Politics

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday called on President Joe Biden to issue an executive order to boost oversight of investments by U.S. companies and individuals in China and other countries.

The lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator John Cornyn urged Biden to issue an order to “safeguard our national security and supply chain resiliency on outbound investments to foreign adversaries.”

Congress has been considering legislation that would give the U.S. government sweeping new powers to block billions in U.S. outbound investments into China. The proposal was removed from bipartisan legislation to subsidize U.S. semiconductor chips manufacturing and research in a bill approved in August.

The lawmakers, including Democrats Bill Pascrell, House Appropriations chair Rosa DeLauro, Senator Bob Casey and Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick and Victoria Spartz, said in a letter to Biden that as negotiations continue, “our national security cannot afford to wait.”

They urged the president “to safeguard our national security and supply chain resiliency on outbound investments to foreign adversaries.”

The White House did not comment.

In Washington, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy, said, “The allegation that China is hurting the interests of American workers is completely wrong.”

The United States “should maintain the stability of the global industrial and supply chains rather than pick on China from time to time,” the official added.

White House national security official Peter Harrell said this month that the Biden administration has not made a final decision on a potential outbound investment mechanism regulating U.S. investments in China.

Harrell stressed that any measure targeting such investments should be narrowly tailored to address gaps in existing U.S. authorities and specific national security risks.

“When we cede our manufacturing power and technological know-how to foreign adversaries, we are hurting our economy, our global competitiveness, American workers, industry and national security. Government action on this front is long overdue to address the scope and magnitude of these serious risks we face as a country,” the lawmakers wrote.

The Senate Banking Committee on Thursday will hold a hearing on outbound investment that will feature testimony from Cornyn, Casey and several former government officials among them Information Technology Industry Council Executive Vice President Robert Strayer.

The proposed legislation is intended to give the government greater visibility into U.S. investments. It would be mandatory to notify the government of investments that may fall under the new regulations, and the United States could use existing authorities to stop investments, or mitigate risk. If no action is taken, the investment can move forward.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Mark Porter and David Gregorio)

source

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court last March rebuffed an emergency request by North Carolina Republicans to allow the use in November’s congressional elections of an electoral map they drew that a lower court invalidated for unlawfully disadvantaging Democrats.

It was a short-term setback for the North Carolina Republicans, but they soon will get a chance to claim a bigger legal victory. Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested at the time that the justices take up the underlying legal dispute, one that could provide state legislators around the country the ability to enact election policies with less judicial oversight – a Republican goal.

The Supreme Court in June announced it would hear the case in its new term, which begins on Monday. This showed the increasing willingness of its 6-3 conservative majority take on divisive issues as it steers the court on a rightward path.

Following a term when its conservatives delivered blockbuster rulings curtailing abortion access and widening gun rights, the court returns from a summer recess ready to tackle more major cases. Potential rulings in upcoming cases could end affirmative action policies used by colleges and universities to increase campus racial diversity, hobble a federal law called the Voting Rights Act and make it easier for businesses to refuse service to LGBT people based on free-speech rights.

“The justices are taking things that are causing real conflicts around the country, they’re taking issues even if there’s a lot of media attention, even if it’s a hot-button issue – and they’re going to decide it anyway,” said Megan Wold, an attorney and former law clerk to conservative Justice Samuel Alito.

The addition of three justices appointed by Republican former President Donald Trump – Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 – gave the court its current conservative supermajority.

According to Irv Gornstein, executive director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Supreme Court Institute, Kavanaugh now wields outsized influence over the speed and limits of the court’s rightward shift. Gornstein called Kavanaugh the “median justice.”

He does not appear as far to the right as Justices Clarence Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett, while Chief Justice John Roberts – an incrementalist conservative – and liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson are to Kavanaugh’s left.

Gornstein noted during a recent panel discussion in Washington that Kavanaugh has taken to opining on the limits of the majority’s rulings. In the abortion decision, for instance, he issued a separate opinion stating that interstate travel to obtain the procedure is constitutional.

“Make no mistake, for now and for the foreseeable future, this is Justice Kavanaugh’s court,” Gornstein said.

