harvard will not only continue to beat national averages in reports of cheating, but also strengthen Harvard's culture of integrity, in which cheating is the rare exception."]

 In the Crimson's findings on cheating, athletes were roughly twice as likely to cheat as non-athletes, with 26% of recruited athletes responding that they had cheated on a paper or take-home assignment before arriving at Harvard. (That figure was 16% for non-recruits.)

 The first line of Harvard's policy on academic dishonesty states that "All work submitted for credit is expected to be the student’s own work."

 "Plagiarism or falsification of research results will ordinarily result in a requirement to withdraw or expulsion," the policy states.

 [For the record: 11:16 p.m., Sept. 5: An earlier version of this post said the Harvard Crimson's survey found that 80% of the incoming class expected to get jobs in the finance industry. Actually, the figure is 8%.]

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 Follow L.A. Times National on Twitter ||||| Part II of a four-part series on Harvard’s incoming Class of 2017, based on data collected by The Crimson in an online survey conducted in the month of August. Part I ran on Tuesday, Part II ran on Wednesday, and Part IV will run on Friday.

 After going public a year ago with their investigation into Harvard’s largest cheating scandal in recent memory, administrators went to great lengths to promote a culture of academic integrity in the Harvard community.

 But the results of a Crimson survey of the Class of 2017 conducted last month suggest that some of the newest members of that community are already guilty of academic dishonesty.

 Ten percent of respondents admitted to having cheated on an exam, and 17 percent said they had cheated on a paper or a take-home assignment. An even greater percentage—42 percent—admitted to cheating on a homework assignment or problem set.

 Recruited athletes were even more likely to admit to cheating—20 percent admitted to cheating on an exam, compared to 9 percent of students who were not recruited to play a varsity sport at Harvard. Twenty-six percent of recruited athletes said they had cheated on a paper or take-home assignment, compared to 16 percent of non-recruits.

 Across the board, the incoming freshman class reported higher rates of cheating than did Harvard’s Class of 2013 in a Crimson senior survey conducted last spring. In that survey, 7 percent of graduating seniors said they had cheated on an exam, and 7 percent said they had cheated on a paper or take-home test. Thirty-two percent of graduating seniors said they cheated on a problem set or homework assignment during their undergraduate careers.

 The Crimson’s survey of the Class of 2017 generated responses from more 1,300 incoming freshmen—nearly 80 percent of the class. Part III of a four-part series on the results of the survey focuses on the academic and extracurricular lives of freshmen.

 ACADEMICS

 Recruited athletes were not the only demographic to be more likely to cheat. Men were more likely than women to report having cheated. Male freshmen were twice as likely as their female counterparts to have cheated on an exam and one-and-a-half times more likely to admit to cheating on a paper or take-home assignment.

 Despite the number of freshmen who admitted to academic dishonesty, their responses indicate that they overwhelmingly expect to prioritize academics at Harvard. Eighty-four percent of respondents put academics first when asked to rank their anticipated priorities among academics, extracurriculars, varsity sports, paid employment, and social life. Not a single respondent put academics at the bottom of their list.

 The academic interests of the new freshman class were not always consistent with concentration numbers at the College. Twenty-six percent of surveyed freshmen said they plan to concentrate in economics or government, the two most populous concentrations at Harvard that represent 21 percent of current Harvard concentrators. And not a single freshman expressed plans to study African and African American Studies, Germanic Languages and Literatures, or South Asian Studies.

 And just three months after a faculty committee released a set of reports advocating the revitalization of the study of the arts and humanities at Harvard, just 11 percent of surveyed freshmen said they plan to concentrate in that discipline. That figure is even lower than the current percentage of arts and humanities concentrators, who already make up just 16 percent of the student body.

 Surveyed freshmen were also ambitious in their undergraduate academic plans. Fifty-nine percent said they plan to pursue a secondary field, and 36 percent a language citation. Among all surveyed freshmen, 23 percent plan to pursue both.

 The survey results suggest that these high achievers are self-motivated. Eighty-two percent identified their greatest source of pressure as their own expectations. Just 8 percent named their parents as their greatest source of pressure. But not everyone was stressed out—7 percent of respondents said they are not under pressure.

 The majority of surveyed freshmen said they expect to spend more time studying in college than they did in high school. A plurality of respondents—36 percent—indicated that they anticipate studying between 20 and 29 hours a week in college, and 26 percent said they anticipate spending between 30 and 39. Four percent said they anticipate studying 50 or more hours a week, and only 2 percent said they anticipate studying for 10 or fewer.

 In comparison, 58 percent said that they studied for 19 or fewer hours in high school. However, pre-college study habits varied widely between respondents who went to public and private secondary schools. Only 17 percent of students who attended a non-denominational private school said they studied for 10 or fewer hours a week, compared to 39 percent of public, non-charter school students.

