Sarah Mervosh

Hashmi, who came from India to the United States at the age of 4, pulled up to the community college where she worked, parked her minivan and felt frozen with fear. As a Muslim who had lived in the United States nearly all her life, she wondered, did she still have a place in the country she called home?

She shed those doubts on Tuesday when she became the first Muslim to be elected to the Virginia state Senate, a milestone that comes amid a wave of Muslims running for elected office across the country and increased visibility for Muslim women in politics.

Hashmi, 55, upset the Republican incumbent to represent a district based in Chesterfield County, which includes suburban Richmond. Her victory helped to flip the Senate on a night that Democrats took control of both chambers and consolidated power across state government for the first time in a generation.

A former literature professor and community college administrator, Hashmi campaigned on issues that included improving education, taking action on gun control and expanding access to health care. In addition to becoming the first Muslim in the State Senate, she will be the first Muslim woman to serve in the Virginia General Assembly, according to her campaign. At least two Muslim men serve in the House.

“Muslims in America are just like any other American,” Hashmi said in an interview on Wednesday. “I have been a troop leader for Girl Scouts. I have been active in my daughters’ school and volunteer work. All the things that another suburban mom might be doing, I’ve been doing.”

Since 2016, more than 300 Muslim candidates, including more than 100 women, have run for elected office nationwide, according to a report tracking political involvement by Muslims.

Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan became the first Muslim women elected to Congress last year. And many others have run in smaller races across the country, such as Abrar E. Omeish, who won a seat Tuesday on the school board in Fairfax County, Virginia. She was among at least three Muslim women in Virginia who clinched down-ballot contests on Tuesday, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which tracks Muslim candidates for public office.

Mohammed Missouri, the executive director of Jetpac, which advocates Muslim political engagement, said the surge in Muslim candidates running for office in recent years has been among the largest since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. In part, he said, it is a direct response to open expressions of Islamophobia in the United States, including White House policies that critics see as anti-Muslim.

He said he had heard a common refrain from first-time candidates: “I can’t sit on the sidelines anymore.”

Similarly, after panicking in her minivan in 2017, Hashmi realized that she had two options: “I could continue to be quiet and accept things,” she said. “Or I really had to become much more visible.”

At a victory party on Tuesday night, supporters cheered and chanted her name. She smiled and addressed the crowd: “You’ve proven,” she said, “that Ghazala is truly an American name.”

This article originally appeared in

First Muslim Woman Is Elected to the Virginia Legislature

Ghazala Hashmi was on her way to work one winter morning in 2017 when she heard news on the radio that left her in a panic: President Donald Trump’s order banning refugees from certain Muslim countries was making headlines, and she was concerned about the possibility of a Muslim registry being created in the United States.

In all, at least 180,000 people who live amid the vineyards and mountains of Sonoma County were ordered to evacuate because of the Kincade fire. Shelters and hotels filled up quickly. So dozens of evacuees have taken refuge in the parking lot of a Walmart in Rohnert Park, California.

They are living out of their cars and their campers on the edges of the shopping center, forming a makeshift neighborhood. They arrived with folding chairs and generators, bags of dog food and boxes of Cheerios. Whatever they couldn’t bring, they tried to buy.

That’s one advantage of setting up camp outside a Walmart in a time of crisis: Basic necessities are only steps away.

At moments, the atmosphere can feel festive, with people knitting, cooking out and playing cards. But underneath it runs a current of dread. Many people here do not know the status of their homes, and some are worried about loved ones who are still in harm’s way.

Many have been through this unwelcome routine before.

Lila Frank, 85, and her daughter camped in the same Walmart parking lot when they evacuated during the Tubbs fire in 2017.

Linda Hochstetler, who made a cheeseburger for dinner this week, was also a return visitor after the Tubbs fire in 2017. “Walmart feels like home now,” she said.

Walmart has a history of allowing some temporary parking overnight. In this case, the store brought in portable toilets and washing stations to accommodate an “urgent and highly unusual situation.”

The parking lot was also a draw for pets, which are not accepted at every hotel or evacuation center.

Inside each camper, and behind each car window, lies a story of resilience and survival.

“Walmart is safe, lots of good people, and everything we need is accessible,” said Marcella King, who has been staying in the parking lot since she evacuated early Sunday.