In its most recent term, there were 14 rulings decided on a 6-3 tally with the conservative justices on one side and the liberals on the other. That is up from 10 on strictly ideological lines the previous term, according to legal scholar Adam Feldman, who tracks court data at a website called “Empirical Scotus.”

In the abortion decision, the court ruled 6-3 to uphold the restrictive Mississippi law at issue, though Roberts opposed outright overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent. Similarly decided on 6-3 votes were the gun rights expansion, cases from Maine and Washington state favoring religious rights and another case that made it harder for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to issue rules addressing climate change.

The court appears likely to continue to take up cases particularly important to conservatives, Feldman said.

“They can look for cases that are going to be more ideological because even the weakest link on the right is still pretty far to the right,” Feldman added.

MORE TRANSFORMATION

Further transformation in U.S. law appears likely this term. Two cases could have profound implications for elections in 2024 and beyond.

In the North Carolina case involving the Republican-drawn map of the state’s 14 U.S. House of Representatives districts, Republican lawmakers are advocating for a legal theory gaining popularity among conservatives that could restrict the power of state courts to review actions by state legislatures concerning federal elections. Endorsing the theory would undermine democratic norms, according to critics, even as Republicans at the state level pursue restrictive voting policies and electoral maps skewed in their favor.

Alabama in another case is defending its Republican-drawn map of the state’s seven U.S. House districts that a lower court struck down as discriminatory against Black voters in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Also closely watched are cases involving race-conscious student admissions programs used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina to foster campus racial diversity. A group led by an anti-affirmative action activist challenged those policies as unlawfully discriminatory against Asian American and white applicants.

The court will hear an evangelical Christian web designer’s free speech claim that she cannot be forced under a Colorado anti-discrimination law to produce websites for same-sex marriages. The court did not resolve that issue in a 2018 ruling in favor of a Christian Denver-area baker who refused on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Other important cases could make it easier to build on property deemed wetlands without needing a permit under the federal Clean Water Act, or, in a case involving Taser-maker Axon Enterprise Inc, to challenge the authority of federal regulatory agencies without first undergoing an enforcement action.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

source

By Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, author of a blockbuster ruling that revoked nationwide abortion rights, said on Tuesday that his Catholic faith requires him to consider the real-world implications of his decisions on the nation’s highest court.

Speaking to a sympathetic audience shortly before the court begins its next term, the conservative justice did not discuss the abortion ruling or other landmark decisions on guns and federal power issued earlier this year.

Asked how his personal faith affects his work, Alito said that judges can impact people “indirectly but sometimes very powerfully” through their decisions.

“It’s important to keep in mind that these decisions are not abstract discussions – they have real impact on the world,” he said at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

Alito said his faith also “affects the way you treat all the people that you work with, when you’re serving as a judge.”

Alito has emerged as a leading voice of the court’s emboldened 6-3 conservative majority, which issued a string of blockbuster decisions last year that pushed U.S. law to the right.

The majority’s assertiveness could continue in a number of major cases in the next term, which begins in October.

Alito authored the landmark ruling that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a nationwide right to abortion. Since then, several states have banned the procedure outright or limited it sharply.

Alito spoke at an inaugural lecture for a new program at Catholic University of America’s law school, called the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. The school said earlier this year that Alito will be the honorary chair for the program’s advisory board.

Alito focused his remarks on Catholic intellectual tradition and the law, steering clear of the barbed comments that have marked some of his other public appearances.

In July, he mocked foreign leaders who objected to the court’s abortion decision, while in 2020 he said religious liberty was becoming a “disfavored right”.

Opinion polls have shown a drop in public approval of the court in the wake of that abortion ruling.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Stephen Coates)

source

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Republicans redrew Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids ‘ suburban Kansas City, Kansas-area district this year to make a third term harder for her to win, adding rural areas where former President Donald Trump did well and removing urban areas that Davids had carried handily.

But the dynamic changed in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Kansas voters responded in August by overwhelmingly rejecting a ballot measure expected to lead to more restrictions or a ban on abortion.

