• The number of homicides in six major cities across the country has increased compared to last year, disproportionately affecting black people, according to crime data.
• “We are seeing an uptick in violent crime across the country, specifically gun violence,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told The New York Times.
• In Chicago, black people have been the victims of roughly 81 percent of the 317 murders in the first six months of 2021, data shows. They were the victims of about 70 percent of the 295 murders committed in the first six months of 2020.
• “I am proud to lead a City Council that took the first step to responsibly reduce Baltimore’s budget dependence on policing,” former Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott, who is now the city’s mayor, said after the council voted to strip funding from the city’s police last year, the Baltimore Sun reported.

The number of homicides in six major cities across the country has increased compared to last year, disproportionately affecting black people, according to crime data.

Black people have represented a massive share of murder victims in six major cities through the first six months of 2021 compared to last year, which itself saw a large crime surge, according to data analyzed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The DCNF analyzed both police department data and homicide reports compiled by local news outlets to determine how black people have been victimized in the wake of the 2020 crime spike.

“We are seeing an uptick in violent crime across the country, specifically gun violence,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told The New York Times earlier this month.

The DCNF collected homicide data from Chicago, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Indianapolis, some of the only cities in which such data is readily available. Most major cities have limited statistics tracking 2021 murders and homicide victims.

The percentage of murder victims in Chicago that were black increased from 70 percent in 2020 to 81 percent in 2021 while that figure increased from 60 percent to 90 percent year-over-year in Milwaukee, the data showed. In one of the cities analyzed, the percentage of black victims decreased, but the raw number of black victims still increased.

Democratic leaders of most of the cities examined voted to greatly reduce police funding amid widespread Black Lives Matter protests last year. In the wake of the death of George Floyd, who died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck in May 2020, thousands of protests and riots took place across the country.

University of Missouri criminologist Richard Rosenfeld blamed the uptick in violence seen nationwide on the lack of trust between police and citizens, according to the NYT.

“When police legitimacy is greatly reduced, you get more crime because people are no longer relying on the criminal justice system for assistance,” Rosenfeld told the NYT. “People are less willing to cooperate with police in investigations, less willing to report crimes or other problems to the police, and more willing to take matters into their own hands.”

While murder statistics in just six cities were analyzed, the number of homicides has spiked roughly 18 percent across the country compared to 2020, according to a random sample of 37 cities, the NYT reported. In 2020, the number of murders increased by 36.7 percent compared to 2019, according to data analytics reporter Jeff Asher.

As Violent Crime SURGES across America, some politicians and some in the media are gaslighting the public into thinking the Police are the Problem…

Homicides:
Atlanta ⬆️ 58%
Portland ⬆️ 533%
Philadelphia ⬆️ 37%

Shootings:
New York City ⬆️ 64%
Los Angeles ⬆️ 51%
Chicago ⬆️ 18% pic.twitter.com/5RbhbKY312

— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) June 22, 2021

Chicago, Illinois

At least 317 total homicides were committed in Chicago between Jan. 1, 2021 and June 22, 2021, according to a Chicago Sun-Times database. In that same period last year, 295 murders were committed.

While black people represented 207 of the murder victims in Chicago through the period last year ending on June 22, 2020, they represented a whopping 257 of the victims this year, according to the Sun-Times database. That means black people have been the victims of roughly 81 percent of murders this year while they were the victims in about 70 percent of 2020 murders.

Meanwhile, Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed an $80 million cut to Chicago Police Department funding in October, according to Injustice Watch.

“While we will slow the rate of growth, with a resulting $80 million in corporate fund savings, on my watch we will never make cuts or policy changes that inhibit the core mission of the police department, which is to serve and protect,” Lightfoot said, according to the Sun-Times.

Illinois became the first state to completely abolish its cash bail system earlier this year, NBC News reported. The legislation laid out a new, stricter decision-making process for judges to determine if a person charged with a crime presents a threat.

“This legislation marks a substantial step toward dismantling the systemic racism that plagues our communities, our state, and our nation and brings us closer to true safety, true fairness, and true justice,” Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker said after signing the bill in February, according to NBC News.

Baltimore, Maryland

In Baltimore, black people represented 69 of the 152, or 45 percent, of total murder victims between Jan. 1, 2021, and June 17, 2021, according to a Baltimore Sun database.

While murder statistics between that same period in 2020 were unavailable, black people were the victims of 130, or 39 percent, of the 335 total homicides committed in Baltimore for all of last year, the database showed.

The majority of murder victims in 2020 and 2021 were listed without racial information in the Baltimore Sun database. Black people represented the vast majority of victims with their race listed.

But the Baltimore City Council agreed to cut $22 million from the city’s police budget in June 2020, according to the Baltimore Sun.

“I am proud to lead a City Council that took the first step to responsibly reduce Baltimore’s budget dependence on policing,” former City Council President Brandon Scott, who is now the city’s mayor, said after the vote, the Baltimore Sun reported. “This is just the beginning, and I intend to continue leading this process to redirect our public dollars and reimagine public safety in Baltimore.”

In March, Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the city’s top prosecutor, announced she would no longer prosecute prostitution, drug possession, or other minor offenses, NBC affiliate WBAL-TV reported.

After multiple shootings in a popular area of Baltimore earlier this month, 37 businesses threatened to stop paying taxes unless Scott addressed surging crime, according to Fox affiliate WBFF-TV. The business owners argued that allowing minor crime to continue leads to major violent crimes.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The number of total murders increased in Milwaukee from 75 in the period between Jan. 1, 2020, and June 17, 2020, to 87 committed over that same period this year, according to murder reports compiled by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Black people were the victims of 79, or 90 percent, of the total murders this year, the database showed. While isolated victim data wasn’t available for the first six months of 2020, black people represented 74 percent of all murder victims in Milwaukee last year.

The Milwaukee Common Council approved a police budget cut in November that reduced the department by 120 officers, the Journal Sentinel reported.

“Although the proposed budget cut would undoubtedly impact the operations of the Milwaukee Police Department, we remain committed to working and engaging with our community, elected officials, and public safety partners to ensure that all of our neighborhoods are safe, vibrant and livable,” the department said in a statement after Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett proposed the budget, according to the Journal Sentinel.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

In Pittsburgh, black people made up 90 percent of murder victims between January and April, according to county data. In comparison, 60 percent of murder victims during the same time period last year were black.

There were 20 murders between January and April this year and 10 in that same period in 2020, according to Allegheny County. Data beyond April 31, 2021, hasn’t been made available.

The Pittsburgh City Council approved a police department hiring freeze in July 2020, according to WPXI-TV. The council also ordered the department to redirect 10 percent of the budget to social service programs every year.

The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police said the actions would “greatly impact” its ability to increase diversity within its ranks, WPXI reported.

Los Angeles, California

Between Jan. 1, 2020 and June 21, 2020, black people were the victims of 92 of the 272 homicides committed in Los Angeles County, which includes the city and surrounding communities, according to a Los Angeles Times database. In the same period this year, they represented 103 of the 315 total homicides.

The data showed that the share of black murder victims in the county has stayed level at around 33 percent year-over-year. However, the uptick in violence this year has caused at least 11 additional deaths in Los Angeles County’s black community compared to last year.

Hispanic people, who are the largest demographic group in the county, accounted for the majority of murder victims in Los Angeles County in both 2020 and 2021 while black people accounted for the second-highest number of murder victims, according to the database. Hispanic people were the victims of 50 percent of the murder victims between Jan. 1, 2020 and June 21, 2020 and 57 percent of the victims in that same period this year.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a $150 million cut to the city’s police department in July 2020, ABC affiliate KABC-TV reported. Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti supported the massive budget cuts.

“It will take years to recover from that,” Los Angeles Police union spokesman Dustin DeRollo told the DCNF last summer. “And it will result immediately with less officers patrolling the streets.”

“What that means simply is longer response times to emergency calls,” he continued. “It means less time to do community-based policing like building relationships in neighborhoods. And it also will mean less ability to implement the training that everybody wants our officers to have.”

But, amid the increased violent crime, the Los Angeles County Metro unanimously approved a $36 million budget boost for transit police in March. Garcetti, who serves on the Metro’s board, voted in favor of the budget increase.

Indianapolis, Indiana

Black people represented 58 of the 98 murder victims in Indianapolis between Jan. 1, 2021 and June 1, 2021, according to a homicide database created by the Indianapolis Star. Last year, black people were the victims in 53 of the city’s 70 total murders.

While the percentage of homicide victims who were black decreased from 75 percent to 59 percent in that period, the number of total black homicide victims still increased, the data showed.

Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett resisted calls for defunding the city’s police department budget last year, the Indianapolis Recorder reported. Instead, he proposed a $7 million police budget increase.