 EXTRACURRICULARS

 Although a large majority of respondents ranked academics as their anticipated highest priority for college, a plurality—40 percent—ranked extracurriculars second, and another 35 percent ranked it third.

 Surveyed freshmen were also enthusiastic about their secondary school extracurriculars. A large majority—84 percent—were involved in community service in high school. Also popular were music clubs/bands and student government, at 39 and 37 percent, respectively.

 Respondents also reported being drawn to academic clubs in high school: 34 percent were involved in math clubs or competitions, 32 percent in science clubs or competitions, and 25 percent in other academic clubs.

 Of those who were involved in student government in high school, 79 percent said they believe that student government has the power to effect change. Respondents who did not participate in student government were a bit more skeptical, with 60 percent expressing faith in the potential of student government.

 Many surveyed freshmen rose to the top of their high school extracurriculars. A plurality of respondents—27 percent—were the president or top leader of two clubs in high school, and 26 percent were in charge of one. Two percent were the leaders of six or more clubs, and 9 percent were the editors-in-chief of their high school newspapers.

 But not all freshmen obtained a top leadership role in their extracurriculars—19 percent led zero clubs.

 ATHLETICS

 One particularly popular high school extracurricular was athletics. Sixty-nine percent of surveyed freshmen reported being involved in athletics in high school, but just 12 percent of respondents were recruited to play a varsity sport at Harvard. An additional 9 percent of the class planned to walk on to a varsity team at Harvard.

 Three quarters of freshman athletes, including both walk-ons and recruits, said they were likely or very likely to play their sport for all four years. However, recruited athletes were more likely than intended walk-on athletes to envision themselves graduating as four-year athletes, coming in at 93 and 47 percent, respectively.

 Intended walk-on athletes were disproportionately drawn to certain sports. Among the intended walk-on athletes, more than 27 percent said they plan to try out for the men’s or women’s lightweight or heavyweight crew teams. Only three were ambitious enough to say they plan to walk on to the men’s basketball team that made it to March Madness the past two seasons.

 Twenty-two percent of incoming recruited and walk-on athletes reported having received at least one concussion while playing a sport. Of those, two-thirds said they had been concussed once. But for most, these experiences did not dissuade them from playing their sports. Just 5 percent of all athletes and 19 percent of those who had been concussed from sports said they felt that concussions had affected their approach to their sport or desire to play that sport.

 Athletes and non-athletes reported differing academic backgrounds. Coming into Harvard, 33 percent of incoming recruited athletes said that BC Calculus was the highest level of math they had completed prior to college, compared to 43 percent of non-athletes.

 Athletes also expressed different academic plans for Harvard than their non-athlete counterparts. Although the “Gov Jock” is a commonly referenced stereotype among Harvard students, just one incoming recruited athlete expressed plans to concentrate in government. In comparison, 11 percent of non-athlete respondents were interested in becoming government concentrators.

 On the other hand, economics, the most popular concentration among Harvard students, was disproportionately represented among incoming recruited athletes. Thirty-two percent said they expect to become economics concentrators, compared to 15 percent of non-athletes.

 —Staff writer Madeline R. Conway can be reached at mconway@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @MadelineRConway.

 —Staff writer Cordelia F. Mendez can be reached at cordelia.mendez@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @CrimsonCordelia. |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?

– To get into Harvard, you have to be the best and the brightest—or at least copy off the best and brightest's paper. In a Harvard Crimson survey, 10% of incoming freshmen said they'd cheated on a test, 17% admitted cheating on a paper or take-home project, and 42% admitted cheating on a homework assignment. All of those numbers went up among athletic recruits, and among men. The survey covered 1,300 students, or 80% of the incoming class. The numbers are not likely to help the university recoup its image in the wake of its cheating scandal, the LA Times points out. A Harvard spokesman responded to the report by pointing out that cheating was "a national problem," but said Harvard was taking action against cheating "through faculty and presentations to students."


Here is a news article: The government shutdown headed into its third day as Republicans insulted Democrats for rejecting the latest offer from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said he would consider allowing a floor debate on immigration issues in mid- to late February if leaders do not strike an agreement before then.

 As the Senate prepared for a procedural vote at noon, President Trump went on Twitter to argue Democrats are acting at the behest of their "far left base" in demanding protections for young undocumented immigrants in negotiations to reopen the government.

 "The Democrats are turning down services and security for citizens in favor of services and security for non-citizens. Not good!" he wrote.

 In a television interview, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) called Democrats' position "bizarre" and "just ridiculous."

 "We were in bipartisan, earnest, good-faith DACA negotiations before the shutdown," Ryan said on "Fox & Friends," referring to talks over how to resolve the status of immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children.

 Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday night that the two sides had "yet to reach an agreement on a path forward" after moderate senators spent the day trying to bridge the gap between the two sides.

 Their proposal — to link a three-week extension of government funding to the consideration of an immigration bill in the Senate — prompted McConnell to announce that he would be willing to consider debating various immigration proposals on the floor in mid- to late February if an agreement on immigration were not otherwise reached before then by party leaders.

 "Let's step back from the brink," he said. "Let's stop victimizing the American people and get back to work on their behalf."

 [Government shutdown foreshadows a 2018 of inaction and gridlock]

 But Democrats doubted the Senate Republican leader would follow through.

 McConnell's pledge is "clearly inadequate, an empty promise, a transparent ploy without any commitment to making dreamers legislation part of a must-pass bill," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview with CNN.

 Blumenthal said that in order to win enough Democratic support to reopen the government, McConnell should commit to including immigration legislation in the spending bill.

 The effects of the shutdown over the weekend were relatively limited: halting trash pickup on National Park Service property, canceling military reservists' drill plans, switching off some government employees' cellphones.

 But the shutdown's continuing into Monday, the start of the workweek, means that hundreds of thousands of workers will stay home and key federal agencies will be affected. Federal contractors will see payments delayed, and the Internal Revenue Service will slow its preparations for the coming tax season.

 The impasse continues as it was unclear whether the public would blame the Republicans, who control the White House and Congress, or Democrats taking a stand on immigration while shuttering government agencies.

 White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said progress was being made in the negotiations, despite the appearance of a logjam.

 "I feel like there's been significant progress," Short said Monday in an interview with CNN, arguing he sees Democrats moving "toward our position." "I think that honestly there's a lot of progress here."

 But whether Republicans can find compromise on immigration remained as uncertain as ever Sunday, with no clear backing from House Republican leaders or Trump, who showed no sign of retreating from his hard line on immigration.

 Still, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said he was optimistic the Senate would vote Monday to break the impasse. Schumer, he said, "wants to just give everybody a chance to chew on it and sort of understand it, and so that's why he didn't want to have the vote tonight."

 Matt House, a spokesman for Schumer, said the Democrats "made some reasonable offers to Senator McConnell and he hasn't accepted them yet. The caucus is waiting for him to move some in our direction."

 The bipartisan group scrambled for a compromise, but the decision ultimately belonged to McConnell and Schumer.

 "We're trying to be helpful in showing them that there is a path forward," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who hosted more than 20 fellow moderates in her office for an early afternoon meeting.

 Sunday began with more of the partisan posturing that marked much of the previous week, delivered on the morning news programs, on the House and Senate floors, and in a presidential tweet.

 Trump wrote that if the "stalemate continues," then Republicans should use the "Nuclear Option" to rewrite Senate rules and try to pass a long-term spending bill with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes needed to pass most legislation — a notion Trump has previously floated to McConnell's repeated dismissal.

 The president otherwise remained uncharacteristically quiet, heeding the advice of senior advisers who argued that he has the upper hand over Schumer and the Democrats and that they would soon be forced to capitulate.

 On the Senate floor, Schumer showed no signs of caving and kept pressure on Republicans.

 "Not only do they not consult us, but they can't even get on the same page with their own president," he said. "The congressional leaders tell me to negotiate with President Trump; President Trump tells me to figure it out with the congressional leaders. This political Catch-22, never seen before, has driven our government to dysfunction."

 As the clock ticked toward a scheduled 1 a.m. Monday vote — set by McConnell in part because of arcane Senate rules but later postponed — the moderates made the most visible progress toward a deal. Among the participants in the Collins meeting were a number of Democrats who are seeking reelection in states Trump won in 2016 — five of whom voted Friday against sparking the shutdown in the first place.

 [House Republicans are unusually united that the shutdown is Democrats’ fault ]

 "There are more than just moderate Democrats or conservative Democrats — a majority of Democrats want it to end," said Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).

 All of that weighed on lawmakers who milled around the Capitol, many in flannel shirts, sweater vests and other casual garb.

 "If it doesn't happen tonight, it's going to get a lot harder tomorrow," said a windbreaker-and-baseball-cap clad Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has pressed for action on immigration legislation and met with the moderate group Sunday.

 No firm proposal emerged from the meeting, but senators discussed a broad outline that could unlock a deal: modify the temporary spending bill now under consideration in the Senate to expire on Feb. 8, and then find some way to guarantee that immigration legislation moves forward in the interim.

 The White House has said it supports the plan for funding through Feb. 8 but has been wary of making concessions on immigration. While legislation protecting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients could probably move through the Senate with Democrats and a handful of Republicans supporting it, Trump has rejected proposals along those lines, and House GOP leaders are under fierce pressure not to bring up any bill that a majority of Republicans would reject.

 Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Short declined to provide assurances that the president would guarantee a vote on an immigration bill in exchange for a short-term spending deal. "We want to have the right resolution," he said.

 Other Republicans also saw little advantage in making any concessions to advance legislation that would provide protections for "dreamers" — undocumented immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children, 690,000 of whom face potential deportation after Trump canceled the DACA program.

 [Shutdown dynamics highlight the state of politics on Trump’s anniversary]

 In a brief closed-door meeting of House Republicans, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reassured lawmakers that there would be no negotiations on the issue as long as the government remained shuttered, affirming the White House position.

 Cornyn told reporters that the deadline for action to address DACA remained March 5, when the last of the program's participants will see their protected status expire.

 "We're more than happy to have a vote on it well before the deadline. We've committed to that," Cornyn said. "But turning the agenda over to Democrats who just shut down the government makes no sense to me. It just seems like it encourages bad behavior."

 While there have been talks since early last year about trading DACA protections for more border security funding, as many Republicans want, negotiations have failed to produce a deal.

 Democrats said they made a significant concession over the weekend, agreeing to put major funding behind Trump's promised border wall, something that has been anathema to liberals since the 2016 presidential election.

 Schumer on Sunday said that in a Friday meeting, Trump "picked a number for the wall, and I accepted it."

 "It would be hard to imagine a much more reasonable compromise," he added. "All along, the president saying, 'Well, I'll do DACA, dreamers, in return for the wall.' He's got it. He can't take yes for an answer. That's why we're here."

 Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), one of the most outspoken Democratic advocates for immigrant rights, said in a Sunday appearance on ABC's "This Week" that he would agree to the funding.

 "I think the wall is a monumental waste of taxpayer money," he said. "Having said that . . . if that's what the hostage takers [demand for] the dreamers, if that's their ransom call, I say pay it."

 But the concession was rejected on two fronts. Doubts remained that the Democratic rank and file would agree to wall funding — even with the blessing of Schumer and Gutiérrez. Asked about a deal that could deliver Trump as much as $20 billion for the border wall, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) scoffed, "Oh, come on."

 "None of us is at a table where they're talking about $20 billion," she said. "Should there be fencing? Should there be technology? Should they mow the grass so that people can't hide in it? Should there be some bricks and mortar someplace? Let's see what works."

 And Republicans themselves scoffed at Schumer's claim that he offered Trump precisely what was demanded. The Democratic offer, they said, fell short of the full, immediate funding the president sought and instead involved yearly installments of funding that could be subject to future shutdown threats.

 Moreover, Republicans have demanded concessions on other aspects of the immigration system, including an end to rules authorizing permanent legal immigrants to sponsor family members for legal status and an end to a "diversity visa" program that distributes visas based on a lottery system.

 The wall is "one of the three legs of this three-legged stool," said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a key House conservative. "I'm glad to hear that there is some movement there, but there's a couple of other legs of that stool that have to be put forth."

 The battle lines over immigration have become especially firm as spending talks falter. Republican leaders have cast the shutdown as the product of Democrats' prioritization of undocumented immigrants over American citizens.

 But a debate has opened up in the party about how far to push that argument. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) questioned an online ad from Trump's campaign that said the president's immigration proposals are "right" and "Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder committed by illegal immigrants."

 "I don't know if that's necessarily productive," Ryan said on CBS.

 Most senators remained cautious about the developments, adding quickly after each burst of optimism that any vote late Sunday or early Monday could easily fall apart and that the moderate group was sparking discussion but was hardly in control.

 Sen. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), one of the five Democrats who crossed over on Friday, said he and other Democrats met with Schumer on Sunday morning.

 "The pitch is we need to do what's right for the country and he does, too. He feels the same way, and that's what we're trying to do," said Donnelly, who faces a tough reelection fight in a state Trump won.

 Sean Sullivan, Paul Kane, Ed O'Keefe, Jacob Bogage, Cindy Boren, Jenna Johnson, Karoun Demirjian and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.

 Read more at PowerPost ||||| Great to see how hard Republicans are fighting for our Military and Safety at the Border. The Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked. If stalemate continues, Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long term budget, no C.R.’s! |||||
A summary of this is?

– President Trump came out swinging on the second day of the government shutdown, reports the Washington Post, tweeting Sunday that Senate "Dems just want illegal immigrants to pour into our nation unchecked," and that "If stalemate continues, Republicans should go to 51% (Nuclear Option) and vote on real, long term budget, no C.R.’s!" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated he's not open to using the nuclear option, which would circumvent the need for 60 votes, and will gavel open a session at 1pm Sunday. The Post notes that McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer "did little in public Saturday besides trade insults" and that negotiations appear deadlocked with the clock ticking until Monday morning, when about a million federal workers either will or won't go to work.