The magnitude of that vote has left Davids and other Democrats optimistic. That’s why she is spending the final stretch of the campaign focused on abortion, attempting to keep the same abortion-rights supporters who turned out to vote in August energized to do so again in November.

It’s a delicate task, asking voters who may fault Democrats for rising housing and grocery prices to nonetheless support Davids for Congress.

“I think this has more to do with control and limiting people’s rights,” said swing voter Tanner Klingzell, a 42-year-old from the suburb of Prairie Village who says he is fiscally conservative but socially progressive. He supports abortion rights and says, “I just don’t feel comfortable voting for Republicans.”

The Supreme Court’s abortion ruling has rewritten the script in districts around the country, and both Davids and Republican challenger Amanda Adkins must win over independents and GOP moderates to win the one swing congressional district in an otherwise red state.

Davids became the first lesbian Native American in Congress when she rode suburban anti-Trump sentiment to office in the 2018 election. Her background as a mixed martial arts fighter drew national interest, and Republicans initially tried to group her with “The Squad” of new liberal House members. Those efforts fell flat as she focused on such non-divisive issues as road projects, prescription drug prices and high-speed internet for rural areas.

Adkins, a former corporate executive and Kansas GOP chair, is hitting Davids hard on pocketbook issues, a tactic Republicans nationally expect to carry them back to a House majority. She’s also started highlighting crime and border security. She held a news conference on those issues Monday, days after House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy released Republicans’ “Commitment to America” agenda, which promises to fight inflation but also to “protect the lives of unborn children.”

The two have faced off before. Davids defeated Adkins in 2020 by 10 percentage points, but that was before redistricting after the 2020 census. While Democrat Joe Biden would have prevailed in the new district in 2020, his margin would have been roughly half the 10 percentage points he racked up in the old district — and that’s likely true for Davids as well. If Adkins’ percentage of the vote in the suburbs is a few points higher this year than in 2020, she can win.

In suburban Overland Park, Andrea Calvo, a 33-year-old freight-company accounts manager, is hoping Republicans emerge a little stronger from the November election because, in her view, “they have proven to be able to handle the economy better.”

While Calvo, a Republican, doesn’t see herself as a moderate, she voted in August against the proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Kansas Constitution. She sees Adkins’ support for it as “definitely a problem.” But it’s not a deal-breaker.

“It’s all about the economy at the end of the day for me,” she said.

The two campaigns, the parties and political groups are now on track to spend about $8 million on television ads.

Davids’ ads attack Adkins for her long association with former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, whose nationally notorious 2012-13 experiment in cutting taxes was followed by huge, persistent state budget shortfalls. Davids on Saturday launched an ad attacking Adkins on abortion that follows up on multiple Kansas Democratic Party mailings, including to Republicans.

Davids and her backers are painting Adkins as an extremist for supporting the proposed amendment that voters rejected in August. It would have removed protections for abortion from the state Constitution, which would have allowed the state Legislature, dominated by abortion opponents, to greatly restrict or ban abortion.

Davids’ strong, public opposition to the Kansas anti-abortion measure contrasts with three decades of Democratic candidates soft-pedaling their support for abortion rights in most areas of the state. Abortion has been a dominant issue in Kansas politics since the 1991 anti-abortion “Summer of Mercy” protests outside Dr. George Tiller’s clinic in Wichita. Tiller was among the few doctors known to perform abortions late in pregnancy and was shot to death in 2009 by an anti-abortion zealot. Anti-abortion groups have been powerful forces in state politics.

Even with the 3rd District’s new, more Republican leanings, 67.5% of its voters opposed the Kansas anti-abortion measure in the August abortion referendum.

“They were very engaged and sent a strong message about us not wanting to have politicians making our decisions for us,” Davids said.

Adkins describes herself as a Catholic who has “always been pro-life” and “100% committed to protecting life at every stage.” But Adkins said she respects the August vote and opposes federal laws on abortion, saying the issue should be decided at the state level.

“It should not be a federal issue, and Sharice Davids still is focusing on it as a federal issue,” Adkins said after a recent suburban meet-and-greet. Davids voted last year for a Democratic measure to guarantee abortion rights across the U.S. and override state restrictions.

Adkins has not been specific about how far she thinks abortion law should go in Kansas, which bans most abortions at the 22nd week, but said Monday that she would favor any new, incremental state measures that would reduce the number of abortions.

In the new, rural parts of the 3rd District, Democrats say the abortion ruling means volunteers are energized. But Republican state Rep. Samantha Poetter Parshall said that Davids is an “extremely hard sell,” especially with conservative farmers. Even Democrats tend to take more conservative positions on issues such as gun rights, she said.

“Also, taxes — people are extremely upset with how high their taxes are right now,” she said.

But about 85% of the district’s voters still live in the suburbs, where centrist and conservative Republicans have feuded for decades, and voters have been electing more Democrats in recent years.

Former U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, the four-term GOP incumbent ousted by Davids in 2018, praised Adkins as a candidate, but he pointed to the dominance of those suburbs in the district as the reason the race remains challenging for the GOP.

“It’s still a Biden district,” he said.

_____

Hollingsworth reported from multiple cities in Johnson County, Kansas.

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna

source

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday called on President Joe Biden to issue an executive order to boost oversight of investments by U.S. companies and individuals in China and other countries.

The lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican Senator John Cornyn urged Biden to issue an order to “safeguard our national security and supply chain resiliency on outbound investments to foreign adversaries.”

Congress has been considering legislation that would give the U.S. government sweeping new powers to block billions in U.S. outbound investments into China. The proposal was removed from bipartisan legislation to subsidize U.S. semiconductor chips manufacturing and research in a bill approved in August.

The lawmakers, including Democrats Bill Pascrell, House Appropriations chair Rosa DeLauro, Senator Bob Casey and Republicans Brian Fitzpatrick and Victoria Spartz, said in a letter to Biden that as negotiations continue, “our national security cannot afford to wait.” They urged the president “to safeguard our national security and supply chain resiliency on outbound investments to foreign adversaries.”

The White House and Chinese Embassy did not immediately comment.

White House national security official Peter Harrell earlier this month said that the Biden administration has not yet made a final decision on a potential outbound investment mechanism regulating U.S. investments in China.

Harrell stressed that any measure targeting such investments should be narrowly tailored to address gaps in existing U.S. authorities and specific national security risks.

“When we cede our manufacturing power and technological know-how to foreign adversaries, we are hurting our economy, our global competitiveness, American workers, industry and national security. Government action on this front is long overdue to address the scope and magnitude of these serious risks we face as a country,” the lawmakers wrote.

The Senate Banking Committee on Thursday will hold a hearing on outbound investment that will feature testimony from Cornyn, Casey and several former government officials among them Information Technology Industry Council Executive Vice President Robert Strayer.

The proposed legislation is intended to give the government greater visibility into U.S. investments. It would be mandatory to notify the government of investments that may fall under the new regulations, and the United States could use existing authorities to stop investments, or mitigate risk. If no action is taken, the investment can move forward.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Mark Porter and David Gregorio)

source

By David Morgan and Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday voiced qualified support for a bipartisan Senate bill to clarify Congress’ role in certifying presidential election results, calling it the only chance to prevent any future chaos like the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault.

“I’ll proudly support the legislation provided that nothing more than practical changes are made to its current form,” McConnell said in a floor speech.

“This bill, as introduced, is the only chance to get an outcome and to actually make law,” he added.

Fourteen lawmakers from both parties on the Senate Rules Committee, including McConnell himself, later voted on Tuesday to approve the bill for an eventual floor vote.

Former President Donald Trump’s supporters launched a deadly attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a bid to stop Congress from certifying his election defeat, which the then-president falsely claimed was the result of widespread fraud. They trained their anger on then-Vice President Mike Pence, urging him to reject the results, an authority that Pence said he did not hold.

The bill would make clear that the vice president’s role in certification is purely ceremonial and would require one-fifth of the House of Representatives and the Senate to agree to challenge a state’s results. Current law allows objections to proceed with the support of just one lawmaker from each chamber.

Only Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican who had objected to President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory on Jan. 6, 2021, voted against the legislation in the rules committee on Tuesday.