Homicides Have Skyrocketed in These Six Democratic Cities; Black People Are Disproportionately the Victims, Data Shows (theepochtimes.com)

‘Crime Is Skyrocketing In Many Big Cities,’ But Some Jurisdictions Have Cut Police Budgets In Response To ‘Defund The Police’ Demands And Many Others Are Rapidly Losing Police Officers

SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): “From coast to coast, American families are facing an explosion of violent crime on their streets and in their neighborhoods. 2020 saw homicides skyrocket nationwide. The sharpest one-year increase in decades. And 2021 is already shaping up to be even worse…. Crime and delinquency have many causes. In some ways, the pandemic likely contributed. But it is impossible to ignore that these terrible trends are coming precisely as so-called ‘progressives’ have decided it’s time to denounce and defund local law enforcement. Seattle cut police funding by 20%. Minneapolis defunded cops by millions of dollars. The District of Columbia’s city council approved $15 million in cuts. These bone-headed decisions are the direct result of an anti-law-enforcement fad that has swept through the political left like a wildfire…. So, look, I’m not sure exactly how the rantings of far-left Twitter about crime and policing became official Democratic Party dogma in so many places across America. What I do know is that ordinary Americans cannot bear much more of this. And that goes double for the most vulnerable neighborhoods.” (Sen. McConnell, Remarks, 5/27/2021)

FLASHBACK: Far-Left Democrats: ‘No More Policing,’ ‘We Need To Disinvest From Police,’ ‘Defunding Police Means Defunding Police’

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): “Defunding police means defunding police.” (“Ocasio-Cortez Dismisses Proposed $1B Cut: ‘Defunding Police Means Defunding Police’,” The Hill, 6/30/2020)

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): “I will never stop saying, ‘Not only do we need to disinvest from police but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.’” (“‘Defund The Police’ Movement Hits Semantics Roadblock,” The Hill, 6/14/2020)

REP. CORI BUSH (D-MO): “Defunding the police isn’t radical, it’s real.” (Rep. Bush, @CoriBush, Twitter, 1/27/2021)

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): “… Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist. … I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.” (Rep. Tlaib, @RashidaTlaib, Twitter, 4/12/2021)

REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY (D-MA): “From slave patrols to traffic stops. We can’t reform this.” (Rep. Pressley, @AyannaPressley, Twitter, 4/12/2021)

And Sure Enough, Left-Wing Activists ‘Successfully Pushed For $840 Million In Police Spending Cuts Across The U.S.’

“According to Interrupting Criminalization, an initiative at the Barnard Center for Research on Women that supports defunding the police, organizers successfully pushed for $840 million in police spending cuts across the U.S., and $160 million in shifts to other social programs. Cities cut another $35 million by canceling contracts with police departments to patrol schools, the center said.” (“Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime,” The Wall Street Journal, 5/26/2021)

• “Last summer, nearly half of 258 police agencies surveyed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said their budgets had been cut or were likely to be cut. The cuts hit purchases of new police equipment hardest, followed by training, hiring new officers and overtime spending, the survey found.” (“Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime,” The Wall Street Journal, 5/26/2021)

In 2020, The United States Had ‘The Largest Single One-Year Increase In Homicides Since The Country Started Keeping Such Records’

“2020 has been a killer year in every way, including murder. The United States has experienced the largest single one-year increase in homicides since the country started keeping such records in the 20th century, according to crime data and criminologists.” (“2020 Saw An Unprecedented Spike In Homicides From Big Cities To Small Towns,” The Washington Post, 12/30/2020)

• “It is a trend mirrored across the country, where crime is skyrocketing in many big cities, putting liberal leaders under pressure to balance the demands of activists against the concerns of some residents about rising violence. In New York, where homicides grew by nearly 45 percent last year, crime is dominating the discussion in the race for mayor…. Even smaller cities haven’t been spared the rise in violence: Louisville last year set a record for homicides, with 173, and this year is on pace to surpass that.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

“A group of 34 of America’s biggest cities suffered a 30 percent total increase in homicides in 2020, according to a new survey published Monday, with police in four Midwestern cities reporting increases of more than 60 percent over 2019. In Milwaukee, homicides rose from 97 to 189, a 95 percent increase. In Louisville, homicides increased from 90 to 173, a 92 percent increase. Of the 34 cities surveyed by the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice, a project of the D.C.-based Council on Criminal Justice, only four — Raleigh, N.C.; Baltimore; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Virginia Beach — saw declines in 2020.” (“Homicides Rose 30 Percent In 2020, Survey Of 34 U.S. Cities Finds,” The Washington Post, 2/03/2021)

“[In March], the F.B.I. released preliminary statistics showing a major increase in murder last year, with a 25 percent rise in agencies that reported quarterly data. The F.B.I. did not receive data from several cities with known big increases in murder like New York, Chicago and New Orleans, but cities of all sizes reported increases of greater than 20 percent. A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995. (The final official numbers for 2020 will not be released until late September.)” (“Murder Rate Remains Elevated as New Crime Reporting System Begins,” The New York Times, 3/16/2021)

Over The First Three Months Of 2021, The Murder Rate In 37 Cities Is Up 18 Percent Compared To The Same Period In 2020

“The big increase in the murder rate in the United States in 2020 has carried over to 2021. A sample of 37 cities with data available for the first three months of this year shows murder up 18 percent relative to the same period last year.” (“Murder Rate Remains Elevated as New Crime Reporting System Begins,” The New York Times, 3/16/2021)

As Murders Surged In 2020, Seattle Cut Its Police Department’s Budget ‘By Nearly 20%’

“Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan signed off on the 2021 budget, after months of debate and public outcry.  It includes a significant cut to the Seattle Police Department (SPD), and puts new money in new hands. … The 2021 budget sliced SPD’s budget by nearly 20% …” (“Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan Signs City’s 2021 Budget With 20% Cut To Police,” King5, 12/01/2020)

“Calling 2020 a year like no other, interim Seattle police Chief Adrian Diaz said Monday his department’s homicide detectives investigated 50 homicides last year, representing a 61% increase over the 31 people killed as a result of homicidal violence in the city in 2019. Citing data that shows homicides across the country were up 36% in 2020 compared to the previous year, Diaz said Seattle’s 50 homicides were the most investigated in the city in 26 years.” (“50 People Died From Homicidal Violence In Seattle In 2020, The Largest Number In A Quarter Century, Police Chief Says,” The Seattle Times, 1/11/2021)

The LAPD Had Its Budget Slashed By $150 Million In 2020 As Murders In Los Angeles Reached The Highest Number ‘In More Than A Decade’

“Now, a year after Mr. Floyd’s death, Los Angeles and other American cities face a surge in violent crime amid pandemic despair and a flood of new guns onto the streets. The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services…. A year after streets echoed with calls to ‘defund’ law enforcement and city leaders embraced the message by agreeing to take $150 million away from the Los Angeles Police Department, or about 8 percent of the department’s budget, the city last week agreed to increase the police budget to allow the department to hire about 250 officers. The increase essentially restores the cuts that followed the protests. On the streets of South Los Angeles, where residents have historically suffered the most from aggressive policing and gang violence and where much of the current surge in shootings is happening, officers are ramping up patrols and stopping more cars to look for guns. ‘We’ve lost more than a decade of progress,’ Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department said in an interview, referring to the significant drops in crime in the years before the pandemic…. [T]he number of murders in Los Angeles last year — 350 — was the highest in more than a decade …” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

• “If the old crop of activists sought changes by partnering with the police, the defining view of the new movement is a focus on money, and trying to pull as many dollars as possible away from police budgets and toward other programs that address systemic racism.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

Following A $15 Million Cut To Washington, D.C.’s Police Department Budget, 2020 Ended With The District’s Highest Number Of Homicides In 16 Years

“Homicides in the District rose for the third consecutive year in 2020, reaching nearly 200 for the first time since the previous decade and further stressing a city rattled by the pandemic and social and political unrest. The number of killings stood at 198 Thursday evening, making the past year the deadliest in the city since 2004. More than 920 people were shot in D.C. in 2020, a 64 percent increase from three years ago.” (“Homicides In D.C. Hit 16-Year High; Shootings Also Have Spiked,” The Washington Post, 12/31/2020)

• “In 2020, homicides in D.C. hit a 16-year high. If current trends continue, 2021 could be even deadlier. D.C. Police data reports a 43% increase in homicides from the same time last year, with 2021 totaling 63 as of April 28, compared to 44 on this date in 2020.” (“DC’s Homicide Rate Already Is Outpacing 2020, Which Saw A 16-Year-High,” WUSA, 4/28/2021)

“D.C. lawmakers [in June] advanced measures to cut $15 million from the police department budget, a change that defund-the-police activists dismissed as insufficient and the police chief warned could result in the loss of hundreds of officers. The D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety unanimously approved a plan to reduce the $533 million police budget proposed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) by cutting vacant positions and rejecting an expansion of the police cadet program. The committee also voted to cut the department’s capital budget and reallocate funds to alternative violence-reduction programs.” (“D.C. Activists And Lawmakers Confront Challenges Of ‘Defund Police’ Movement,” The Washington Post, 6/25/2020)

‘Last Year, The Homicide Rate In Minneapolis Hit Highs Not Seen Since The Mid-1990s’ And Still The City Council Voted To Cut $8 Million From The City’s Police Department

“Last year, the homicide rate in Minneapolis hit highs not seen since the mid-1990s, when killings led the city to be derisively called ‘Murderapolis.’ The bleak trend has continued into this year. According to police data, nearly 200 people have been shot this year — more than double the number in the same period last year and the most recorded in more than a decade. There have been 31 homicides, compared with 15 at this point in 2020.” (“A Year After George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Remains Scarred, Divided,” The Washington Post, 5/23/2021)

