The Democratic district attorney in a Houston-area county where 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was allegedly raped and murdered by two Venezuelan illegal immigrants blamed the “broken” immigration system for the girl’s death.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg rebuked federal law enforcement at the southern border for letting Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 22, and Franklin Jose Peña Ramos, 26, into the United States after they were caught illegally entering near El Paso, Texas, this spring.

“They should have never been released when they crossed over into El Paso, but we have a broken system, and Jocelyn’s death resulted,” Ogg said in a recent interview with local media outlet KPRC. “It’s just hard when you know something could have been prevented like a child’s death.”

Nungaray was found deceased early in the morning on June 16. Court records said Nungaray had snuck out of her home late the previous night and gone to 7-Eleven, where she encountered the two suspects after they had partied at a local restaurant, according to KPRC.

The two are alleged to have lured her to a private area where they raped and then strangled her before throwing her body into a creek to get rid of DNA evidence. One suspect reportedly searched how to get out of the U.S. before police arrested them.

“Our immigration system is broken, and if ever there was a case that reflected that, it’s this one,” Ogg added.

Ogg’s statements echo those made by the Biden administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has called on Congress since 2021 to fix the “broken immigration system.” Republicans, meanwhile, squarely place blame at President Joe Biden’s feet, pointing to his decision to undo Trump-era border policies upon assuming office.

As illegal immigrant arrests have increased to record-high levels under Biden, a greater percentage of people arriving are from faraway countries, not just Mexico and northern Central America. Hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries including Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia have arrived at the border.

“It’s not just immigrants from Mexico. We’re seeing immigrants from China, from the islands, from South America, like these individuals,” Ogg said. “I think it’s increasing the risk factor for regular people here. So I’m hoping that our government will work together in a bipartisan fashion to keep the public safe by making our borders safer.”

The Biden administration has largely arrested and then released into the U.S. most illegal immigrants due to an inability to fly back as many people as are being encountered and a preference against detaining people in jail through yearslong immigration proceedings.

Although the Department of Homeland Security has stated it is screening and vetting illegal immigrants before it releases them into the country, some governments, like Venezuela, do not share criminal database information with the U.S., making it impossible for federal law enforcement at the border to know each person’s entire history.

Despite Ogg’s complaints, Houston is a sanctuary city, which means the city has elected not to turn over illegal immigrants in custody to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement except for rare cases in which a serious crime has been committed. In Nungaray’s case, ICE has placed a request for the city to hold the suspects for federal officers to take custody.

However, ICE would not transfer the two men into its custody and begin deportation proceedings until after they have completed their sentence, if convicted.

Ogg berated the federal government for releasing both men with ankle monitor devices and said it gave Houston residents a false sense of security that the government was tracking illegal immigrants it released into the country.

“One of them cut it off. The ankle monitors give the public a false sense of security. We don’t rely on them as prosecutors because we see too many problems with folks who are supposed to be under supervision and yet aren’t,” Ogg said. “And that’s the case with these two guys. They should have never been released when they crossed over in El Paso.”

Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain of Houston blamed Ogg and the Biden administration for endorsing immigration policies that he said had protected illegal immigrants.

“Harris County has become a sanctuary for criminals, and the blame is not just on the Biden administration, but it’s on the DA’s office,” Cain, a Republican, told Fox News Digital.

Ogg lost her Democratic primary in March to a former prosecutor from her office, Sean Teare, who will take on Republican attorney Dan Simons in November. Cain implored Houston voters to select the Republican come this fall.

“In November: Republicans support legislation that could have allowed Texas to arrest and deport these monsters before they could harm anyone. Democrats want them to stay in the U.S. indefinitely. Vote accordingly,” Cain wrote in a post to X on June 25.

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The defendants were charged with capital murder. Life without parole is the maximum punishment for the murder of a child between the ages of 10 and 15, but an underlying felony conviction of sexual assault could make them eligible for the death penalty, Ogg said.

Each suspect is being held on a $10 million bond.

A middle school in Wayne, New Jersey, has apologized for a quiz question that called ISIS a terrorist group after backlash from terrorist-sympathizing organizations, showing how pro-terrorism rhetoric is continuing to infect academia.

The question that caused controversy said, “It is a terrorist organization that commits acts of violence, destroys cultural artifacts, and encourages loss of life in order to achieve its goal of global rule under strict Islamic Sharia law.” The four multiple-choice options were the Shining Path, al Qaeda, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the correct response, Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

“We have seen anti-Muslim & anti-Palestinian sentiments, teachers, and content in our schools over and over again. But we must not allow it to continue,” a group called Teaching While Muslim said in a post on Instagram criticizing the quiz. “Call and email everyone that you can. This is NOT okay on a million levels. Go.”

