New Jersey
In South Carolina, Vice President Harris tells voters to continue MLK’s fight at the ballot box – New Jersey Monitor
Vice President Kamala Harris told a crowd gathered outside the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, that the freedoms Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for six decades ago are under attack, and voters must fight back at the ballot box.
King “dedicated his life, and in the end gave his life, to advance one of our nation’s highest ideals – the ideal of freedom,” Harris said in her roughly 15-minute speech at the NAACP’s annual King Day at the Dome event.
The NAACP named the theme “Ballots for Freedom, Ballots for Justice, Ballots for Change!”
Harris said the freedoms at risk this election year include LGBTQ rights and abortion access. South Carolina is among states across the South that have enacted strict restrictions or near-total bans on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a half century of precedent and returned the legality of abortions to state legislators last summer.
“Freedom is fundamental to the promise of America,” Harris said. Under assault, she continued, is “freedom from fear, violence and harm, freedom to vote, to live, to learn, to control one’s own body, and the freedom to simply be.”
Harris was the featured speaker less than three weeks before South Carolina Democrats go to the polls for the first presidential primary recognized by the national party. Early voting for the contest starts in just one week.
President Joe Biden is expected to win handily over two little-known challengers.
But state and national Democrats want a strong showing in South Carolina, where Black voters make up a large part of the party’s base, to galvanize support amid polls that show a drop in enthusiasm for Biden among Black voters nationally.
In her speech, Harris cited part of King’s famous 1963 “I Have a Dream” address in Washington, in which he called the words of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence a promissory note that all Americans would be guaranteed the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Harris quoted King, saying, “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. … So, we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.”
She told the people who marched Monday from Zion Baptist Church in downtown Columbia to the Statehouse they are an extension of King’s fight to make the promise a reality.
“Though we have come far, in this moment it is up to us to continue that fight, to cash that promissory note,” she said.
In conclusion, she said, “Freedom is never truly won. You earn it, and win it, in every generation.”
Harris’ attendance brought extra layers of security for the event hosted annually by the NAACP since 2000. Initially organized as a protest of the Confederate flag that, at the time, still flew from the Statehouse dome, King Day at the Dome has become a must-attend event for Democratic presidential campaigns.
In 2020, Biden was among presidential contenders walking arm in arm down Main Street to speak at the Statehouse. Harris had dropped out of the race a month earlier. The event then went virtual for two years amid the pandemic before resuming in person.
This year, people who walked the half-mile from the church, the event’s traditional start, had to go through metal detectors at a security checkpoint before being allowed on the Statehouse’s front lawn. It was also the first time that tall security glass separated the speakers from the audience.
Other high-profile Democrats in Columbia for the event included U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who gave the main speech at the church to start the day. Like King, he said, sometimes people must step forward without knowing the destination.
He quoted a Bible passage from Luke, when Jesus and his disciples are in a boat, and Jesus calms the sea.
King stepped forward into the storm, guided by faith, Jeffries said.
“When he would go into a town like Birmingham, or St. Augustine, or Selma, Alabama, he wasn’t greeted with wine and roses,” he said. “He was greeted with billy clubs and fire hoses.”
He called for the audience to carry on the fight for justice.
“You can’t get from your departure to your point of destination without encountering at some point along the way some turbulence,” Jeffries said.
The event attracted separate groups of protesters this year.
Some people held signs calling for reparations for Black Americans.
Others protested the Israel-Hamas war. Some of them were removed from Statehouse grounds by security. It’s unclear how many.
Monday’s speech was Harris’ second in South Carolina this month.
In Myrtle Beach on Jan. 6, she told a crowd mostly of Black women it was time to “roll up their sleeves” and organize for a second Biden term. That speech was given to the 7th Episcopal District African Methodist Episcopal Church Women’s Missionary Society retreat.
Biden himself campaigned last week at Mother Emanuel in Charleston, where he thanked Black voters in South Carolina for putting him in the White House. He will return one week before the Feb. 3 Democratic primary for the party’s “First in the Nation Celebration” dinner.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: [email protected]. Follow SC Daily Gazette on Facebook and Twitter.
New Jersey
Command and Control | FEATURE | New Jersey Devils
Command (6-1, 187 pounds) plays for Orebro’s junior club in the Swedish Hockey League. With the U20 Nationell team in 2025-26, he posted 17 goals and 44 points in 30 games while adding 13 points (5g-8a) in 14 playoff games. Command finished with three goals and seven points in seven games for Sweden as the top-line center in the World Under-18 Junior Championship to help his country win gold.
Command made his professional debut with six games played in the SHL while his draft stock soared late in the year.