“You can never be prepared,” said Larry Zwart, who evacuated from Sebastopol, California, with his wife and two dogs. “You don’t know if you are going to go home to a fire-ravaged home. All you can do is do the best you can.”

“All you want is a comfy chair and a book and then you’re slapped with this,” said Philip Brown, who, like many others, slept in the driver’s seat of his car. Still, he said, “I’m thankful.”

But this is California, and there’s a sense that this scene will play out again, sooner than they’d like. During the next big fire, they will once again need a place to go, as the orange sky fades into twilight.

'Walmart Feels Like Home Now' for These Fire Evacuees

The evacuation order came in the middle of the night. Across a fire-torn region of Northern California, families packed up, got in their cars and drove into the darkness. They did not know when — or if — they would be able to return home. But they knew where to go: Walmart.

The largest, the Kincade fire in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, nearly doubled in size in 24 hours and was just 5% contained Monday, prompting volunteers downwind in the Bay Area to scramble to hand out masks and check on homeless residents.

At the same time, a brush fire broke out early Monday on the western side of Los Angeles and quickly consumed 600 acres. That blaze, known as the Getty fire, led to complaints about air quality near the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, which canceled classes for the day. And smaller fires were burning as far north as Lake Mendocino and as far south as the mountains northeast of San Diego.

Here is what you need to know about the air quality in California this week, with some tips from experts on what to do about it.

How bad is the air?

Air quality is graded on a color-coded scale, with green for good quality, and yellow, orange, red and purple representing increasingly significant risks.

After the Getty fire broke out Monday, the Los Angeles area was experiencing moderately hazardous conditions — in the yellow category — with some locations recording air that was unhealthy for sensitive groups, coded orange.

The San Francisco Bay Area was also experiencing conditions in the orange range, with some “spikes” into the red range, which is generally considered unhealthy for everyone, according to Kristine Roselius, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

“It’s not great,” said Roselius, who recommended that people in the region stay indoors. Still, she said, the air quality in the Bay Area was not as bad as it was during the Camp fire, which blazed for more than two weeks in 2018, claimed dozens of lives and became the deadliest wildfire on record in California. “That was far more widespread, and it was higher levels,” she said of the air quality problems from that fire.

In general, wildfires come with a risk of breathing particulate matter, tiny pollutants too small to see individually that can cause a range of harmful effects when inhaled into the lungs.

“You’re breathing in some pretty nasty air,” said Steve LaDochy, a professor of geosciences and environment at California State University, Los Angeles. “It’s the fine particles that are the most dangerous — those are the ones that get into the lungs. You don’t see them, so you don’t know. But if you see smoke, there are definitely a lot of fine particles.”

What can I do to avoid exposure?

Young children, older adults, people with asthma and people with preexisting conditions are most at risk, but pollution from smoky air can affect even healthy adults.

When the air quality is poor, health experts recommend staying inside, closing windows to keep out smoky air, and using an air-conditioner with a recirculation option, if possible.

If you must go outside, experts recommend using a mask designed to keep out particulate matter.

What kind of mask should I use?

A surgical mask, scarf or bandanna will not do much to filter out many pollutants. Instead, experts recommend a respirator mask, such as a N95 face mask, which is designed to filter out 95% of airborne particles. Respirator masks can generally be found in hardware stores or bought online.

Mask Oakland, a grassroots group in the Bay Area that hands out masks to homeless people and other marginalized groups during hazardous air conditions, mobilized over the weekend. By Monday morning, the group had supplied about 3,000 masks to volunteers and community leaders to be distributed.

“I’m already getting emails this morning from schools and other centers,” said Quinn Redwoods, a director for the group. “People forget about us until people need a mask. I think there is a sense of collective denial that this is a worsening reality every year.”

Experts cautioned, though, that the masks should be used as a last resort.

“They need to be put on correctly, and that can take some degree of training,” said Dr. Kathryn Melamed, a pulmonologist at UCLA. She noted that the masks will not seal correctly if someone has facial hair, for example, and they can give people a false feeling of safety.

How can I track air quality near me?

The current and forecast air quality conditions anywhere in the United States can be checked on AirNow.gov, a website set up by the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies.

Melamed said people should also monitor their own symptoms when the air they are breathing is less than pristine. While dry eyes and a scratchy throat may simply be a reaction to low humidity in fire-prone areas, she said, a cough, shortness of breath or lightheadedness could also be a symptom of something more serious.