“Months after their pledge to dismantle the Police Department fell apart, members of the Minneapolis City Council voted [December 10^th] to divert nearly $8 million from the proposed policing budget to other city services … Trimming of those items raised alarm bells among the police chief and some lawmakers, as the department has lost 166 officers this year — some permanently, others because they are on disability, and still others saying they have post-traumatic stress from the massive protests that swept the city over the summer.” (“Minneapolis City Council Votes to Remove $8 Million From Police Budget,” The New York Times, 12/10/2020)

• “Steven Belton, the president of the Twin Cities chapter of the Urban League, called the cuts to the police budget misguided and misinformed. He said council members made it an either-or proposition between funding the police and other services when he believed everything was needed…. [In 2020], the city has logged 5,164 violent crimes, up 25.7 percent from last year, according to data from the Minneapolis Police Department. The cuts to the police budget could embolden criminals to think that policing was going away, Mr. Belton said. ‘It’s the wrong optics to the communities that are most impacted detrimentally by violence and the absence of policing and poor policing,’ he said.” (“Minneapolis City Council Votes to Remove $8 Million From Police Budget,” The New York Times, 12/10/2020)

‘The Number Of Slayings In 2020 Dwarfs Anything Louisville Has Seen’

“In 2020, 173 people in Louisville were victims of criminal homicides, according to metro police — shot, bludgeoned, strangled or stabbed to death. Another 20 people were slain in homicides investigated by other Jefferson County police agencies or in cases that didn’t result in criminal charges. The number of slayings in 2020 dwarfs anything Louisville has seen — obliterating the previous record of 117 criminal homicides in 2016…. Of last year’s homicides, 160 were shootings. Another 585 people were shot and survived — another grim milestone.” (“170-Plus Killings And Few Answers: Louisville Besieged By Record Homicides And Gun Violence,” Louisville Courier Journal, 1/01/2021)

• “Louisville is on pace to have another record year for homicides in the city [in 2021]. Community activist Christopher 2X said — as of the end of April — Louisville has now seen the deadliest four-month stretch of gun violence in the city’s history. ‘In four months and three days, we’re at 59 fatals, 218 nonfatals, and we’ve never been in this space before,’ 2X told WDRB News on Monday. ‘We’ve never reached almost 60 homicides this fast.’ 2X said April was the 15th consecutive month with double-digit homicides…. In the first weekend in May, LMPD responded to at least six separate shootings, two of them ending with fatalities.” (“Several Weekend Shootings Put Louisville On Pace For Another Record Year For Homicides,” WDRB, 5/03/2021)
• “As of [April 25], there had been 84% more non-fatal shootings so far this year, with 201, compared to the 109 instances reported during the same time in 2020, LMPD statistics show. There were 56 murders reported as of Sunday — a 75% increase from the 32 reported by April 25, 2020.” (“Louisville Police Department Staffing ‘In Dire Straits’ Amid High Crime Rates, Recruitment Woes: Union,” Fox News, 4/27/2021)

“In November, Louisville social justice organizer Travis Nagdy met with another local leader, Kenneth Forbes, to discuss turning attention to the city’s seemingly intractable violence. ‘The people dying look just like you,’ Forbes, founder of the group Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughters United, told the 21-year-old Nagdy. ‘We are just asking for help, for compassion, for people to open up their ears and listen. For people to talk about it.’ Days after their meeting, Nagdy was dead, fatally shot in an apparent carjacking.” (“170-Plus Killings And Few Answers: Louisville Besieged By Record Homicides And Gun Violence,” Louisville Courier Journal, 1/01/2021)

“It’s a complicated problem, said Christopher 2X, founder of the Louisville nonprofit Game Changers, which tracks gun violence and supports victims…. 2X noted, Black men haven’t been the only victims. The majority of homicides each year, he said, take place in areas covered by LMPD’s First, Second and Fourth divisions, downtown and in Louisville’s West End. In 2020, though, 51 homicides were reported in areas patrolled by LMPD’s Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth divisions — on the outskirts of the city and in some of Louisville’s more upscale neighborhoods. In 2019, just 22 homicides were reported in areas covered by those five divisions. Just as striking, 2X said, is 34 female homicide victims in 2020, a higher number than in previous years. ‘That’s a number that we’ve got to be concerned about,’ he said.” (“170-Plus Killings And Few Answers: Louisville Besieged By Record Homicides And Gun Violence,” Louisville Courier Journal, 1/01/2021)

In New York City, Shootings Nearly Doubled In 2020 While Murders Rose Around 45%

“Homicides and shootings in New York City rose sharply in 2020, New York Police Department officials said Thursday, as police resources were stretched thin by the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to large-scale protests over the killing of George Floyd. The number of murders in the city rose to 462 last year, up nearly 45% from 319 in 2019, according to the NYPD. The increase accompanied a steep rise in gun violence more intense than any seen in the previous 20 years, according to police statistics. The city recorded 1,531 shootings in 2020, 97% more than the 777 in 2019. Data showed the number of shooting victims in the city more than doubled to 1,868 in 2020 from 923 in 2019. The number of shooting victims exceeds the number of shootings because multiple people may be shot in a single incident.” (“New York City Homicides And Shootings Rose Dramatically In 2020,” The Wall Street Journal, 1/07/2021)

• “The major rise in gun violence in the city began in 2020, after a period in which violent crime dropped to its lowest levels in more than six decades. Now, even as New York City emerges from the pandemic, the spike that began as the virus spread last spring has shown no sign of receding: As of the second weekend in May, the city had recorded 505 shooting victims, the most through that point of any year in the last decade. … Murders in New York are at 146 this year, up from 104 over the same period in 2019 and 115 in 2020. … This year, about 96 percent of shooting victims have been Black or Latino, police data shows, similar to previous years. One percent, or seven victims, have been white.” (“The Spike in Shootings During the Pandemic May Outlast the Virus,” The New York Times, 5/14/2021)

“A shooting in Times Square, a spike in gun violence and a spate of high-profile attacks on subway riders have pushed concerns over crime and public safety to the forefront of the New York City mayor’s race, altering the trajectory of the contest as the June 22 primary approaches. A year after the rise of the ‘defund the police’ movement amid an outcry over racial injustice, the primary will offer one of the first tests of where Democratic voters stand as the country emerges from the pandemic but confronts a rise in gun violence in major cities like New York…. As of May 2, 132 people have been killed compared with 113 this same time last year, a 17 percent increase, according to Police Department statistics. There have been 416 shooting incidents compared with 227 this time last year, an 83 percent increase…. Even before the Times Square shooting, there were mounting signs that public safety was intensifying as a concern in New York: a Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll released late last month found that ‘crime or violence’ was a major concern for New York Democrats, second only to the coronavirus.” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

New Yorkers: ‘Are We Back In The ‘70s And ‘80s?,’ ‘I Want Someone [For Mayor] Who Can Make Us Feel Safer’

“Jade Lundy, a child-care worker who lives in the Bronx, said she has begun taking more precautions because there seems to be an uptick in crime, which she blamed on economic hardship caused by the pandemic. ‘I don’t take out my phone anymore,’ she said Monday afternoon as she headed for the subway to the Bronx, from Times Square. Ms. Lundy, who recently turned 18, said she plans to vote in the mayoral election and has just begun learning about the candidates. ‘I want someone who can make us feel safer,’ Ms. Lundy said. ‘Especially for the women. We have it harder out here.’” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

“A spate of crimes targeting Asian-Americans have also alarmed New Yorkers across the city, some candidates say. ‘That makes them very worried about the city, and particularly for people who have lived here a long time,’ said [Kathryn] Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner. For those New Yorkers, she said, some wonder, ‘Are we back in the ‘70s and ‘80s?’” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

“‘Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, people that lived here, including myself, you know, we witnessed some pretty nasty stuff,’ said Representative Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat. ‘We don’t want to slip back to that. So I think that that’s going to be a major issue with this year’s mayoral race.’ … Diana Ayala, a councilwoman representing East Harlem and the Bronx … said the response from the mayoral candidates to addressing crime will determine if she endorses anyone else for mayor. ‘Citywide, people are alarmed at the numbers of shootings but quite frankly, those numbers have been pretty consistent in my district for the last three and a half years,’ Ms. Ayala said. ‘Every summer, even as we speak, we are planning for what’s to come.’” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

San Francisco Is Suffering From A ‘Shoplifting Epidemic’ That Has Forced Stores To Shutter And Even City Officials Now Admit Is ‘Out Of Control’

“[T]he shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco has only worsened. At a board of supervisors hearing [in early May], representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable. Brendan Dugan, the director of the retail crime division at CVS Health, called San Francisco ‘one of the epicenters of organized retail crime’ and said employees were instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because encounters had become too dangerous. ‘We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,’ Dugan said. The retail executives and police officers emphasized the role of organized crime in the thefts. And they told the supervisors that Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified nonviolent thefts as misdemeanors if the stolen goods are worth less than $950, had emboldened thieves. ‘The one trend we are seeing is more violence and escalating — and much more bold,’ said Commander Raj Vaswani, the head of the investigations bureau at the San Francisco Police Department. ‘We see a lot of repeat offenders.’” (“San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge,” The New York Times, 5/21/2021)

