Man who firebombed Boulder Israeli hostage march sentenced to life in prison
(JTA) — The man charged with carrying out a deadly firebombing attack on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, last year was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on May 7 after pleading guilty to murder and dozens of other charges.
Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national who was arrested at the scene of the attack on the demonstrators last June, pleaded guilty to 101 charges, including 52 counts of attempted murder and one count of murder for the death of Karen Diamond, an 82-year-old victim of the attack who later died of her wounds.
During the June attack, Soliman shouted “free Palestine” and threw two molotov cocktails at the group, Run for Their Lives, injuring over a dozen people. According to an earlier court filing, Soliman said that he had staged the attack, which prosecutors said he planned for a year, because he “wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.”
Soliman has separately pleaded not guilty to federal hate crime charges, for which prosecutors could potentially seek the death penalty.
“If I went back, I would not have done this as this is not according to the teaching of Islam,” Soliman said during the sentencing hearing, adding that he wanted federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty. “What I did came out of myself and only myself.”
Neo-Nazi, known as ‘commander butcher,’ gets 15 years for plot to poison Jewish kids in Brooklyn with candy
(JNS) — A Georgian national known as “Commander Butcher,” who admitted to plotting a mass-casualty attack targeting Jews and minorities in New York City, was sentenced on May 13 to 15 years in federal prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, a leader of the neo-Nazi extremist group Maniac Murder Cult, pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and distributing bomb-making and ricin instructions. He was extradited from Moldova.
Federal authorities said that the plot evolved into a plan to poison Jewish children in Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve by distributing candy laced with toxins, and that Chkhikvishvili tried to recruit someone to dress as Santa Claus and pass out the poisoned candy.
Prosecutors said that he encouraged followers through social media to carry out attacks against Jews, racial minorities and others, distributing a manifesto called the “Hater’s Handbook.”
According to prosecutors, Chkhikvishvili incited attacks in Nashville in 2025 and in Eskisehir, Turkey, in 2024.
“The defendant is a hate-mongering menace who intended to hurt and kill children in the Jewish community and in other minority communities in New York City,” stated Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
U.S. adults likeliest since 2002 to say religion gaining influence in America, Pew study suggests
(JNS) — The 37% of U.S. adults who say that religion is gaining influence in the country represents the highest percentage that the Pew Research Center has tracked since 2002, it said in its new survey of how Americans feel about the influence of religion in government and public life.
Pew surveyed more than 3,500 American adults in April and found that 61% think that religion is declining in influence in the United States, well above the 52% in 2002.
The poll also found that most Americans want houses of worship to stay away from politics and clergy to avoid (79%) endorsing candidates and that more people (59%) are familiar with the term “Christian nationalism.”
Pew found a small increase in American adults who said that Christianity should be declared the official national faith in 2026 (17%), compared to 13% in 2024. In that span, 55% of respondents said in April 2026 that they have a positive view of religion’s influence, up from 49% in September 2022.
Among respondents, 10% saw Christian nationalism in a positive way, up from 5% in September 2022, and 31% saw it as unfavorable, up from 24% in 2022.
Some 75% of Republicans, and those who lean right, said that religion has a positive influence in American life, compared to 38% of Democrats and those who lean left.
Long Island school district pays $125K to settle lawsuit over erased pro-Palestinian student art
(JTA) — A Long Island school district agreed to pay a $125,000 settlement to a former student whose pro-Palestinian artwork was painted over in a high school parking lot.
The lawsuit stemmed from a September 2024 incident at Half Hollow Hills High School West, which permitted seniors to decorate their campus parking spots. A Muslim-American student, who was a senior at the time, painted a watermelon featuring a keffiyeh pattern alongside her name in Arabic and the phrase “Peace be upon you” on her space.
At the time, protests against the war in Gaza were at a peak, and the watermelon and keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf, are both widely used symbols of Palestinian solidarity. The school painted over the artwork after it drew outcry from some Jewish parents in the district, determining that it had run afoul of the district’s rules barring political designs.
The settlement, which was approved by the Half Hollow Hills school board at a meeting on April 21, will be paid by the district’s insurance carrier, according to Superintendent John O’Farrell.
In a statement obtained by Newsday, O’Farrell said that students were no longer allowed to paint their parking spaces “following the incident and the disruption it caused.”
California mayor to plead guilty to acting as illegal Chinese agent
(JNS) — Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, Calif., has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California announced on Monday.
Wang, 58, faces up to 10 years in federal prison after agreeing to plead guilty to one felony count of acting as an unregistered foreign agent, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Federal prosecutors said Wang worked from late 2020 through 2022 at the direction of Chinese government officials to promote pro-Beijing propaganda in the United States. Wang, who was elected to the Arcadia City Council in 2022 and became mayor earlier this year through the council’s rotating leadership system, resigned from both posts May 10 after the case was unsealed.
According to court documents, Wang coordinated with Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 65, of Chino Hills, Calif., who is serving a four-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2025 to acting as an illegal foreign agent for China.
Prosecutors said Wang and Sun operated U.S. News Center, a Chinese-language website that presented itself as a local news outlet for Chinese Americans while publishing material supplied by Chinese officials.
The plea agreement states that Wang posted articles denying human-rights abuses in Xinjiang.
