SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Teen Supported by NRA Lawsuit Fills Facebook Page with Violent, Threatening Messages
WASHINGTON
Violent images and messages fill the Facebook pages of the
18-year-old Texan, who has brought a lawsuit, joined by the National
Rifle Association, to give 18-20 year-olds a constitutional right to
carry concealed weapons in public, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
"Last week we pointed out that it was dangerous and reckless for the
NRA to claim that teenagers should be allowed to carry loaded
semiautomatic weapons on our streets and playgrounds. After seeing the
angry, violent Facebook postings of the teen who the NRA wants to arm
with concealed weapons, it is clear how wrongheaded its lawsuit is," said Brady Center President Paul Helmke.
The
NRA and James A. D'Cruz', of Lubbock, Texas, are the plaintiffs in the
suit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District
of Texas claiming that the Second Amendment requires that states allow
teens and young persons ages 18-20 to carry loaded firearms in public.
They seek to overturn a Texas law that generally prohibits the carrying
of concealed weapons by people under age 21. Texas is one of 36 states
that restricts the possession or carrying of firearms by teens and young
persons ages 18-20. The Texas Constitution specifically allows the
regulation of public gun carrying, stating that the "Legislature shall
have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to
prevent crime."
D'Cruz's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/james.dcruz1)
pictures him in a black suit and hat reminiscent of John Dillinger,
posing with legs spread apart, holding upright in his hand what appears
to be a machine gun or assault weapon. Many of his postings over the
past year reflect his fascination with gangsters and outlaws, often
quoting them, and include violent, threatening messages, such as these:
"Death is but a doorway", October 6 at 5:28pm,
"the match is lit and it will burn all of us now", September 25 at 12:06pm
"in this field of hundreds begging for their lives, we shall spare none," August 9 at 11:38am
After hunting men, nothing can compare"-Shooter, December 26, 2009 at 5:47pm
"There
is no redemption, There is no forgiveness. I will stare into your eyes
as I pull the trigger and laugh as you hit the ground with your last,
pathetic breath." April 1
In noting its opposition to the NRA's
lawsuit, the Brady Center has cited studies showing that young persons
under 21 often lack the same ability as adults to "govern impulsivity,
judgment, planning for the future, and foresight of consequences."
People aged 18-20 fall within the age range of offenders with the
highest rates of homicide and criminal gun possession.
"Mr.
D'Cruz's Facebook postings underscore the research findings highlighting
the fragility and unpredictability of young people. If we care at all
for the safety and security of Americans, making it easier and legal for
such youths to carry lethal weapons is not a sensible thing to do,"
said Helmke. "If this is the NRA's poster boy for concealed carry, then
the bosses have some explaining to do."
Brady United formerly known as The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and its legislative and grassroots affiliate, the Brady Campaign and its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, is the nation's largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence. We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.
LATEST NEWS
Press Freedom Groups to Congress: Drop Subpoena of Journalist Over Reporting on Venezuela Attack
"This is a dangerous assault on press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know."
Jan 13, 2026
A coalition of press freedom and civil liberties groups on Tuesday implored US lawmakers to immediately rescind their subpoena of investigative journalist Seth Harp, who named the commander of the elite Army Delta Force unit that carried out the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this month.
In a letter to House leaders, Defending Rights & Dissent, the ACLU, Freedom of the Press Foundation, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, and more than a dozen other organizations warned that "by issuing this subpoena, Congress is undermining one of the most cherished American freedoms."
"The subpoena has few parallels or precedents in recent history and poses a grave danger to the First Amendment’s guarantee of press freedom," the letter reads. "There is zero question that Harp’s actions were fully and squarely within the protections of the First Amendment, as well as outside the scope of any federal criminal statutes."
The effort to subpoena Harp was led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who accused the journalist of the "doxxing a US Delta Force operator" by posting to X a then-publicly available bio of Col. Chris Countouriotis. Harp identified Countouriotis as "the current commander of Delta Force, whose men just invaded a sovereign country, killed a bunch of innocent people, and kidnapped the rightful president."
The House Oversight Committee approved the subpoena—with the support of Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the panel's top Democrat—in a voice vote last week.
X, a platform owned by self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk, locked Harp's account and required him to delete the post on Countouriotis before he could regain access. Luna also referred Harp to the US Justice Department, urging it to "pursue criminal charges" against him.
Harp, an Iraq War veteran who authored a book exposing crimes committed by US Special Forces units, dismissed Luna's "doxxing" accusations and said the identities of military officers who "participated in this illegal and provocative act of war" against Venezuela are "the legitimate subject of journalistic scrutiny."
"I'm not the only one they're going after with these bogus 'doxxing' allegations," Harp wrote on X, "but they would have to radically restructure the fundamental architecture of US law to criminalize reporting the names of government officials involved in breaking news stories."
In their letter to House leaders on Tuesday, the press freedom coalition stressed that while "journalists have a right under the First Amendment to publish even classified information... none of the information published by Harp was classified."
Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, said in a statement that Luna attack on Harp "is clearly designed to chill and intimidate a journalist doing some of the most significant investigative reporting on US Special Forces."
"Her own statement makes clear that far from having a valid legislative purpose, she seeks to hold a journalist ‘accountable’ for what is essentially reporting she dislikes," said Gibbons. "This is a dangerous assault on press freedom, as well as the US people’s right to know. It is shameful it passed the committee."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Vows 'Reckoning and Retribution is Coming' to Minnesota as ICE Brutality Mounts
The president's declaration came as new reports documented brutality and other abuses carried out by federal immigration agents.