• “The cost of business and shoplifting led Walgreens to shut 17 locations in San Francisco in the past five years — an ‘unpopular and difficult decision,’ Jason Cunningham, regional vice president for pharmacy and retail operations in California and Hawaii, said at the hearing…. Theft in Walgreens’ San Francisco stores is four times the average for stores elsewhere in the country, and the chain spends 35 times more on security guards in the city than elsewhere, Cunningham said. At CVS, 42% of losses in the Bay Area came from 12 stores in San Francisco, which are only 8% of the market share, Brendan Dugan, director of organized retail crime and corporate investigations, said at the hearing…. CVS security guards in San Francisco have been assaulted, especially at the now-closed Seventh and Market streets location, Dugan said. Some businesses instead hire costly off-duty police officers.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)
• “A statement from Safeway read at Thursday’s hearing blamed Proposition 47, which lowered penalties for thefts under $950, for ‘dramatic increases’ in shoplifting losses…. Professional shoplifters can work the system by stealing items under the threshold from one store and hitting several retailers in the same day.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

“Retailers attributed a majority of losses to professional thieves instead of opportunistic shoplifters who may be driven by poverty, with one CVS leader calling San Francisco a hub of organized retail crime. Losses have shuttered drugstores providing vital services, even more critical during the pandemic as some stores give out vaccines.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

• “For years, John Susoeff walked from his home two blocks to the Walgreens at Bush and Larkin streets — to pick up prescriptions for himself and for less mobile neighbors, to get a new phone card, and to snag senior discounts the first Tuesday of the month. That changed in March when the Walgreens, ravaged by shoplifting, closed. Susoeff, 77, who sometimes uses a cane, now goes six blocks for medication and other necessities. ‘It’s terrible,’ he said. On his last visit before the store closed, even beef jerky was behind lock and key. A CVS nearby shuttered in 2019, with similar reports of rampant shoplifting. ‘I don’t blame them for closing,’ Susoeff said.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

“‘This has been out of control,’ said Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who held a hearing [May 13^th] with retailers, police, the district attorney and probation departments. ‘People are scared to go into these stores — seniors, people with disabilities, children. It’s just happening brazenly. We can’t just as a city throw up our hands and say this is OK. We have to come up with solutions.’” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

• “On Thursday I called Ahsha Safaí, the member of the board of supervisors who organized the hearing. We talked about the thefts we had witnessed in the city and the sidewalk thieves’ markets where steaks, bicycles and other stolen goods are fenced. Safaí said he had recently stopped to inspect one of these markets at 24th and Mission. ‘Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding,’ Safaí said. ‘I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it in this city.’ He talked about what he called a laissez-faire attitude in San Francisco. ‘It has become part of the landscape,’ he said of thefts. ‘People say, “Oh, well, that just happens.”‘ Thieves ‘are obviously choosing locales based on what the consequences are,’ Safaí said. ‘If there are no consequences for their actions, then you invite the behavior. Over and over.’” (“San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge,” The New York Times, 5/21/2021)

As Violent Crime Surges In Cities, Metro Police Departments Are Hemorrhaging Officers While The Remaining Cops ‘Are Demoralized And Pulling Back On Patrolling High-Crime Areas’

“In some liberal cities like Minneapolis, where gun violence is surging and where the Police Department is depleted after so many officers quit or retired, some elected leaders and older clergy members and civil rights leaders are echoing the sentiments of conservative commentators who claim a link between the violence and the movement to defund police departments, saying officers are demoralized and pulling back on patrolling high-crime areas.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

• “From the crucible of 1992, former gang members in South Los Angeles worked to make peace, often working alongside a new force of police officers dedicated to ‘community policing,’ in which officers worked in specific neighborhoods to establish close relationships with residents. Leon Gullette, who was drawn to activism after 1992, now works for Community Build, which was co-founded by Maxine Waters, a local congresswoman. Mr. Gullette’s specialty is working to achieve truces between rival gangs. Unlike the younger activists with Black Lives Matter, he says working with the police is essential. ‘We can’t operate without the police, so I wouldn’t say defund the police,’ Mr. Gullette said.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

SEATTLE: “Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers are leaving the job at a ‘record pace’ — with at least 249 people leaving over the past year alone — as statistics show manpower has been declining in recent years, according to union and city officials. SPD boasted a police force of 1,276 uniformed members at the end of February 2020, but staffing levels dropped by 249 people to 1,027 by the end of February 2021, according to the most recent department statistics available to Fox News. … As of last week, 66 officers had left SPD so far this year, Solan said, confirming previous reports from local news. ” (“Seattle Police Department Losing Officers At ‘Record Pace’ Amid Budget Uncertainty, Lack Of Support: Officials,” Fox News, 5/01/2021)

• “Last June, three months into the pandemic and as the protests exploded in Seattle and around the country, officer-initiated calls plunged to a 10-year low. Mostly for that reason, the department’s overall call load dropped by almost half, to about 16,000, by June, according to a Seattle Times analysis. At the same time, the department’s monthly average response time for all remaining calls more than doubled, climbing from about 20 minutes in May to 41 minutes in June. Response times for the most serious 911 calls — known as Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls — increased 48% and 84% respectively, even though commanders repeatedly ordered the department to operate on ‘priority call status.’ That means dispatchers send officers only to Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls such as homicides, robberies and assaults, skipping other calls, such as break-ins.” (“Seattle 911 Response Times Climbed In Summer 2020. Now, Police And Activists Debate What Comes Next,” The Seattle Times, 5/11/2021)

LOS ANGELES: “Like in many major cities, homicides and other forms of violent crime in Los Angeles have risen sharply in the past year, and the LAPD is facing an unexpected staffing shortage. The LAPD was expected to have roughly 9,750 officers at the end of June 2021 — but an increase in retirements and resignations have left the department with about 9,450 officers, which [Mayor Eric] Garcetti is hoping to expand with this year’s budget.” (“Defund The Police Encounters Resistance As Violent Crime Spikes,” CNN, 5/25/2021)

WASHINGTON, D.C.: “The D.C. police force has already grown smaller, from about 3,850 officers in 2019 to around 3,650 today, because of budget cuts lawmakers imposed last year and an increasing number of resignations and retirements. About 90 percent of the department’s budget is spent on personnel.” (“Commission To Reimagine Police In District Grapples With Effort To Defund,” The Washington Post, 3/21/2021)

MINNEAPOLIS: “Nearly 200 Minneapolis police officers have left the department since Floyd’s death, including dozens who filed PTSD claims after the unrest.” (“Minneapolis To Bring In Outside Help To Deal With Surge In Violence,” Star Tribune, 5/24/2021)

• “Minneapolis police are bringing in outside help as they try to temper violence that killed four people this weekend alone, including a college senior who was out celebrating graduation. Mayor Jacob Frey said the city has asked state and federal agencies for assistance, citing the city’s shortage of officers. ‘Safety in our city has to be a priority,’ Frey said at a news conference Sunday, calling the reinforcements ‘really, really critical.’” (“Minneapolis To Bring In Outside Help To Deal With Surge In Violence,” Star Tribune, 5/24/2021)

LOUISVILLE: “Nearly 190 cops left the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) in 2020 and 43 have stepped away from the Kentucky city’s agency so far in 2021, either choosing to retire or resign altogether, as law enforcement officials struggle to recruit new members to make up for a deficit in manpower, authorities and a union spokesperson told Fox News on Tuesday.” (“Louisville Police Department Staffing ‘In Dire Straits’ Amid High Crime Rates, Recruitment Woes: Union,” Fox News, 4/27/2021)

• “Statistics provided by LMPD on Tuesday show the department has hired 26 new members so far this year, while 43 have left. The 1,069-person department falls 255 people short of its ‘authorized strength’ of 1,324 — the number of personnel it is authorized to employ, statistics show.” (“Louisville Police Department Staffing ‘In Dire Straits’ Amid High Crime Rates, Recruitment Woes: Union,” Fox News, 4/27/2021)

NEW YORK: “More than 5,300 NYPD uniformed officers retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020 — a 75 percent spike from the year before, department data show. The exodus — amid the pandemic, anti-cop hostility, riots and a skyrocketing number of NYC shootings — saw 2,600 officers say goodbye to the job and another 2,746 file for retirement, a combined 5,346. … Through April 21 of this year, 831 cops have retired or filed to leave…” (“Are NYPD Officers Rushing To Retire Amid City’s Anti-Cop Climate?,” New York Post, 4/24/2021)

Research | The Leader Board | THE NEWSROOM | Republican Leader (senate.gov)

Iranian intel agents sought to kidnap American journalist

The State Department informed Congress late Tuesday that it would waive sanctions on Iran’s illicit oil trade so that the country can access frozen funds from South Korea and Japan, the same day the Department of Justice announced charges on an Iranian spy network that sought to kidnap an American.

The waiver, signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, allows the “transfer of Iranian funds in restricted accounts to exporters in Japan and the Republic of Korea,” according to a notification sent to Congress by the State Department. The waiver allows Iranian money that had been frozen as a result of American sanctions to be freed up without violating the law. “Allowing these funds to be used to repay exporters in these jurisdictions will make those entities whole with respect to the goods and services they exported to Iran, address a recurring irritant in important bilateral relationships, and decrease Iran’s foreign reserves,” the waiver states.

The waiver was announced on the same day the Justice Department announced new charges against a network of Iranian intelligence agents who sought to kidnap an American journalist and bring her to Iran. The charges include kidnapping conspiracy, sanctions violations conspiracy, bank and wire fraud conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy charges.

The sanctions relief also comes as the United States and Iran get closer to finalizing a revamped nuclear deal that will even further unwind sanctions on Tehran. Congressional Republicans are likely to oppose the move, which lessens economic pressure on Iran at a time when it is still funding regional terror groups and building out its nuclear weapons program. Sanctions of Iran’s oil trade were a hallmark policy of the Trump administration, which sought to cut Iran’s exports down to zero and deny the regime a key source of income.

Richard Goldberg, the former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction on Trump’s White House National Security Council, said the waiver will relieve pressure on Iran’s floundering economy and give it access to much-needed cash.

“There’s a reason we talk about accessible foreign exchange reserves versus inaccessible foreign exchange reserves. If you free up money that’s trapped in foreign accounts for Iran to pay off debts, you are bailing out the regime and rescuing the mullahs from a balance of payments crisis,” said Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is a bailout, plain and simple. And to announce it right as DOJ tells us Iran tried to kidnap an American journalist out of New York City—that’s a national outrage.”

A State Department spokesman said Blinken signed the sanctions waiver to give Japan and Korea another 90-days to complete transactions with Iran.

“The secretary of state previously signed a waiver to allow funds held in restricted Iranian accounts in Japan and Korea to be used to pay back Japanese and Korean companies that exported non-sanctioned items to Iran,” the spokesperson said. “These repayment transactions can sometimes be time consuming, and the secretary extended the waivers for another 90 days.”

The State Department says the waiver “does not allow for the transfer of any funds to Iran,” and will make whole Japanese and Korean companies that exported non-sanctioned goods and services before U.S. sanctions were tightened by the previous administration.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) said the Biden administration is rewarding Iran with an economic bailout.

“President Biden today is giving the Iranian regime—the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism—an economic bailout by freeing up billions of dollars that U.S. sanctions had frozen in foreign banks,” said Hagerty. “I personally spent months working with the then-Japanese Prime Minster and his cabinet to put in place these crippling and biting sanctions, which had real and tangible results, only today to see them begin to be blown apart with the stroke of a pen in exchange for nothing. President Biden is doubling down on his Iran appeasement policy just as it was revealed that Iranian officials were plotting to abduct an American citizen in New York City, and as the regime is continuing to use missiles and proxy militants to attack Americans in Iraq and Syria.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Biden Admin Waives Sanctions on Iranian Oil Trade As DOJ Announces Charges On Spy Network (freebeacon.com)

The Wall Street Journal reports “An internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document.”

The memo was dated July 13th, a mere month after Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a Trump-era program designed at providing swift and safe evacuations for Americans out of crisis zones, such as the upcoming Afghanistan troop withdrawal.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it.

The cable, sent via the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces, and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation, the two people said.

The cable, dated July 13, also called for the State Department to use tougher language in describing the atrocities being committed by the Taliban, one of the people said.

As of last weekend, some 18,000 Afghans who have applied for the U.S.’s Special Immigrant Visa program, as well as their families, remained on the ground in Afghanistan, with about half of them outside Kabul in areas already under Taliban control, and efforts to get them to the Kabul airport have grown more difficult by the day.

Internal Memo Shows State Department Was Warned ‘Collapse of Kabul’ by Taliban was Imminent | Gregg Jarrett (thegreggjarrett.com)

The National Police Association lobbying group has said that the House hearing into the Jan. 6 Capitol incident is politically motivated, urging Congress to instead investigate left-wing riots that left numerous officers injured last year.

Association spokeswoman Betsy Brantner Smith said in an interview that Congress should hear testimonials from thousands of officers who were injured during demonstrations, riots, arson, and other violence last year following the death of George Floyd.

During the first hearing for the House select committee on the Jan. 6 breach, four police officers offered testimony saying that individuals who entered the Capitol made specific threats against them.

“People need to see that police officers go through horrible things, and Jan. 6 was a horrible thing for some of those officers,” Smith told Fox News. “But, quite frankly, I find this whole Jan. 6 Commission, frankly, a dog and pony show. It doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Later, Smith questioned why the federal government hasn’t provided more information about the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt, one of several Trump supporters who died during the incident, or raised questions about video footage of Capitol Police officers’ interactions with demonstrators on Jan. 6.

“Myself, like millions of Americans, sat there watching the testimony thinking, ‘Wait, where are the police officers who appeared—appeared—to let some of the protesters in?” she asked. “Where is the police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt? In fact, why aren’t we talking about Ashli Babbitt? I mean there’s so much more here.”

On July 27, one of the testifying officers, Daniel Hodges, who works for the Metropolitan Police Department, recounted being allegedly told, “You will die on your knees.”

Hodges said he was kicked in the chest and struck with something heavy in the head as other officers and he clashed with a crowd near the Capitol.

But Smith suggested that the injuries those officers suffered likely paled in comparison to the numerous officers who were injured during riots last year.

“We have a Las Vegas police officer who is still paralyzed from the Black Lives Matter riots,” she told Fox. “We have thousands of police officers around the country who are retiring because of post-traumatic stress because of the riots.

“The 2020 riots, we can’t just say the whole George Floyd thing was bad and that’s what cops have to deal with, and then watch these four weeping men talk about their experiences, ignoring thousands and thousands of police officers, ignoring their feelings and their experiences and their injuries.”

A recent analysis from The Epoch Times in late June showed that major metropolitan police departments are struggling with hiring new recruits and dealing with an increase in retirements or officers quitting amid anti-police rhetoric and activism. Violent crime such as murders, rapes, and robberies has also spiked in most major cities.

Last month, the Portland Police Bureau’s riot squad quit en masse after one of its officers was indicted on an assault charge. The arrest stemmed from violent demonstrations that roiled the Oregon city last year.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Smith said. “I have some cops who would rather go back to Iraq than continue to work on the street, just because of the massive amounts of blood and bodies and everything they deal with that people don’t see.”

The office of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), head of the select committee, didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

National Police Association: Congress Should Investigate 2020 Riots, Not Jan. 6 Capitol Breach (theepochtimes.com)

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol’s apprehension numbers of illegal migrants broke records in July for the sixth consecutive month following Joe Biden’s taking office as president, with the numbers reaching an “historic crisis level.”

While the “sweltering” heat of June and July usually slows down illegal immigration at the southern US border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), in June and July of 2021 border traffic actually increased. Bensman said:

“For the sixth consecutive month since President Joe Biden took office and followed through on campaign promises to dismantle his predecessor’s deterrence-based policies, the number of illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection broke records, reaching 210,000 in July, the Associated Press reported Monday. The outlet cited a court filing by David Shahoulian, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Based on past trends, the vast majority of those encountered were likely illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol.”

Authorities encountered on average 6,770 individuals every single day of July, and many of these people were families and “unaccompanied alien minors.” Single adult “runners” were also driving the wave of immigration. Border Patrol is struggling to push these people back into Mexico over and over again, its resources “strained.” The CBP encountered 210,000 illegal aliens in July, and it is estimated that 37,000 migrants evaded Border Patrol altogether, a number which Bensman calls a “likely… significant undercount.”

While June’s apprehension number of 188,829 illegal migrants was the largest for one month in 21 years, July’s number of 210,000 exceeded that record. Overall, in this fiscal year, which ends September 30, CBP encounters reached the staggering number of 1.3 million. The last time border apprehension numbers hit the mark of a million was back in 2006.

In the border crisis “epicenter” of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, the numbers of illegal migrants stopped by Border Patrol were 51,149 in May, 59,380 in June, and 78,000 in July.

“The July numbers, once finalized and released in the next couple of weeks, will show that the border crisis is going from record high to record high in an upward climb into a red-zone crisis that will defy any control, short of a radical about-face by the Biden administration. Few signs point to any such policy reversal, although the White House has tentatively begun long-haul deportations to Central America aboard ICE jets.

Border Patrol and CBP facilities, meanwhile, are overrun in the crisis’s Texas epicenter, as are hundreds of border communities that have rarely experienced anything like the steadily worsening chaos of wandering immigrants; high-speed car chases; crime; fear of Covid; and widespread insecurity.”

Bensman explained that promises by Democrat candidates for president in 2019 and 2020 to welcome illegal immigrants and institute policies highly favorable to those migrants caused migrants to begin massing in southern Mexico and even increase CBP apprehension numbers, despite then-President Trump’s “tough turn-back policies.” Individuals who had previously been “unable to advance through Trump’s border restrictions” saw a chance to be successful migrants. As polls pointed to a Biden win, migrants continued to cross in increasing numbers. Some of the migrants in Mexico told Bensman they were planning to “wait out” what they expected to be the last few months of Trump’s presidency.

Bensman calls this steadily growing surge of illegal immigration the “Biden effect,” and said that the border crisis was predicted by an October 2020 national threat assessment from the Department of Homeland Security. Biden’s exemption of “unaccompanied alien minors from pandemic-related ‘Title 42’ instant expulsions to Mexico” and effective ending of interior removals for all those migrants who had successfully evaded Border Patrol as soon as he took office made the crisis rapidly worse.

“The exempted family groups and unaccompanied alien minors have driven the crisis, because they have forced Border Patrol agents ‘off the line’ to deal with their care and processing. Agents processed a whopping 80,000 illegal family unit immigrants in July, Shahoulian said, a leap from June’s 55,805. Reports coming from the border in recent days indicate they have been showing up in individual groups of 500, and even 1,000.

U.S. officials probably picked up more than 19,000 unaccompanied children in July, exceeding the previous record of 18,877 in March.”

If the Biden administration continues its failed border policies, apprehension numbers are likely to continue in an upward trend.

Border Patrol Apprehension Numbers Point To Historic, Crisis Levels At American Border. – The National Pulse

Human Rights Watch Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir spoke directly to board

A former longtime Ben & Jerry’s employee said the company’s decision to boycott Israel was based on advice from a BDS activist who was expelled from Israel for spearheading economic pressure campaigns against the Jewish state.

Susannah Levin, who spent 21 years as a freelance graphic designer for Ben & Jerry’s before resigning last month over the company’s decision to halt its sales in the West Bank, said the company’s board consulted with Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine director Omar Shakir, an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement who accused the Jewish state of “crimes against humanity.”

“Omar Shakir spoke directly to the board,” said Levin in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 radio on Tuesday. “He wrote the Human Rights Watch report, [which] is what they were basing their information on. It’s a report that accuses Israel of apartheid.”

“They believed him to be a valid source of information about Israel,” she added.

Ben & Jerry’s has come under scrutiny for its involvement with anti-Israel activists. The company recently hosted a conference call with anti-Zionist writer Peter Beinart, who has said he supports the destruction of the Jewish state, to address concerns about the boycott from its franchise owners, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Ben & Jerry’s declined to comment on Shakir’s alleged involvement with its board. Human Rights Watch did not respond to a request for comment.

Shakir was deported from Israel in 2019 due to his attempts to pressure various companies and international organizations, including FIFA, to join boycotts against homes and businesses in contested parts of Israel. He took credit for Airbnb’s decision to bar Israelis in the West Bank from renting their homes on the site in 2018. The rental service later backtracked in the face of legal challenges.

In April, Shakir authored a report for Human Rights Watch that accused Israel of committing “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

The report’s conclusion was rejected by the Biden administration, which said it was “not the view of this administration that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid.” Israeli ambassador to the United States Gilad Erdan denounced the report as “lies and fabrications, bordering on anti-Semitic.”

Levin said she believed she had no choice but to resign after Ben & Jerry’s announced its boycott.

“I knew that my job was over. I knew I wasn’t going to work there if they were going to [boycott Israel],” said Levin. “I worked for this company for so long, and they were like family to me. To think they would really join up with people who hate Israel so much, it’s a terrible feeling.”

Former Ben and Jerry’s Employee Says Anti-Israel Activist Spoke to Board Ahead of Boycott Decision (freebeacon.com)

Border officers are releasing illegal immigrants who test positive for COVID-19 to a nonprofit organization, Texas authorities said this week.

The immigrants were handed over to the Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley, which arranged for their stay in a La Joya, Texas, hotel that it had rented out entirely, La Joya police officials said.

“We did not know this. No one told the city of La Joya. No one told the police department that these people were here. And no one told us that these people were possibly ill,” La Joya Sgt. Manuel Casas told reporters at a July 27 press conference.

The situation came to light on July 26, after a concerned citizen reported to a police officer that she saw members of a family who were coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths at a Whataburger location, and they weren’t wearing masks. Management at the restaurant where the incident was reported said they wanted the family to leave because they were disregarding other people’s health.

The officer went to the family, who told the officer they had been apprehended by Border Patrol agents just days before, but were released because they had COVID-19. The family was being housed at the Texas Inn Hotel, which authorities later learned had been completely booked to house such immigrants.

“The information we have is that everybody that is staying in that hotel is COVID-19 positive,” Casas said.

Officers later witnessed a group of 20 to 30 people staying at the hotel outside. Most of them weren’t wearing masks.

Officers also later learned that the illegal immigrants being detained by Border Patrol were given over to the nonprofit to be placed in hotels in the La Joya and McAllen, Texas, areas.

“We have been doing well as a community in slowing the spread of this deadly virus. But ill-conceived policies by both the federal and state governments are beginning to have serious consequences on Hildago County. I call on federal immigration officials to stop releasing infected migrants into our community,” Richard Cortez, the county judge, said in a statement.

A Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley representative didn’t return a request for comment by press time.

The charity’s executive director, Sister Norma Pimentel, told Border Report that the group has been helping house COVID-positive immigrants in hotels. Pimentel said that a security guard is now at the La Joya hotel to keep the immigrants inside.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told The Epoch Times via email that the agency in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector “continues to encounter significant numbers of undocumented migrants crossing the border.”

Undocumented migrants is a term for illegal aliens.

“RGV continues to expel individuals under Title 42 authorities as part of COVID mitigation efforts and utilizes pathways under Title 8 proceedings to remove those amenable to their home countries,” the spokesperson wrote. “During these challenging times, our federal, state, and local partnerships are indispensable as we work to secure our borders and to quickly move individuals out of USBP custody and through the appropriate immigration pathway.”

Border agents in the Rio Grande Valley apprehended more than 20,000 illegal immigrants in a single week this month, part of a dramatic rise in apprehensions seen during President Joe Biden’s first term.

Texas authorities have begun taking matters into their own hands, arresting immigrants on trespassing charges. The city of Laredo, Texas, sued the Biden administration last week in a bid to stop the transfer of thousands of illegal immigrants from among those apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio to the city.

US Releasing Illegal Immigrants Who Test Positive for COVID-19: Texas Police (theepochtimes.com)

She unveiled the black ops military force on the Capitol steps today as she gave an impassioned speech about defunding the police.

“If you don’t want to defund the police, my private army has been ordered to take care of you,” she said, standing in front of dozens of hardened, trained private special forces. “Butch, Spike, Zero, Aces, Skull—go get ’em!” 

The private military she’d hired with her healthy congressional salary then went out to find anyone who didn’t like Bush’s idea of defunding the police to apprehend them. Many tried to call the police to protect themselves, but their cities had already defunded the police, and nobody responded, or else a social worker showed up to ask about their feelings.

Bush has arrested thousands of Americans so far. Prisons are filling up quickly, but no worries: Bush says she is holding a protest to make sure violent criminals are released as soon as possible to make room for pro-police Americans.

Cori Bush Hires Mercenary Army To Arrest Anyone Who Doesn’t Want To Defund The Police | The Babylon Bee

Americans have been beaten in Afghanistan, a U.S. military official said Saturday.

A day after he said the military was aware of reports that Americans were beaten by Taliban terrorists, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said that “we know of a small number of cases where some Americans … have been harassed, and in some cases, beaten.”

“We don’t believe it’s a very large number, and most Americans who have their credentials with them are being allowed through the Taliban checkpoints,” he added.

The stunning admission came as the U.S. Embassy warned Americans against traveling to the U.S.-held airport in Kabul, where thousands of people are trying to enter to escape the country before American troops leave.

The United States is openly working with the Taliban to facilitate the evacuation, and Taliban militants control all of the ground around the exterior of the airport.

President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States was in “constant communication” with the Taliban, which is designated as a terrorist group by a number of countries.

The U.S. military has largely chosen not to conduct operations outside the airport, leaving Americans and Afghans to fend for themselves until they reach the facility.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told members of Congress in a call Friday that violence against Americans “is unacceptable,” Kirby said Saturday.

And U.S. commanders have conveyed the same message to Taliban commanders, he said.

“We’ve been in touch with the Taliban for quite some time, I think, over the course of the last week. And we’ve certainly made our concerns known,” Kirby said.

According to the military spokesman, word had not filtered down from Taliban leadership to every individual militant.

“What appears to be happening is that not every Taliban fighter either got the word or decided to obey the word,” he said.

The revelation came as a growing number of Republicans called for more decisive action from the Biden administration, which both parties have said has botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“Instead of going out there and making the Taliban our hostages, right now America is on day seven, day eight of the Afghanistan hostage crisis for us,” Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), a military veteran, said on Fox News on Friday. “And until we flip that scenario back to where it was prior to this, we can’t safely get our people out.”

“Biden’s failed Afghanistan withdrawal has put thousands of American lives in danger behind enemy lines,” added Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is trying to impeach Biden, on Twitter on Saturday. “The Taliban is beating Americans but Biden is still relying on & trusting them. He is incompetent, unhinged, incoherent & unfit.”

Military officials said the focus remains on keeping the airport secure and evacuating people who can make it there.

“The military mission that we are executing now is a noncombatant evacuation operation,” Kirby said. “We’re fighting against both time and space. That’s the race that we’re in right now,” he added later.

Pentagon Confirms Americans Have Been Beaten in Afghanistan (theepochtimes.com)

Almost two years ago I published an article on the Gab News blog about Silicon Valley building a social credit system for the West. Exactly one year later I experienced this social credit system personally when my business and family were blacklisted by Visa after also being banned by Paypal, Stripe, Coinbase, and many other payment processors.