The group continued, saying the question “wrongly implies that terrorism is a fundamental goal of an ‘Islamic State’” and is “a continuation of U.S. and Zionist propaganda aimed at fearmongering against Muslims AND Palestinians.” It also criticized the question for including the PLO as an answer choice and then doxxed the teacher who used the quiz, saying he “failed his students and must be held accountable for this misinformation.” The post included contact information for numerous school officials to ask “how this was allowed and how it will be rectified.” 

Schuyler Colfax Middle School spinelessly apologized following the group’s post, saying, “The question was offensive and contrary to values of respect, inclusivity, and cultural sensitivity that we foster at Schuyler. A priority is always to cultivate safe learning environments for all students regardless of background or belief.”

Wayne for Palestine wrote, “An apology alone does not undo the damage. We demand that a lesson approved by Muslim and Arab teachers be implemented immediately when students return in September to counteract this harmful content.” It continued, “We demand that you connect with expert Muslim and Arab educators to provide necessary training, audit your curriculum, and ensure it does not perpetuate trauma.”

Just a few years ago, a teacher in France was beheaded for showing cartoons of Muhammad during a class debate on freedom of expression. The teenager who committed the murder shared photos of the teacher’s severed head on ISIS Telegram channels and had close ties to the terrorist organization. Pretending that ISIS is not a terrorist group while also threatening a teacher is especially dangerous in this context.

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While the ideological rot at institutions of higher education has been well-documented in the past year after pro-Hamas encampments, pro-Hezbollah chalkings, and numerous antisemitic incidents, the trickle down to middle and high schools has been concerning as well. Terrorism is not new for academia. The Unabomber taught us that at the University of California, Berkeley. But the institutionalization of this hatred is being met with little successful resistance.

ISIS is a terrorist group. Apologizing for stating basic truths is an act of pure cowardice.

Cultural centers at some Utah universities are deciding to close down in response to the state’s partial diversity, equity, and inclusion restriction despite the law not requiring them to do so.

The DEI restriction, which does not ban the ideology but pares back some of the programs in the state’s universities and government offices, went into effect Monday. While guidance about how to implement the new law does not advise schools to close their cultural centers, which are often race-, sex-, or sexual orientation-based student support offices, some have decided to do so anyway.

Guidance from the Utah System of Higher Education does require that schools shut down offices that are “discriminatory,” meaning in part that programs, offices, procedures, or other initiatives based on “personal identity characteristics” would not be permitted. For all intents and purposes, a cultural center would be required to service students who do not meet the race, sex, or other characteristic upon which it is based.

Particularly in light of stronger bans such as those implemented in Texas and Florida that were aimed more at routing out the ideology at the core, Utah’s law was applauded by some DEI proponents as a “compromise,” a middle ground of getting rid of the coercive aspects, such as trainings or support statements, while maintaining some programs.

Despite that, five of six public universities in Utah have announced they will close down at least one cultural center on their campuses.

“The intention of the law is to promote student success for all students in our schools and universities and ensure any student who needs support and services has them available,” Republican state Rep. Katy Hall, who sponsored the DEI restriction bill, told Inside Higher Ed. “As I understand it, some of the universities have chosen to [close certain student centers] to better meet the goals I just described. I hope that students who benefitted from these centers in the past know that the expectation is that they will still be able to receive the services and support that they need to succeed with their educational goals.”

University of Utah’s Black Cultural Center, for example, shut down its website and moved its student resources and support programs to the Center for Student Access and Resources while moving “cultural education, celebration activities, and awareness programs” to the Center for Cultural and Community Engagement. The school also announced it would close its Center for Equity and Student Belonging, LGBT Resource Center, and Women’s Resource Center. The American Indian Resource Center will be renamed the Center for Native Excellence and Tribal Engagement.

Southern Utah University is getting rid of its Center for Diversity and Inclusion as well as its LGBT center, called the Q Center, and Utah State University is closing its Inclusion Center but moving programs to other offices. However, USU will keep its “Latinx Cultural Center” open and create a Native American Cultural Center, so long as they are approved by the state board of higher education.

Weber State University shut down its Division of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which housed five cultural centers and a LGBT center. But that school is opening a Student Success Center and moving most of the faculty and staff from the DEI office to continue much of their work there.

Utah Commissioner of Higher Education Geoffrey Landward told the Salt Lake Tribune there could be a university system-side multicultural center to replace the more characteristic-specific cultural centers, something which the University of Utah and Utah State University have already said they would do.

“You create an umbrella cultural center,” Landward told the outlet. “This preserves our ability to educate and celebrate different cultures, but in a way that doesn’t expose us to more criticism … without having to answer the question: ‘Why does this one group get a center and another group doesn’t?’”

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While Landward said the cultural centers are not outlawed, he anticipates they could be in the future, as the centers are widely criticized among opponents of DEI for only offering their services to certain students who meet their racial or sexual criteria while excluding others. He added that schools moving to close their cultural centers now is likely well advised.

Gov. Spencer Cox’s (R-UT) office did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.

The Supreme Court gave a lower court in Washington, D.C., on Monday the monumental task of determining what acts are official and unofficial in the election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

The high court’s 6-3 decision along ideological lines was a massive victory for Trump, as it found that presidents cannot be prosecuted for actions they took in their official capacity unless the Department of Justice can prove the prosecution will not threaten the authority of the executive branch as a whole.

The Supreme Court also found that evidence encompassing a president’s official acts cannot be used in court, which is expected to weaken special counsel Jack Smith’s case severely because he cites several such acts in the charges he brought against Trump.

The full effects of the complicated and unprecedented nature of the decision remain to be seen.

Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over Trump’s case at the district court level, must first hold a hearing to begin the tall order of weeding out parts of Trump’s indictment. Trump will also have options to challenge her orders, which could dramatically postpone any trial in the case.

Smith brought the indictment against Trump last year, alleging the former president conspired to defraud the government and violate the rights of voters during the 2020 election. The 45-page document included a wealth of detail to support the charges, and Smith may now need to excise significant portions of it in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Trump had argued to the courts that all of his charges should be dropped because he was protected from prosecution by presidential immunity, and Chutkan and the appellate court in Washington were quick to deny his claim. In its decision, the Supreme Court rebuked the lower courts for rushing to decide Trump was not immune from prosecution.

The justices said the lower courts must now take the time to “analyze the conduct alleged in the indictment” and determine which of Trump’s actions cannot be used as evidence and which ones he cannot be criminally charged for.

Smith, for instance, alleged that former Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen privately told Trump his claims about widespread voter fraud were unfounded. Trump communicating with executive branch officeholders is “readily categorized” as an official act, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

The conversations with Rosen, or with former Vice President Mike Pence, may now need to be carved out of Smith’s indictment.

The decision will have reach beyond Trump’s indictment in Washington, however. For example, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis brought a separate criminal indictment against Trump and 18 others at the state level in Georgia for election-related activity.

Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia-based defense attorney, observed that Willis’s case may face insurmountable hurdles now. The case is already on pause indefinitely while a higher state court reviews a question about her disqualification, but once it resumes, the judge there will then have to take under consideration the Supreme Court’s decision.

“Here’s the part that probably borks the Georgia case against Trump, at least for the foreseeable future. A judge has to dig through this extremely complicated RICO indictment and decide, with no established test, if Trump was being official,” Fleischman wrote on X.

Other officials from Trump’s administration stand to benefit from the decision. Former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, for example, was indicted in Georgia for his involvement in an alternate electors plan and is at risk of losing his bar license in Washington.

The group Center for Renewing America responded to the Supreme Court’s decision by calling for Clark’s charges to be dismissed in Georgia and with the District of Columbia Bar.

On top of the immunity decision, the Supreme Court also decided last week that prosecutors and judges had used an Enron-era obstruction charge too broadly. Two of Smith’s four charges against Trump fall under the high court’s decision, meaning Trump could now rely on the decision to fight those charges if they still remain in any form once immunity claims are addressed. Smith has argued his obstruction charges against Trump fall under the Supreme Court’s newly narrowed interpretation of the law.

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Smith’s only saving grace in the decision was that the justices unequivocally said the unofficial acts of presidents are not immune from criminal prosecution.

Regardless, the new challenges imposed on the district court mean Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, will likely not see a trial before the election.

This story is developing.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon reported to prison on Monday for his four-month sentence for his contempt of Congress conviction, but he gave defiant remarks before surrendering himself to authorities.

Bannon told supporters and the press before heading to federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, that his voice will be heard during his prison sentence, arguing the movement he is a part of will continue even while he is away.

“I have a First Amendment right. I have first a First Amendment right to have my voice heard. And my voice is going to be heard every day, and more importantly, their voices are going to be heard,” Bannon said.

“You don’t need my voice. We’re a populist movement. We’re a populist movement. When I say, ‘Next man up,’ it’s not just our other hosts. It’s just not congressmen [Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)] and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and all the people that support the show. It’s all these people,” he added.

The host of the podcast War Room also stated that he is “proud” to report to prison if it means standing up to Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

“I am proud to go to prison. And this is what it takes to stand up to tyranny. This way, it takes a stand up to the Garland corrupt criminal DOJ. This is what it takes to stand up to Nancy Pelosi. This is what it takes to stand up to Joe Biden — to Joe Biden,” Bannon said. “I’m proud to do it.”

He also vowed that the enemies of the “MAGA Movement,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” would be unable to stop them, no matter what they may try.

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Bannon had attempted to delay his prison sentence as he appeals his conviction, but he was denied by the multiple courts, including the Supreme Court.

He will be in prison until just before the November election. Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro was also convicted of contempt of Congress charges after defying subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee, but Navarro reported to prison for his four-month sentence in March.

One of the few entities with the power and authority to hold Boeing accountable for its many fatal failures is attempting to give the company an absurdly light slap on the wrist.

The Department of Justice is reportedly planning to file criminal fraud charges against Boeing, the world’s most successful airplane manufacturer. The charges stem from the company’s failure to comply with a 2021 agreement with federal prosecutors that was supposed to insulate the company from charges related to two fatal crashes of its notorious 737 Max passenger jets.

The charges come just months after Boeing planes have been continually plagued by dangerous malfunctions, most notably in January when the emergency door on an Alaska Airlines jet abruptly flew off mid-flight, forcing an emergency landing.

But even as the DOJ attempts to file the criminal charges it did not pursue three years ago, it is still trying to pursue a sweetheart deal that will insulate the company and major government contractor from any real accountability.

In the coming days, Boeing will decide whether or not to plead guilty to the fraud charge. If the company elects to admit wrongdoing, the DOJ intends to make a mockery of the 346 victims of the company’s failures by leveling a pathetic $243.6 million fine and require the company to hire a corporate monitor for three years.

For a company worth more than $110 billion, this minuscule fine is nothing. It is an insult to the hundreds of people who died because of the company’s failures, and it does nothing to address the corporate culture of Boeing that has allowed shoddy manufacturing to endanger the lives of pilots, crews, and passengers all over the world.

Already, the families of Boeing’s victims are planning to object to the plea deal.

“The deal will not acknowledge, in any way, that Boeing’s crime killed 346 people,” attorney Paul Cassell told Bloomberg. “The families will strenuously object to this plea deal.”

The families that Cassell represents are urging the DOJ to issue a fine of $25 billion, a far heavier punishment that will force Boeing to reckon with its callous disregard for human life. But under the terms proposed by the families, the majority of the fine would be suspended if Boeing hired a corporate monitor and overhauled its safety systems so the culture of shoddy workmanship and cost cutting is purged from the company.

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If the reported plea deal is approved, the very integrity of Boeing’s airplane manufacturing is at stake. If the company gets nothing more than a light scolding from the DOJ, the government is sending a clear message that such corporations are beyond true accountability.

The DOJ must back off its sweetheart deal and force Boeing to take accountability for the lives it has cost. If the company continues on its current course, the millions of people that board Boeing jets each year will be left anxiously wondering if their plane will be the next one to fall out of the sky.

Carlo Acutis, the late computer-programming Italian teenager known as “God’s Influencer,” will become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint.

Pope Francis and the College of Cardinals approved Acutis’s canonization on Monday, the Vatican News announced. He will likely be proclaimed a saint during the 2025 Jubilee.

Acutis, a devout Catholic, was born in London in 1991 and was a talented computer programmer and graphic designer from a young age. He designed a website cataloging more than 150 Eucharistic miracles around the world, which has gone on to be displayed at thousands of parishes across five continents, the Catholic News Agency reported.

“Computer genius, Carlo made his computer an instrument at the service of God and the Internet a way to evangelize, spreading his love for the Holy Eucharist,” the website of the 2023 World Youth Day in Lisbon, Portugal, said.

Before becoming a saint in the Catholic Church, a person must first be declared “venerable” and then beatified or declared “blessed.”

Acutis was declared venerable by Francis in 2018, a recognition that he had lived a life of “heroic virtue.”

Beatification, the next step in the process of sainthood, requires a miracle to have been attributed to a person. Acutis was beatified in 2020 after reportedly healing a young Brazilian boy from a birth defect affecting his pancreas in 2013, seven years after Acutis’s death.

Francis attributed a second miracle to Acutis in May, clearing the way for his canonization. Acutis reportedly healed a young woman suffering from a head injury as a result of a bicycle accident in 2022 after the woman’s mother prayed for her recovery at the late teenager’s tomb in Assisi, Italy.

Acutis’s mother, Antonia Salzano, described her son as a “sign of hope” to CNN in May.

“[With] all the media, the technologies, it seems sometimes that holiness is something that belongs to the past,” she said. “Instead, holiness is also something nowadays in this modern time.”

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Acutis loved playing video games such as Halo, Super Mario, and Pokemon, CNN reported.

He died of acute promyelocytic leukemia in 2006 at 15 years old.