McConnell’s remarks appeared to warn Democrats against altering the bill, known as the Electoral Count Reform Act, which already seems to have enough co-sponsors from each party to secure the 60 votes necessary for passage in the evenly split 100-seat chamber.

Lawmakers expect to enact reform legislation before the end of the year. But they will need to confront differences between the Senate bill and similar legislation that passed the House last week, before a final bill can be sent to Democratic President Joe Biden for his signature.

House Republicans opposed their chamber’s version of the bill, arguing that it goes too far.

New legislation would reform the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which contains vague language on certification that Trump and his supporters sought to use to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.

In addition to the Jan. 6 violence, 139 House Republicans and eight Senate Republicans including Cruz voted to challenge results in key states.

The House bill would require at least one-third of the members of the House and Senate to agree to challenge a state’s certification.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Katharine Jackson in Washington; Editing by Franklin Paul, Jonathan Oatis and Josie Kao)

source

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Leaders of the U.S. congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol said the panel had postponed a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, citing the threat to the state of Florida by a major hurricane.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Democratic chairperson, Bennie Thompson, and Republican vice chairperson, Liz Cheney, did not announce a new date for the House of Representatives Select Committee’s hearing.

“In light of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, we have decided to postpone tomorrow’s proceedings. We’re praying for the safety of all those in the storm’s path. The Select Committee’s investigation goes forward and we will soon announce a date for the postponed proceedings,” Thompson and Cheney said in a statement.

Some 2.5 million residents of Florida were under evacuation orders or warnings on Tuesday due to the approach of Hurricane Ian, which was expected to make landfall in the state about the same time as the hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

Thompson had said he expected the hearing would be the last from the Democratic-led panel. It held eight in June and July, presenting findings of its more than year-long probe of events surrounding the deadly assault on the seat of the government by supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump.

In its earlier hearings – including one held in July 2021 – the panel made its case that, after losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump ignored allies who told him his claims of widespread election fraud were untrue and then sat back and watched as followers who believed his false accusations stormed the Capitol.

Trump has denied wrongdoing.

The panel has not said when it will release a final report on its probe, although the document is expected to be made public before the Nov. 8 mid-term elections, when control of Congress is up for grabs.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)

source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Leaders of the U.S. congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol said the panel had postponed a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, citing the threat to the state of Florida by a major hurricane.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Democratic chairperson, Bennie Thompson, and Republican vice chairperson, Liz Cheney, did not announce a new date for the House of Representatives Select Committee’s hearing.

“In light of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, we have decided to postpone tomorrow’s proceedings. We’re praying for the safety of all those in the storm’s path. The Select Committee’s investigation goes forward and we will soon announce a date for the postponed proceedings,” Thompson and Cheney said in a statement.

Some 2.5 million residents of Florida were under evacuation orders or warnings on Tuesday due to the approach of Hurricane Ian, which was expected to make landfall in the state about the same time as the hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

Thompson had said he expected the hearing would be the last from the Democratic-led panel. It held eight in June and July, presenting findings of its more than year-long probe of events surrounding the deadly assault on the seat of the government by supporters of former Republican President Donald Trump.

In its earlier hearings – including one held in July 2021 – the panel made its case that, after losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump ignored allies who told him his claims of widespread election fraud were untrue and then sat back and watched as followers who believed his false accusations stormed the Capitol.

Trump has denied wrongdoing.

The panel has not said when it will release a final report on its probe, although the document is expected to be made public before the Nov. 8 mid-term elections, when control of Congress is up for grabs.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Franklin Paul and David Gregorio)

source

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A former congressman from Philadelphia who went to prison over the 1970s-era Abscam scandal was sent back to prison Tuesday at age 79 in a ballot stuffing case.

Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Michael J. “Ozzie” Myers was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison by a judge who questioned whether he had learned any lessons over the years. Myers admitted he had worked with election officials to pad the vote tallies of his political consulting clients. Some were running for city judgeships.

“Myers would solicit payments from his clients in the form of cash or checks as ‘consulting fees,’ and then use portions of these funds to pay election officials to tamper with election results,” U.S. Attorney Jacqueline Romero said in a statement after the hearing.