Around this time I wrote a warning letter to Christians about what was happening to me and what would soon be happening, and is now happening, to many more people like me. Earlier this year I wrote about the Silent Christian Secession and the need to build our own economy to escape the pending tyranny of the global elite.

In April I wrote that the vaccine was becoming a religious ceremony–cultish even– and that Christians had an absolute right to reject it. That same month I defended the right of everyone to speak freely on Gab and openly discuss, question, and criticize the vaccines in the face of a censorship crackdown on dissent from Big Tech.

God has blessed me with tremendous foresight and discernment about the Enemy’s next move. It’s why I started Gab in 2016 long before censorship became the center of cultural and political debate that it is today. It’s why I wrote these many warnings to Christians and freedom lovers everywhere about what was happening to me because I knew that it would soon be happening to all of you too.

I don’t take this blessing lightly. These things weigh on my heart heavily as a husband and father of two young children. Everyday I hear stories from Gabbers about how they are being forced and coerced into taking the vaccine when they do not want to.

I am praying that God gives them the peace and discernment they need right now. It sickens me that the Enemy is making my brothers and sisters in Christ choose between feeding their families and retaining their bodily autonomy and being true to their deeply held religious beliefs.

This week we published several religious exemption document templates for people who need them and the response was unbelievable. Many people sent emails, Gab comments, and direct messages thanking us for publishing these and I pray to God that they helped even one person facing an impossible decision to make the right one.

The people in power don’t care about Covid. They don’t care about the vaccines. They care about control. This entire situation is one giant demoralization campaign designed to grind us all down spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. If they can get us all to submit once, they can get us all to submit fully and forever.

We can’t let that happen. Do not let them get in your head with the fear mongering, the lies, and the shapeshifting narratives. They are exposing themselves like never before in human history and we are living through a period of immense spiritual warfare.

We must remember that we are human beings, made in the image of God. We always have choices. We always have hope. Darkness cannot and never will consume the light of Christ.

Do not look to political leaders for help. There is no political solution to a spiritual problem. Look to Jesus Christ. Open your Bible. Pray. Put on the full armor of God and get to work building something new. They have left us no choice. We can and must rebuild from scratch and it starts in your own heart and in your own local community.

God bless you all,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

I Tried My Best To Warn You This Was Going To Happen – Gab News

This evening I received an email (shared below) from Davey Alba at the New York Times. Davey explained that “researchers” from two organizations with direct connections to and funding from Facebook were defaming both myself personally and Gab as a whole for spreading “misinformation.”

I’ll get into the baseless and defamatory claims, but first I’d like you to tell you a little more about these two organizations.

Stanford Internet Observatory is led by Alex Stamos who is the former Chief Security Officer for Facebook. The CTO of Stanford Internet Observatory, David Thiel, also worked at Facebook before starting at SIO. Stanford itself is of course widely known as the Ivy League snob school that the “best and brightest” in Silicon Valley all attended and have deep connections to.

The second organization is Graphika. Graphika is a Facebook-funded “research” group whose executive leadership team includes Camille Francois, a woman worked at Google’s infamous censorship technology incubator “Jigsaw,” and Lauren Pencek who previously worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) among others.

The New York Times own reporting confirms that Graphika receives its funding from Facebook and Facebook is also listed as one of Graphika’s top clients right on the front page of their website. Aside from Facebook, Graphika also partners with DARPA, a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense, along with Google, TikTok, and Pinterest.

Gab will never work with organizations like these and will never subject our community members to the slimy eyeballs of people who wish to “research” them. In fact we have spent years and a considerable amount of our engineering resources to stop these type of “reeeesearchers” from treating our community like lab rats.

Perhaps that’s another reason why Graphika has spent almost an entire year attacking Gab, but I suspect it has more to do with their deep connections to our competitors.

Let’s dive into the email from the New York Times, shall we?

Hi Andrew,
I’m a reporter from The New York Times, where we are writing about some viral posts about the coronavirus that have gained traction online in the past few weeks. I wanted to get your comment on a post by you that the Virality Project — a consortium of research groups focused on misinformation, including the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika, among others — identified as misinformation.
You can find their assertions here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60025974f9f7920e6b40885b/t/61097813bdc29713648c24bf/1628010515835/Virality+Project+-+0803+Weekly+Briefing+.pdf

I’ve also screenshotted the relevant portion in the document:

Would you have a response to this being labeled as misinformation by this group of researchers?
Hope to hear from you as soon as possible — my deadline is on Monday, Aug. 9, at 12nn ET.
Feel free to call me at XXX-XXX-XXX if you have any questions about our story.
Best,Davey

My response to Davey is as follows:

The news that Lloyd Austin intends to make vaccinations mandatory in the military is two days old: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sec-of-defense-austin-to-announce-mandatory-vaccine-policy-for-all-active-duty-military

Furthermore, Pfizer and Moderna tested their vaccines on fetal cell lines and J&J used fetal cell lines in vaccination development. https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-do-the-covid-19-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-cells

I’m telling the truth. Your Facebook-funded “fact checkers” like Graphika are wrong and are the people peddling disinformation here. My response to them is that they can get bent. I’m reminding tens of millions of people that they have religious liberty and God-given human rights in this country. Deal with it. Jesus is King. 

Andrew Torba

I spent all week posting the many dozens of direct messages that I have been receiving on Gab from Military service members and their families who shared their personal stories and experiences with me. I also posted similar stories from those working in healthcare and other various industries.

People are scared, but not of Covid. They are scared of being forced to choose between violating their religious beliefs and giving up control of their own bodily autonomy or losing their livelihood. It’s a position that no human being, let alone a citizen of the United States of America, should have to be in. I choose to share their stories because no one else is.

I then drafted a blog post about my experience reading and sharing these heartbreaking stories and reminded millions of people that in the United States of America we have God-given human rights, including religious liberty. I did this by providing a set of religious exemption templates for Christians to use in the Military and in their workplace.

The post went wildly viral on Gab, Facebook, and Twitter. I also emailed it to millions of people, because people deserve to know that they always have options and the dignity of bodily autonomy and religious liberty.

For doing this both Gab and myself are being defamed for spreading “misinformation,” a totally subjective and ambiguous term that can mean anything the tyrants in power want it to mean.

Ultimately what we are seeing here is an anti-Christian, anti-competitive attack on Gab by organizations who partner with, are funded by, and are staffed by people who worked for our direct competitors.

I am sharing this all with you now to let you know how these wicked people operate and to shine a light on their lies, deception, and anti-Christian attacks. They aren’t just attacking me, they are attacking any and all dissent and opposition to their libido dominandi (lust for power.)

I’m also beating the New York Times to print by emailing this information to millions of people over the weekend. This is how you beat these people at their own game. The time to stand up and speak the truth boldly is now.

God bless you and thank you for reading.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
August 6th, 2021

Facebook-Funded “Researchers” and the New York Times Team Up to Attack Gab – Gab News

As the storming of the Capitol building on January 6th was still unfolding a despicable gremlin of a woman at The New York Times, Sheera Frenkel, was already crafting a totally baseless lie along with her demonic friends at the ADL and Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg about the event being “planned” on both Gab and Parler.

“We need to ascertain right here, right now, whether this specific platform was knowingly facilitating an attack on our nation’s capital, literally a terror act against the seat of our government,” said the ADL’s Greenblatt, who noted that other platforms should also be investigated over the insurrection attempt but he says special attention needs to be trained on Gab.

Source

The ADL also went as far as demanding the DOJ investigate both myself individually and Gab as a whole for “intentionally aided or abetted individuals who carried out the January 6 attack on the nation’s Capitol.”

Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of the largest social network on the internet that happens to have a specific feature for organizing and planning events, also deflected the blame on Gab and Parler. “Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has sought to deflect blame, noting the role of smaller, right-leaning services such as Parler and Gab.”

It has been widely reported, even by mainstream media outlets, that if the event was planned and organized anywhere it was most certainly done on her platform, Facebook.

Today the FBI is exposing the mountain of lies built up by Frenkel, Greenblatt, and Sandberg (I can’t help noticing a trend here!)

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

Source

The defamatory lies of the New York Times, the ADL, and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg had dire consequences for Parler, which was immediately removed from App Stores and hosting providers and has never fully recovered despite caving to Apple’s demands for censorship.

These defamatory lies also impacted Gab’s public image. The lie is still featured prominently on Gab’s Wikipedia page and is falsely cited by other reporters in stories about Gab to this day.

We demand a full and immediate retraction of this story by the New York Times and thank God for shining the light of truth on this fake news story.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

NYT Editorial Team,

Gab AI Inc. hereby demands retraction of the false and defamatory reporting published by the New York Times’ Sheera Frenkel on January 6th, 2021 claiming without providing any evidence whatsoever that the storming of the Capitol was organized on our platform.

Today it has been reported that the FBI found scant evidence that the event was organized at all, let alone on Gab.

Gab is not a lawless platform and proactively cultivates good working relationships with U.S. and international law enforcement. If we were made aware of an illegal plot taking place on our hardware, we would have removed it. This stands in sharp contrast to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which for years have harbored international terrorist organizations like the Taliban – something your paper has never reported on or taken to task to the extent you took us to task for content which appeared on our platform in the aftermath of Jan. 6th and other offensive but legal content that has appeared on our platform from time to time.