“Ultimately,” she said, “I would recommend that people stay indoors when the air quality is poor.”

Should You Wear a Face Mask for Wildfire Smoke?

With wildfires raging up and down the state of California on Monday, smoke filled the air in many places, ash fell from the sky, and residents were once again left to wonder whether the air they were breathing was safe.

The unrelenting rain took many residents by surprise. The storm that had barely earned a name — it briefly ranked as a tropical storm before being downgraded to a tropical depression — moved in and hovered over the region, rekindling memories from when Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rainfall in some areas and caused dozens of deaths in 2017.

So far, Imelda’s damage appeared less extensive, but just as devastating in certain areas: At least two people have died, including a man who drowned after being electrocuted while trying to move his horse and another whose car submerged underwater. Hundreds of homes have flooded. And residents whose homes were inundated two years ago were steeling themselves for what they might return to once the storm clouds moved out.

On Friday, public schools in Houston were closed. Officials were also scrambling to control barges that broke loose in Harris County and struck a bridge that carries traffic across the San Jacinto River. Officials, concerned about possible structural damage to the bridge, shut down Interstate 10 in both directions.

From Tuesday morning to Thursday night, much of southeast Texas absorbed more than 10 inches of rain. Areas southwest of Beaumont were hit hardest, with an extraordinary 43 inches near Fannett, Texas, enough to make Imelda the seventh wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States, according to the National Weather Service.

Southeast Texas typically sees about 63 inches of rainfall total in a given year.

Climate change tends to increase the amount of rainfall during storms, since a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, but scientists must evaluate individual storms after the fact to determine how climate change contributed. (Researchers found that the record rainfall during Harvey was as much as 38% higher than would be expected in a world that was not warming.)

Imelda's Toll in Texas: Flooding, Deaths and Fears About a Bridge

As the remnants of the former Tropical Storm Imelda moved north on Friday, residents in southeast Texas were assessing the damage from a storm that unexpectedly brought an onslaught of rain and flooding and became one the top 10 wettest storms in U.S. history.

Judge Jon S. Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California reinstated a nationwide injunction preventing implementation of the new asylum policy in response to a federal appeals court ruling that had limited his original ruling’s scope to border states in the West.

Tigar made findings, as outlined by the appellate judges, that applying the injunction across the country was necessary to maintain a “uniform immigration policy” and prevent “uneven enforcement.” Under the previous ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the administration had been prohibited from applying the new asylum limitations in California and Arizona, but not in New Mexico and Texas.

“We just sent an email to people on the ground in Texas saying, ‘Make sure none of your clients are subjected to this asylum ban,’ ” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and the lead lawyer on this case. “Because up to this morning, people were being denied asylum automatically if they traveled through another country.”

The latest ruling puts the asylum policy in the hands of the Supreme Court, which was already considering whether the Trump administration could enforce the policy while the case makes its way through the court system. The justices are expected to rule within the next few days.

The Justice Department said Monday that it had “sought relief” from the Supreme Court on the issue of nationwide injunctions, a practice that Attorney General William Barr denounced last week as a partisan tool and a threat to the nation’s democratic system.

“This latest ruling only highlights the urgency to resolve this crisis,” the Justice Department said in a statement.

The dispute stems from a new administration policy, announced this summer, that sought to deny asylum to migrants who failed to apply for protections in at least one country they passed through on their way north to the United States. Under the policy, Hondurans and Salvadorans would have to apply for — and be denied — asylum in Guatemala or Mexico before they would be eligible to apply for asylum in the United States. Guatemalans would have to be denied asylum in Mexico.

The rule reversed long-standing policies that allowed people to seek haven no matter how they got to the United States. It was immediately challenged by critics who said that requiring people to wait for asylum proceedings in other countries violated the law and put migrants in jeopardy.

Gelernt argued that migrants did not have access to fully functioning asylum systems in countries like Mexico and Guatemala. Moreover, he said, migrants could be easily found in such places by the people they are fleeing.

“It’s too dangerous for people to wait around in those countries,” he said. “For many people, this would have effectively been like a death sentence.”

He called the new administration policy “just another in a series of attempts by the administration to effectively end asylums for Central Americans at the southern border.”

In a Supreme Court brief, the solicitor general, Noel J. Francisco, said the policy was needed to address “an unprecedented surge in the number of aliens who enter the country unlawfully across the southern border and, if apprehended, claim asylum and remain in the country while their claims are adjudicated.”

Under the policy, only immigrants who have been denied asylum in another country or who have been victims of “severe” human trafficking are permitted to apply in the United States. “The rule thus screens out asylum-seekers who declined to request protection at the first opportunity,” Francisco wrote.

Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, said that he was frustrated with the asylum ruling by Tigar, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, and the “unprecedented judicial activism we’ve experienced.”

Judge Reinstates Nationwide Injunction on Trump Asylum Rule

A federal judge on Monday issued a nationwide order barring a Trump administration policy that denies asylum to migrants crossing the border unless they have already tried and failed to obtain asylum in another country along the way, a rule that effectively bans claims for most Central Americans fleeing persecution and poverty.

The bill, which narrowly passed in the Republican-controlled legislature on Friday, is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican. The measure generally prohibits the procedure after doctors can discern a fetal heartbeat, a milestone that happens around six weeks of pregnancy — before some women know they are pregnant.

Georgia’s so-called fetal heartbeat bill passed as momentum for similar proposals is building in several Republican-controlled state capitals. The governors in Mississippi and Kentucky signed fetal heartbeat measures into law in recent weeks, and other states — including Florida, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas — are expected to approve similar measures this year.

But the efforts have so far not gained traction in the courts, which quickly halted the fetal heartbeat bill from taking effect in Kentucky and found similar measures in Iowa and North Dakota unconstitutional. The measures clash with Supreme Court decisions that have recognized a woman’s right to an abortion until a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

Opponents of abortion have said that is part of the intent: to land a new case before the Supreme Court, which became more conservative with the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh last year, lending urgency to the question of whether Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal nationwide, could be overturned or weakened.

Those tensions were on display in Georgia, where last year’s tight race for governor showed how politically divided the traditionally red state has become and where women’s health care is a key issue. The state has faced a shortage of obstetricians and has one of the highest maternal death rates in the country.

At the state Capitol this month, anti-abortion activists were joined by protesters opposing the bill, including some dressed as characters from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” wearing the red robes and white bonnets that have become a symbol for women’s rights.

On the eve of the vote, about 50 Hollywood actors, including Alyssa Milano, Amy Schumer and Ben Stiller, wrote an open letter threatening to pull business out of the state, which is a hub for filming movies and television shows.

“We want to continue to support the wonderful people, businesses and communities we have come to love in the Peach State,” according to the letter, which was dated Thursday and addressed to the governor and the speaker of the House of Representatives. “But we will not do so silently, and we will do everything in our power to move our industry to a safer state for women if H.B. 481 becomes law.”

The American Civil Liberties Union also promised to go to court if the bill becomes law.

“For 50 years the Supreme Court has said that banning abortions before the point of viability is unconstitutional,” Sean J. Young, the legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, said on Saturday. “Every judge that has heard a challenge to such abortion bans has struck them down.”

A spokesman for Kemp could not be reached Saturday. The governor campaigned on a promise to sign tough abortion laws and said he welcomed the chance to “fight for life at the Capitol and in the courtroom.” On Friday, he praised lawmakers for their leadership and courage.

“We stand up for the innocent and speak for those who cannot speak for themselves,” he said on Twitter. “The legislature’s bold action reaffirms our priorities and who we are as a state.”

The bill would effectively change the limit on abortion in Georgia to six weeks from 20 weeks. The measure allows exceptions to prevent death or serious harm to the woman, in cases in which the pregnancy is “medically futile” because the fetus would not be able to live after birth, and in cases of rape or incest in which a police report has been filed.

Genevieve Wilson, a spokeswoman for Georgia Right to Life, said the group supported the measure until exceptions were added.

“While HB 481 contains some strong personhood components, such as declaring babies in the womb natural persons, we are very saddened that it also denies equal justice and equal protection for subclasses of children in the womb,” she said Saturday.

On Friday, tensions flashed at the state Capitol as the bill, which needed 91 votes to pass, was approved 92-78. As a crowd gathered in the hallway, activists shouted, “Shame!”

Erica Thomas, a Democratic state representative who is pregnant with her second child, threatened to stand outside the governor’s office in protest of his signing the bill. Thomas said Saturday that she hoped the bill would be struck down by the courts but she lamented that the measure had gone forward “doing nothing but to divide us.”