Jan 13, 2026
President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday that "reckoning and retribution is coming" to the state of Minnesota as new reports documented the brutal actions of federal immigration agents throughout the US.
In a Truth Social post that was amplified by the official White House rapid response account on X, Trump addressed Minnesota residents and asked them if they "really want to live in a community in which their (sic) are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign asylums and mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention."
In reality, the operations being done in Minneapolis and across the US by federal immigration agents have little to do with taking violent criminals off the streets.
Recently released data flagged by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, shows that a plurality of people detained by ICE in recent months have no prior criminal convictions.
Trump ended his message with an all-caps declaration to "FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!"
Trump's vow of retribution came just hours after ProPublica published a lengthy investigation documenting 40 instances in which federal immigration agents across the country used "chokeholds and other moves that can block breathing," including nearly 20 instances where agents "appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits 'unless deadly force is authorized.'"
The publication also identified several videos in which federal immigration agents were kneeling on the backs of people's necks, similar to the way that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd as he suffocated to death in 2020.
Eric Balliet, a former law enforcement official who worked at both Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, told ProPublica that he has never seen immigration agents use such tactics before, even if they were arrested people suspected of serious crimes.
"I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters—some of them will resist," he said. "I don’t remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period."
Arnoldo Bazan, a 16-year-old US citizen who was put into a chokehold by federal immigration agents last year, told ProPublica that he "felt like I was going to pass out and die" because of it.
MPR News reported on Tuesday that immigration agents in Minneapolis have apparently been using license plate readers to identify local activists who have been observing and documenting operations in their neighborhoods.
John Boehler, a policy counsel with the ACLU of Minnesota, told MPR News that the agents' actions appear to violate Minnesota state law, which says accessing people's personal data in this manner can only be done if they are suspects in an active criminal investigation.
There is no reason, Boehler emphasized, that observers should be under any kind of criminal probe.
“Following or observing or reporting on federal agencies or federal activities is not a criminal activity—it's protected First Amendment activity,” Boehler explained. "To be using those cameras, to use those license plate readers, to surveil protesters has a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, and that's what we think the goal is."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Top DOJ Officials Resign After Being Cut Off From Renee Good Killing Probe
"The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans," one former DOJ attorney said recently. "It doesn't exist to enact the president's own agenda."
Jan 13, 2026
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is seeing its latest mass resignation over its handling of the case of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last week in Minneapolis.
Days after Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced that the agency's Civil Rights Division would not be investigating the shooting—despite the fact that the office's criminal unit would ordinarily probe any abuse or improper use of force by law enforcement—four top officials in the section have resigned.
As MS NOW reported Monday night, the chief of the criminal unit—listed on the DOJ website as Jim Felte—has resigned, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief. The outlet reported that other decisions by administration officials also contributed to their decision to leave.
The FBI announced late last week that it would be probing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross' shooting of Good, who was killed while sitting in her car on a street in Minneapolis where ICE was operating—part of a surge of federal immigration agents who have been sent to the area in recent weeks, with the Trump administration largely targeting Somali people.
Despite video evidence showing that Good's wheels were turned away from Ross, who was one of a number of officers who had approached her car and reportedly given her conflicting orders, the Trump administration is continuing to claim that she purposely tried to drive into the ICE agent and that Ross fired "defensive shots"—something law enforcement agents including ICE officers are trained not to do in situations involving a moving vehicle.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office."
As administration officials have aggressively pushed a narrative painting Good as a "domestic terrorist"—a designation that ordinarily would never be used by the government until a full investigation had been carried out—the FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from conducting a probe, leading the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to file a lawsuit Monday.
As the Washington Post reported Monday, the DOJ's Civil Rights Division would typically work alongside the FBI "to guide investigatory strategy" on a case like Good's. Prosecutors with the division were involved in trying the officers who killed George Floyd in MInneapolis and Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office,” Vanita Gupta, who led the division during the Obama administration, told the Post. “I cannot think of another high-profile federal agent shooting case like this when the Civil Rights Division was not involved—its prosecutors have the long-standing expertise in such cases."
Hundreds of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have resigned since President Donald Trump began his second term a year ago. Stacey Young, a former division attorney who left the DOJ soon after Trump was inaugurated, told NPR that the division is "not an arm of the White House."
"The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans," Young said. "It doesn't exist to enact the president's own agenda. That's a perversion of the separation of powers and the role of an independent Justice Department."
Dhillon, who has said the division will work to carry out the president's priorities, said last April that she was "fine" with the mass departure of civil rights attorneys.
“The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws—not woke ideology," she said.
Dhillon's announcement that the division would not investigate Good's killing suggested that the DOJ views probing improper use of force cases as it has in the past as "woke ideology."
The mass resignation at the Civil Rights Division comes a month after more than 200 former DOJ employees signed an open letter condemning "the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel."
"The administration wants you to believe that career staff who fled the Division 'were actively in resistance mode' and 'decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do,'" said the former employeees. "That could not be further from the truth. We left because this administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights."
Now in the wake of Good's killing, said one observer, the division under Dhillon's leadership "refused to probe a murder. The people with consciences walked out."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular