MODESTO, Calif.
Conference criticizes Trump
Speakers at a Vatican-sponsored conference in Northern California — including an archbishop — denounced President Donald Trump’s orders on immigration and travel and vowed to fight them at a meeting Friday. Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez said President Barack Obama deported a high number of people, but the harsh tone and cruelty coming out of the new administration was prompting mass fear and panic. “They’re playing with people’s emotions and toying with their lives and futures, and that is not right,” Gomez said.
NEW YORK
Cities take action over ban
Municipalities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and Skokie, Ill., urged a federal judge on Friday to continue blocking aspects of Republican President Donald Trump’s travel ban. New York City’s chief lawyer, Zachary Carter, filed papers in federal court on behalf of nearly three dozen cities. The arguments were submitted days before a judge will decide whether to extend an order that was issued the day after Trump signed the Jan. 27 executive order. Carter and senior counsel Susan Greenberg said in the filing that the ban against people from seven predominantly Muslim countries damages the economies and cultures of the cities.
FLINT, Mich.
‘Systemic racism’ suggested
“Systemic racism” going back decades is at the core of problems that caused a lead-contaminated water crisis in the majority black city of Flint, according to a Michigan Civil Rights Commission report issued Friday. The report says the commission did not unearth any civil rights law violations and that nobody “intended to poison Flint.” But the 130-page report based on the testimony of more than 100 residents, experts and government and community leaders at public hearings and other meetings last year concludes that decisions would have been different had they concerned the state’s wealthier, predominantly white communities.
LOS ANGELES
Storm kills 2, strands others
A powerful Pacific storm blew into Southern and Central California on Friday with wind-driven heavy rains that downed power lines and electrocuted a man, killed a motorist in a submerged car and disrupted hundreds of flights at airports.
Compiled from wire reports