“I hate that we have to get to the point where we are at the will of the courts,” she said. “I wish we would be at the will of the people.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/georgia-fetal-heartbeat-abortion-law.html" id="0156ec90-afde-3ab4-abf8-950565234284">The New York Times</a>.

Tensions over a growing movement to ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected intensified this week as lawmakers in Georgia passed a bill that stands to become one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country.

Georgia Is Latest State to Pass Fetal Heartbeat Bill as Part of Growing Trend

The student, Raniya Wright, had gotten into a fight with another fifth-grade student at Forest Hills Elementary School on Monday and collapsed, according to officials in Colleton County, about an hour west of Charleston.

Emergency workers who responded to a 911 call found Raniya “unconscious but breathing” at the school nurse’s station and rushed her to the hospital, authorities said. By Wednesday morning, her mother said in a Facebook post, her “baby girl” had gotten her “wings.”

It was unclear what led to the fight. The other student was suspended, school officials said, and authorities were investigating. An autopsy was scheduled for Friday.

“Raniya was a wonderful student,” said a statement Wednesday from the office of the superintendent of the Colleton County School District. “She loved to write, spend time with her friends, play basketball and loved being a big sister. She was actively involved in her church as a junior usher. She will be missed greatly.”

“Our entire school district is saddened by this event,” the statement said. “It is very difficult to experience the death of a young person.”

In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Raniya’s mother suggested that bullying may have been a factor. She posted a photo of her kissing her daughter’s cheek, as Raniya lay unresponsive, wearing a neck brace and hooked up to tubes. “Stay woke PARENTS!” she wrote. Attempts to reach her on Thursday were not immediately successful.

A spokesman for the school district said Thursday that he could not comment on whether bullying had played a role, citing a continuing investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Colleton County Sheriff’s Office described the episode as a “physical altercation” and said no weapons were used.

No arrests or criminal charges had been made, she said. The other student is a minor and has not been identified.

Though information was scarce, Raniya’s death was a stunning development to what felt like a familiar issue to parents in the South Carolina community and beyond, leading to a discussion about the challenges facing young students and their families today.

News 2, a television station in Charleston, reported that a group of parents met at a library in Colleton County on Wednesday to discuss what they see as a problem with bullying in the district.

Online, condolences poured in for Raniya’s family. A GoFundMe account had raised more than $40,000 by Thursday morning, with messages of support from other parents — “To a mother from a mother” — and those who had experiences with bullying themselves. “I see myself in your beautiful daughter,” wrote one person who recalled being picked on in elementary school.

Forest Hills Elementary School had about 700 students as of the 2016-17 school year. There were 44 classroom teachers, with a student to teacher ratio of 15.77, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The elementary school had about 50 student behavior incidents that led to out-of-school suspensions last school year, according to data provided by district officials.

A special meeting of the Colleton County school board was scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/us/raniya-wright-death.html" id="7f90e5a8-a3af-37df-aba9-352ae9623dc5">The New York Times</a>.

A fifth-grade student in South Carolina has died after a fight at her elementary school this week, a devastating outcome that left her community shocked with grief and spurred a discussion about how to handle painful issues of bullying and violence in the classroom.

Fifth-Grader Dies After Fight at School in South Carolina, Officials Say

The teenager, who was not identified, is believed to have published a post on the web forum 4chan that threatened an “ethnic cleansing” at Charlottesville High School, authorities said.

The post set off a rapid investigation and prompted the Charlottesville public school district, which serves about 4,300 students from kindergarten to high school, to shut down all of its campuses Thursday and Friday.

By midday Friday, the Charlottesville Police Department had announced that a suspect was in custody and had been charged with threatening to commit serious bodily harm on a school property, as well as harassment.

The teenager, who lives in the area, is not a student at Charlottesville High School, Chief RaShall M. Brackney of the Charlottesville Police Department said at a news conference Friday afternoon.

Brackney condemned the “vile, racially charged” threat against students in Charlottesville, which is still dealing with the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally nearly two years ago. The tensions that broke out in August 2017 thrust the city, often considered a bastion of Southern progressivism, into a national conversation about Confederate statues, racism and economic disparities.

“We want the community and the world to know that hate is not welcomed in Charlottesville, violence is not welcomed in Charlottesville, intolerance is not welcomed in Charlottesville,” Brackney said Friday.