“Voting is the cornerstone of our democracy. If even one vote has been illegally cast or if the integrity of just one election official is compromised, it diminishes faith in process,” she said.

Myers pleaded guilty in June to violations of election law, conspiracy, bribery and obstruction for his work on behalf of Democratic candidates from 2014 and 2018. There was no evidence the crimes changed the outcome of any election, his lawyer said.

“The people of Philadelphia should feel secure that the elections are run fair and free, and when it is that these occurrences happen … they are found out,” said defense lawyer Noah Gorson, who called the instances of election fraud in the city rare.

Myers’s family, including his elderly wife, became upset when U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond revoked his bail Tuesday and ordered him to prison straightaway.

“They were unprepared for that, because the government had agreed that they had no objection to his self-surrendering, and he is an elderly man,” Gorson said. “That wasn’t needed.”

In the Abscam sting, Myers was convicted of bribery and conspiracy for taking money from FBI agents who posed as Arab sheiks. He served more than a year in prison and was expelled from Congress in 1980.

Myers also served six years in the Pennsylvania House before his 1976 election to Congress.

___

Follow AP Legal Affairs Writer Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale

source

GREENWOOD, Miss. (AP) — Funeral services were held Monday for the Mississippi prosecutor who worked on one of the renewed investigations into the 1955 lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till, a killing that galvanized the civil rights movement after his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral so people could see her son’s mutilated body.

Joyce Chiles died of lung cancer Thursday at a hospital in Ruleville, a coroner told the Greenwood Commonwealth. She was 67. Services were Monday in Itta Bena.

Chiles was elected in 2003 as district attorney for three Mississippi Delta counties — Leflore, Washington and Sunflower — and served one term before deciding not to seek reelection. She was the first Black person, and the first woman, to hold the position.

In 2007, Chiles presented evidence to a grand jury of Black and white Leflore County residents after investigators spent three years re-examining the killing of Till. The FBI exhumed Till’s body to prove that he, and not someone else, was buried at his gravesite in the Chicago suburb of Alsip. The grand jury declined to issue indictments against anyone.

The FBI had reopened the case in 2004 after filmmaker Keith Beauchamp compiled a list of at least 14 people — Black and white — he thought had some role in the kidnapping, beating and slaying of Till. He went to the authorities with the names of five people who were still alive. The Justice Department said the statute of limitations had expired on any potential federal crime, but the FBI worked with state investigators to determine if state charges could be brought.

Chiles told The Associated Press in 2007 that the renewed investigation did not produce evidence to support indictments.

″We are justice seekers and not head hunters,″ Chiles said.

Till, a 14-year-old Chicago resident, was visiting family in the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1955. He and other young people went to a country store in the town of Money, and relatives have told the AP that Till whistled at a white woman working there, Carolyn Bryant. They denied that he touched her, as Bryant had claimed.

Four days later, white men kidnapped Till from his uncle’s home and killed the teenager, then dumped his body into the Tallahatchie River. The mutilated body was found days later, weighted down by a cotton-gin fan.

After Till’s funeral in Chicago, Jet magazine published a photo of his body.

A jury of white men acquitted Carolyn Bryant’s husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam of murder charges a few weeks after the killing, but the two men later told Look magazine that they had abducted and killed Till.

In 2018, the Justice Department reopened an investigation after a 2017 book quoted Carolyn Bryant — by then known as Carolyn Bryant Donham — saying she lied when she claimed Till grabbed her and made sexual advances. The department closed that investigation in late 2021 without bringing charges.

The FBI again reopened an investigation this year after people searching the Leflore County Courthouse basement found an unserved arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant. In August, another Leflore County grand jury declined to indict her.

In the 2007 AP interview, Chiles said it would have been easy for members of the grand jury more than 50 years later to indict someone “based solely on the emotion and rage that they felt.” She commended them for not doing that.

Chiles said she had grown up on a plantation near where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.

Speaking of Donham, Chiles said: ″I didn’t feel good toward her; I still don’t feel good toward her.”

source