World News

>Aircraft carrier sent to Middle East after indications Iran planned attack on US forces

>The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has just updated its policy on firearms, moving from a recommendation that lethal weapons, including guns, were considered “inappropriate” on church property to an outright prohibition of them.

>This marks the latest in a series of small steps the church has taken away from the Republican Party, either by tweaking its own policies or by simply upholding its usual position to the right of center, while members of the GOP swing ever further to the right.

>Merely by doubling down on the church’s prior stance on weapons in church, changing the one word “inappropriate” to “prohibited,” LDS leaders are signaling that they’re not blindly following the direction that many in the GOP are embracing, despite the fact that a majority of U.S. Mormons identify with the Republican Party.

>Gun violence is not the only issue; Mormons are also charting their own path on immigration. The GOP in general has followed Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Studies by the Pew Research Center show that Republicans are statistically much more likely than Democrats to believe that immigration is a major problem facing the country and that a border wall will be an effective way to solve the problem — both key elements of President Trump’s platform. Mormons, however, are noticeably more pro-immigrant than other Republicans.

>According to research from the 2016 Next Mormons Survey, a majority of U.S. Mormons feel that immigrants “strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents,” while Pew finds that a majority of Republicans believe that immigrants “are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing, and health care.”

>This is evident not just in the beliefs of the rank-and-file but in recent statements of the church, such as one decrying then-candidate Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” in favor of religious freedom for all people (December 2015). Other statements have been pressing for compassionate solutions for refugees (January 2017), recommending that the federal government allow young DACA immigrants to remain in the country (January 2018) and urging that immigrant families be allowed to stay together rather than separating parents from children at the border (June 2018, and reiterated by church President Russell Nelson in April 2019).

>Abortion is a third issue where Mormons’ views are diverging from the GOP’s.

>The Trump administration, with guidance from the FDA, is preparing to ban the sale of all flavored e-cigarettes across the US, the administration said in an unexpected announcement. The ban will build on former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb's proposal to ban flavored tobacco products like Juul.

>"The Trump Administration is making it clear that we intend to clear the market of flavored e-cigarettes to reverse the deeply concerning epidemic of youth e-cigarette use that is impacting children, families, schools and communities," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement. "We will not stand idly by as these products become an on-ramp to combustible cigarettes or nicotine addiction for a generation of youth."

>Azar and acting FDA Commissioner Norman Sharpless said the ban will include all flavored vaping products including mint and menthol flavors. Flavored vape products have gained scrutiny because they seem to be marketed toward young adults.

>"She's got a son ... she feels very strongly about it," Trump said of Melania's involvement in the vaping issue.

>“Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” That phrase appears repeatedly in a trove of private emails and documents recently obtained by The Spokesman-Review through multiple sources. Shea, R-Spokane Valley, has used it to sign messages to his associates on the far right, including militia members who took part in the 2016 armed standoff at an Oregon wildlife refuge.

>Last year, at the Marble religious compound in northern Stevens County, Shea described a brewing civil war in the United States, telling a crowd: “Liberty must be kept by force.” He later acknowledged writing a manifesto titled “Biblical Basis for War.”

>Shea and some of his closest supporters have made physical preparations for a holy war, one that would help them establish their long-envisioned 51st state, their Redoubt, their Christian homeland. Leaked emails published this week reveal that Shea has had close ties with a group that conducted “patriotic and biblical training on war for young men.”

>In addition to running “background checks” on liberal activists and supporting military-style training for boys and young men, Shea has in recent years sought to purchase GPS tracking devices, compiled dossiers on local progressive leaders and kept a blacklist of suspected informants in his network.

>By January 2017, Shea had developed suspicions about a new group of associates, and he sent Pounder a list of four names. “Please get with Scout and add these names to the confirmed informants list,” Shea wrote. Scout was a code name for one of Shea’s most trusted lieutenants, Anthony Bosworth, who’s known for bringing guns to the federal courthouse in Spokane and physically abusing his 17-year-old daughter in a videotaped public altercation in Yakima.

>In a fall 2017 group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal, Pounder shared the address and contact information of an activist who had opposed a right-wing occupation of federal land in Nevada in 2014, and who was now pushing legislation to protect wolves in Washington. Bosworth suggested sending the activist the severed tail and testicles of a wolf from North Idaho. Shea then chided Bosworth – not for the wolf-parts proposal, but for creating an electronic record of the conversation. Such things should be discussed face-to-face, Shea wrote.

>That was the same chat in which Bosworth and Jack Robertson, who hosts a far-right radio show using the pseudonym John Jacob Schmidt, proposed acts of violence against liberal demonstrators and Shea offered to conduct background checks.