Images posted on social media appeared to show a copy of the post on 4chan, an anonymous web forum where offensive views proliferate. A user who claimed to be affiliated with Charlottesville High School promised an “ethnic cleansing in my school” and, using slurs, threatened to kill African-American and Hispanic people.

When asked about the race of the suspect, the chief did not answer directly, saying only that the teenager “identifies as Portuguese.”

Rosa Atkins, superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools, said the district planned to reopen schools by Monday morning.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/charlottesville-schools-closed-threat.html" id="0a26b769-b8c6-3455-add4-3218d04fe991">The New York Times</a>.

Authorities in Charlottesville, Virginia, arrested a 17-year-old boy Friday in connection with an online threat targeting black and Hispanic students, bringing a sense of relief to a saga that had forced the closing of the city’s public schools for two straight days.

Teenager Arrested in Charlottesville After Racist Online Threat Shuts Schools for 2 Days

The post set off a rapid investigation and prompted the Charlottesville public school district, which serves about 4,300 students from kindergarten to high school, to shut down all its campuses Thursday and Friday.

Brackney condemned the “vile, racially charged” threat against students in Charlottesville, which is still dealing with the aftermath of a deadly white supremacist rally nearly two years ago. The tensions that broke out in August 2017 thrust the city, often considered a bastion of Southern progressivism, into a national conversation about Confederate statues, deep-seated racism and economic disparities.

Referencing language President Donald Trump used when he blamed “both sides” for violence at the rally, the police chief added: “In Charlottesville and around the globe, we stand firmly in stating: there are not very fine people on both sides of this issue.”

Since hordes of people with guns, swastikas and Confederate flags descended on the city, in a rally that featured beatings, brawls and a car that plowed into a crowd of anti-racist counterprotesters, killing one of them, the people of Charlottesville have seen a drastic overhaul of the city’s leadership and engaged in conversations about what kind of city Charlottesville is going to be.

The city is grappling with deep-seated inequity, including in its school system. Charlottesville City Schools, where students are about 40 percent white, 30 percent black and 12 percent Hispanic, has one of the widest educational disparity gaps in the United States.

Christine Esposito, an elementary schoolteacher in the district, said in an interview Friday that the online threat and the upheaval that followed had exacerbated wounds “that are already present and we are already trying to deal with.”

She added, “The person who made the threat clearly understood what is going on in Charlottesville and what it feels like to live in Charlottesville.”

Authorities first learned about the threat Wednesday afternoon and worked to determine its credibility before making an arrest around 6 a.m. Friday.

When asked about the race of the suspect, the chief did not answer directly, saying only that the teenager “identifies as Portuguese.” Authorities have declined to name him because he is a minor.

While white supremacist hatred long predates sites like 4chan or Reddit, online platforms can create and reinforce extremist beliefs. And extremist behavior online has preceded real-life violence in recent instances.

The suspect in a mass shooting that killed 50 people at mosques in New Zealand last week seemed to have planned the attack as an online performance. He teased his act on Twitter, announced it on the online message board 8chan and appeared to have posted a 74-page manifesto online before streaming the massacre on Facebook.

And last year, hours before a gunman barged into a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people, authorities say he posted a signoff on Gab, a social network that bills itself as a “free speech” alternative to Facebook and Twitter, and that has become a haven for white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other extremists.

In another instance, the suspect accused of sending explosive devices to prominent Democrats last year appeared to have been radicalized online.

“Even though this threat has been resolved, the fear and anxiety that it provoked is real,” Rosa Atkins, superintendent of Charlottesville City Schools, said at the news conference Friday.

She said the district planned to reopen schools by Monday morning.

In an email to families, Atkins urged strength and solidarity in the face of hate.

“We will NOT let this divide us, either as a school or as a city or even as a region,” she wrote.

Officials said the district had worked with community groups over the past two days to send pizza and fruit to low-income students who typically got free meals at school.

Esposito said she spent part of her day Friday visiting students in their neighborhoods, taking them snacks and navigating complex conversations about what had happened.

“Trying to figure out how to explain to an 8-year-old why they are at home on a Friday,” she said, “is really hard.”

In the aftermath of the white supremacist rally, she said, her fourth-grade students worked on a yearlong project examining the history of Charlottesville, “as a way of processing what happened.”