Though Command had a good conversation with the Devils at the Combine, he was still surprised to hear his name called.
“I was just surprised and happy. Emotions all over the place,” he said. “So grateful for the people who helped me there.”
And of course, he shared his selection with his family, those who helped him get to this point.
“It means for me, pretty much the world,” he said of sharing the experience with his family. “It’s not me who’s getting drafted, it’s them also. So, I’m just happy for them also.”
Command’s family even got a chance to join him through a portion of the car wash. You know, where was asked to smile. But don’t let Command’s serious demeanor fool you. Smile or not, he’s ecstatic about how everything played out.
“As you can imagine, pretty much the best feeling for me I’ve ever had,” he said. “So, very, very happy. Very, very happy.”
And as far as his message to the organization and Devils fans, he had this to say with full-throated confidence.
“You made a good choice,” he said. “I’m happy to be here. I don’t think there’s more to it.
“I’m just getting started.”
New Jersey
New Jersey Supreme Court requires transparency for facial recognition evidence
Just like humans may err in recognizing faces, facial recognition technology (FRT) is not without its flaws. Multiple defendants have blamed the technology for wrongful arrests as more and more law enforcement agencies rely on the technology to identify suspects. Meanwhile, limits on its use vary from state to state and city to city.
A ruling this week regarding a murder case in New Jersey, however, forces law enforcement to disclose how this technology is used in criminal investigations in the state.
In State v. Tybear Miles, New Jersey’s Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors must disclose how FRT was used to identify defendant Tybear Miles, who had been charged with “first-degree murder and weapons offenses.”
The case stems from a 2021 fatal shooting in Jersey City. A day after the shooting, officers showed a confidential informant, who did not witness the incident, CCTV footage from a nearby location. The informant identified two males by their street names and Instagram usernames, according to the ruling. After the informant identified one of the males as “Fat Daddy,” police ran a photo from “Fat Daddy’s” Instagram page through a facial recognition module, which identified Miles as a potential match.
The ruling notes that the state provided the defendant with two different FRT searches as part of discovery. One search, according to the ruling, “returned a list of ten possible ‘matches’ to the probe image of [the] defendant, with [the] defendant ranked as the eighth ‘match’ on the list of ten.” Another search “returned a list of ten possible ‘matches,’ with five different images of [the] defendant ranked in the first five positions.”
Miles’ sister and ex-girlfriend both identified Miles from videos and still images from other nearby surveillance footage, according to the ruling. The ruling states that “no witness identified defendant as the shooter; there were several people near the victim while he was shot twice; and all of the police interviewees were shown video footage and still photographs from approximately ninety minutes before the murder and seven minutes before the murder.”
Miles’ defense demanded details about how FRT was used in the case, and the trial judge ordered prosecutors to hand over 13 items, citing precedent from an earlier case requiring prosecutors to hand over FRT discovery items, reported the New Jersey Monitor.
In Wednesday’s ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court partially upheld the lower court order, reported Reuters. Justice Douglas Fasciale wrote that the state is required to produce “discovery identifying the FRT tools and materials the State used in its investigation,” including the name and manufacturer of the software and publicly available information about its error rates. The state must also turn over items such as the original photograph used in the probe as part of discovery. The ruling does not, however, require the state to produce the “source code of the FRT algorithm and any similar proprietary information applicable to the FRT utilized by the State,” but, if warranted, a defendant could pursue a discovery request for the proprietary information.
“The right to a fair trial is guaranteed under the Federal and State Constitutions, and due process compels the State to disclose evidence favorable to an accused,” asserts the ruling.
The New Jersey Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed an amicus brief in the case, praised the ruling, and one of its attorneys called it a “major victory for civil liberties,” adding it is “one of the first state high court rulings of its kind.” Some states, including Maryland, Montana, and Washington, require law enforcement agencies to disclose the use of FRT to defendants before trial, but few laws and court rulings provide guidance about how the technology is used in the criminal justice system. Regardless of Miles’ guilt or innocence, the ruling is an encouraging sign that more states may recognize the need for transparency regarding FRT as law enforcement increasingly relies on the technology to track and identify suspects.
New Jersey
1 injured after vehicle hits tree in West Deptford, NJ
Friday, June 26, 2026 3:44AM
WEST DEPTFORD, N.J. (WPVI) — A serious crash is under investigation in West Deptford, New Jersey.
Chopper 6 was over the scene near Ogden Station Road and Foxton Court around 8:20 p.m. Thursday.
Authorities said a vehicle crashed into a tree.
At least one person was injured, though the extent of those injuries has not been released.
Officials have not said what led to the crash.
The investigation remains ongoing.
Copyright © 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.
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