“At this point, it’s almost cumulative,” Esposito said. “You think you’re over the worst part and then something else happens. And you realize you’re not over the worst part — and maybe you’ll never be.”

A 17-year-old boy was arrested and charged in connection with the threat, which appeared to have targeted black and Hispanic students.

The Charlottesville public school district, which serves about 4,300 students from kindergarten to high school, had shut down all of its campuses Thursday and announced that schools would remain closed Friday to prioritize the safety of students.

“We would like to acknowledge and condemn the fact that this threat was racially charged,” Charlottesville City Schools said in a message to the community. “We do not tolerate hate or racism.

“The entire staff and School Board stand in solidarity with our students of color — and with people who have been singled out for reasons such as religion or ethnicity or sexual identity in other vile threats made across the country or around the world,” the message continued. “We are in this together, and a threat against one is a threat against all.”

Chief RaShall M. Brackney of the Charlottesville Police Department said that while two days of no school may have caused inconveniences, “the safety of our students and staff was the top priority.”

The back-to-back days of school closures came amid a backdrop of racial tension in Charlottesville, a city that was home to a deadly white supremacist rally in 2017 and where resistance to Confederate statues spurred a movement to remove similar symbols across the country.

A spokesman for Charlottesville police declined to specify the details of the online threat, other than to say that it contained “biased-based language” and “targeted specific ethnic groups.”

But images posted on social media indicate the threat was made on 4chan, an anonymous web forum. A user who claimed to be affiliated with Charlottesville High School promised an “ethnic cleansing in my school” and, using slurs, threatened to kill African-American and Hispanic people.

The 17-year-old, who was not identified, was charged with threatening to commit serious bodily harm on a school property, as well as harassment.

Authorities in Charlottesville, Virginia, arrested a teenage boy Friday in connection with an online threat made against “specific ethnic groups” at the public high school there, as the city’s schools remained closed for the second day in a row.

The back-to-back days of school closures came amid a backdrop of racial tension in Charlottesville, a city that was home to a deadly white supremacist rally in 2017 and where resistance to Confederate statues spurred a movement to remove similar symbols in cities across the country.

The events of two years ago prompted a drastic overhaul of the city’s leadership and forced soul-searching on how to address racial and economic disparities in Charlottesville, often considered a bastion of Southern progressivism.

But the city is still grappling with deep-seated inequity, including in its school system. Charlottesville City Schools, where students are about 40 percent white, 30 percent black and 12 percent Hispanic, has one of the widest educational disparity gaps in the United States.

But images posted on social media indicate that the threat was made on 4chan, an anonymous web forum where countercultural and offensive views proliferate. A user who claimed to be affiliated with Charlottesville High School promised an “ethnic cleansing in my school” and, using slurs, threatened to kill African-American and Hispanic people.

Last week, the suspect in a mass shooting that killed 50 people at mosques in New Zealand seemed to have planned the attack as an online performance. He teased his act on Twitter, announced it on online message board 8chan and appeared to have posted a 74-page manifesto online before streaming the massacre on Facebook.

Charlottesville school officials said Friday that they would return to the normal school schedule as soon as possible. In the meantime, they said the district was working with community groups to send pizza and fruit to low-income students who typically got free meals at school.

In a statement, the superintendent, Rosa Atkins, said that erring on the side of caution was appropriate to protect students in the face of a possible threat.

“A threat — credible or not — has real impact,” she said. “It affects you emotionally and it impacts your psyche. It causes people to question the safety of their school environment, which should be considered a sanctuary, a safe place for adults and students alike.”

The measure, which was signed into law Friday by the state’s Republican governor, Matt Bevin, and was set to take effect immediately, was poised to become one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country.

But late Friday, the judge, David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky, ruled the law was potentially unconstitutional. He halted enforcement for at least 14 days to “prevent irreparable harm” until he could hold a hearing.

The ruling came amid a yearslong effort to curb abortions in Kentucky, which has one remaining abortion clinic. Several other states are considering similar measures, known as heartbeat bills, as states move to restrict — or shore up access to — abortion in anticipation of a more conservative Supreme Court possibly ruling on the issue.

The Kentucky law was one of two measures seeking to restrict abortion that were passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature this week but are now being contested. The other, a bill that prohibits abortion if a woman wants to end her pregnancy because of the diagnosis of a disability in the fetus, among other reasons, is awaiting approval from the governor.

The American Civil Liberties Union challenged both measures in a lawsuit filed this week on behalf of EMW Women’s Surgical Center, the state’s only licensed abortion clinic.

“We think this is a very straightforward legal issue,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said Saturday. “States can’t ban abortion. It has been well settled over 40 years ago in Roe v. Wade.”

The judge on Friday did not address the second bill and Amiri said the group planned to ask the judge for a ruling on it after it was signed into law.

Steve Pitt, general counsel to the governor, said Saturday that ruling was not unexpected “given the minimal amount of briefing that has occurred.”

“This case or others like it from other states will result in major changes in abortions in the U.S. in the near future,” he said. “The ACLU, Planned Parenthood and others favoring unlimited abortions know this and are in a panic.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/us/kentucky-fetal-heartbeat-abortion-law.html" id="c4bab73f-7bfd-3ca0-a9df-b92b38bf8c7c">The New York Times</a>.

A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked a Kentucky law that prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which typically happens around six weeks into pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.

Judge Blocks Kentucky Fetal Heartbeat Law That Bans Abortion After 6 Weeks

The measure, which was signed into law on Friday by the state’s Republican governor, Matt Bevin, and was set to take effect immediately, was poised to become one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country.

But late on Friday, the judge, David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky, ruled the law was potentially unconstitutional. He halted enforcement for at least 14 days to “prevent irreparable harm” until he could hold a hearing.

Representatives from Bevin’s office could not be reached for comment Saturday. The governor has made anti-abortion legislation a priority of his administration and has welcomed the chance to fight for protections in court.

In a video message on Friday, he chided his “good friends at the ACLU” for challenging the second bill, which would ban abortions based on a fetus’ disability, sex or race, before it had been signed into law and suggested they needed a civics refresher from “Schoolhouse Rock!” on how legislation works.

“They frankly don’t care whether they are following the law or not,” said Bevin, who has expressed support for the bill. “They simply want to push their ideology.”

The landscape of the Supreme Court changed last year after Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, seen as a reliable conservative, replaced the court’s longtime swing vote, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who retired. The change added urgency to the question of whether Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal nationwide, would survive the Trump administration.

But legal experts have suggested that any developments, at least in the near term, will most likely come at the state level, with states succeeding in smaller cases that limit — but not eliminate — the right to an abortion. Other states, including Iowa and North Dakota, have passed similarly prohibitive fetal heartbeat measures only to have them swiftly voided by the courts as unconstitutional.

Supreme Court decisions have given women a right to abortion until a fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Amiri said the fetal heartbeat bill would effectively eliminate abortion in Kentucky. About 90 percent of abortions in the state are performed after six weeks, according to the lawsuit. The law would make an exception for procedures that were necessary to prevent death or serious risk to the woman.

She said Hale’s ruling came as a “tremendous relief.”

“The clinic sees patients today, and before we got the ruling yesterday, they were in the process of canceling appointments,” Amiri said Saturday. “It means they will be able to provide care today and that is incredibly important to every person who comes to the clinic.”

Amiri said the fetal heartbeat bill would effectively eliminate abortion in Kentucky. About 90 percent of abortions in the state are performed after six weeks, according to the lawsuit.

The new editor and publisher, Elecia R. Dexter, said she wanted to make the newspaper, The Democrat-Reporter, more reflective of the community it serves in Linden, a small town in western Alabama that is about 59 percent white and 41 percent black.

But now, after only a few weeks, Dexter has stepped down.

Her departure this week, which she attributed to continuing interference from the editor she was meant to replace, complicates the future of the weekly newspaper, which was once hailed for its journalism, and reflects the thorny reality that healing from racially hurtful acts is rarely a one-and-done process.

“I would have liked it to turn out a different way, but it didn’t,” Dexter, 46, said in an interview Friday. “This is a hard one because it’s sad — so much good could have come out of this.”

Her predecessor, Goodloe Sutton, came under intense criticism last month after he wrote an editorial that railed against “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats” and called for the return of the most infamous white supremacist group in the nation’s history.

When a white newspaper editor in Alabama drew widespread condemnation for an editorial that called for the Ku Klux Klan to ride again, only to be replaced by a black woman who hoped to take the newspaper in a new direction, it seemed like a symbolic moment.

Sarah Mervosh

Articles written by the author

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