We quote from Reuters: “The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.”

In light of this reporting vindicating Gab’s innocence in this matter, we are demanding a full retraction of the defamatory reporting published by The New York Times. Ms. Frenkel’s piece, which alleged that “[t]he storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media” and made extensive reference to posts on Gab that discussed the event (as indeed most of the Internet did on that day) without providing any evidence that the event was in fact organized by those same commenters, was presented as fact, not opinion.

This statement of fact was not only false, it was recklessly and maliciously false. FBI officials’ own statements on the matter, reported today, prove it was false.

Our rights in this matter are fully and expressly reserved. Please be guided accordingly.

Gab Legal

The New York Times and ADL Lies Exposed By The FBI – Gab News

Americans in Afghanistan were told Saturday not to go to the airport in Kabul to evacuate unless they receive a specific message to do so.

“Because of potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul airport, we are advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so,” the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan said in an alert.

The Pentagon declined to comment, referring The Epoch Times to the State Department. That agency did not respond to a request for comment.

Video footage from the exterior of the airport on Saturday showed crowds remaining outside the concrete, razor wire-topped walls being guarded by U.S. troops.

President Joe Biden told Americans in Washington on Friday that his administration had “no indication” that Americans weren’t able to get to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

“We’ve made an agreement with the Taliban. Thus far, they’ve allowed them to go through,” he said.

He later said he misunderstood the question and that Americans may be getting into trouble after being let through Taliban checkpoints.

But the Department of Defense, about an hour later, acknowledged being aware of reports that Taliban terrorists had been beating Americans in Afghanistan.

Thousands of Americans are estimated to remain in the country after the United States withdrew most troops and the Taliban pummeled Afghan forces.

The Taliban took over Kabul on Aug. 15.

Members of Congress from both parties have been critical of how the United States conducted the withdrawal, with many wondering why civilians weren’t evacuated before the military largely pulled out.

Now, Americans, Afghans, and others seeking to flee the country must brave the Taliban-held streets to reach the airport, with little to no help from troops from the United States or other nations, though some special forces have reportedly conducted targeted rescue missions by helicopter and U.S. troops went outside the airport to rescue 169 people.

Americans were encouraged to leave Afghanistan earlier this year and urged to do so as the Taliban rapidly gained ground this month.

Those who chose to stay have been receiving changing advice from U.S. officials regarding travel to the airport.

The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan told Americans on Aug. 15 to shelter in place because of the unstable security situation there.

That directive remained active until Aug. 18, when Americans were told that U.S. government flights were departing from the airport but also informed that the government could not “ensure safe passage” to the facility.

A similar message was promoted on Thursday, with another warning.

“We are processing people at multiple gates. Due to large crowds and security concerns, gates may open or close without notice. Please use your best judgment and attempt to enter the airport at any gate that is open,” U.S. citizens were told.

US Tells Americans to Avoid Traveling to Kabul Airport Because of ‘Potential Security Threats’ (theepochtimes.com)

‘Highly unlikely’ Taliban will overrun Afghanistan, Biden said in July

When President Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by a September 11 deadline, the president told reporters in July that it remained “highly unlikely” the Taliban would take control of the country. 

“The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely,” Biden said. “The Afghan government and leadership has to come together. They clearly have the capacity to sustain the government in place … there’s not a conclusion that, in fact, they cannot defeat the Taliban.”

Biden’s forecast for the future of Afghanistan, however, has proven completely false. The Taliban has captured several of Afghanistan’s largest cities, and experts now believe the terrorist group will target the Afghan capital of Kabul in the coming weeks. The Biden administration scrambled to call in another 8,000 troops to the region in an effort to rescue both U.S. troops and civilians remaining in the country.

Biden’s Afghanistan Predictions Were All Wrong (freebeacon.com)

‘It was pretty obvious to me what was going to happen’ if Biden bucked military advice, Senate minority leader says

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said President Biden directly ignored the advice of military leaders during briefings on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

“I was in a number of these briefings over the last couple months, it was pretty obvious to me what was going to happen,” McConnell said Monday. “I know for a fact that the president’s military leaders argued against this decision. I think the president himself felt strongly about this and overruled his own military leaders to do it, and he owns it.”

McConnell slammed the Biden administration for its incompetent withdrawal of thousands of Americans and Afghans. Footage emerged Monday of havoc at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, that caused civilian casualties.

“Honestly, this administration looks to me like it couldn’t organize a two-car funeral,” McConnell said. “It is a sad day for the United States of America.”

President Biden responded Monday to critics of his withdrawal, saying he stands by his decision.

“We will continue to support the Afghan people,” Biden said. “The way to do it is not through endless military deployments, but diplomacy.”

McConnell: Biden Ignored Military’s Advice on Afghanistan (freebeacon.com)

The restraint crowd delivers America’s humiliation in Afghanistan

When the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft was founded in 2019, the mainstream media celebrated its emergence as a beacon of hope for a more restrained American foreign policy. Two years later, the humiliating failure wrought by the toxic mix of isolationism and anti-Americanism at the heart of the Quincy Institute is on full display.

Charles Koch, once pilloried for his conservative politics, was celebrated for a collaboration with George Soros that aimed to “bring an end to America’s age of endless wars and to reduce the nation’s military footprint around the world.”

While the left and right alike remain allergic to bipartisanship, the so-called transpartisanship of the Quincy Institute’s retrenchment remains very much in fashion in Washington. It can now claim full credit for the foreign policy debacle in Afghanistan.

The institution itself—and the White House—agrees. The Quincy Institute trumpeted its “success” in a Monday night email. “We knew that if we could bring the forces against endless war on the Left and the Right together, we could achieve the impossible,” the Quincy Institute wrote to supporters. White House chief of staff Ron Klain, for his part, retweeted the top Koch aide William Ruger’s wet kiss to Biden: In Ruger’s view, the president is “showing the requisite realist spine America needs at the moment.” Congratulations!

Quincy cheered President Joe Biden’s announcement in April that the United States would leave Afghanistan, sneering that that “the military high command’s never-ending urge to stick with a failed war was complemented by the inside-the-Beltway Blob’s doomsday scenarios and tired nostrums.”

The Soros network may have been pushing on an open door with Democrats, but Charles Koch gets the credit for doing the heavy lifting to provide intellectual cover for isolationists on the right.

That’s in part why President Donald Trump nominated Ruger, to serve as ambassador to Afghanistan in the last days of that administration. We opposed that nomination, but we now regret he wasn’t there this week to see the fruits of his labor.

This precipitous and calamitous withdrawal had “transpartisan” advocates. But the slogans, the white papers, the research and reports, and the veneer of professionalism and academic rigor used to justify the reckless policy came largely from Koch, Soros, and their army of “restrainers.”

A recent article from the Quincy Institute’s Responsible Statecraft blog posed a question that gets to the core of its naïve worldview:

What would our world actually be like if you simply declared peace and came home?

Now they know the answer. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has brought us the single most irresponsible bit of American statecraft in 50 years. This travesty—and all the death and destruction that will flow from it—is their first great achievement. Let’s hope it is also their last.

Responsible Statecraft Gets Its Moment (freebeacon.com)

Another widely peddled media hoax has been shot to pieces as Reuters reveals that the FBI has “scant evidence” of any plot or forward planning to overthrow the U.S. government on January 6th.

The news confirms The National Pulse’s reporting from January 11th, and raises questions about the government’s power grab and abuse of authority using January 6th as pretext.

Reuters reported Friday morning:

The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.

“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

The report also vindicates President Trump and his team, and clarifies that there is “no evidence that the groups had serious plans,” to overthrow the U.S. government or commit anything like an actual “insurrection.”

The news blows apart the media’s narrative over the past eight months, and should refocus attention on the fact that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refused support in advance of the peaceful Trump rally at the White House earlier that day.

President Trump is known to have cleared the way for 10,000 National Guard troops, in advance of the event, in order to keep the peace.

The FBI, meanwhile, has been targeting peaceful U.S. protesters who did not breach the Capitol on January 6th, including Alaska spa owners Paul and Marilyn Hueper. Many of those arrested in the wake of the riot are being held in D.C. prison without access to edible food, and sometime in solitary confinement.

The National Pulse declared the January 6th hoax dead in March of this year, after exhaustive investigations.

FBI “Finds Scant Evidence” of Jan 6 Insurrection Plot, Killing Off Another Anti-Trump Media Hoax. – The National Pulse

“But in Islamic law, even if you have a good purpose or goal, you have to follow the rules.”

As refugees from Afghanistan pour into the Fort Lee U.S. military base in Virginia, an imam named Ammar Amonette is leading the fundraising drive for the Afghan refugees. Ammar Amonette, Imam of the Islamic Center of Virginia, is a left-wing activist who has spoken alongside Democrat then-Governor Terry McAuliffe, worked with the state’s Democrat attorney general to push hate crime legislation, held a press conference with Democrat Senator Mark Warner, and protested President Donald Trump’s travel ban on terrorism-rich countries.

In a 2004 interview unearthed by NATIONAL FILE, Amonette discussed the 9/11 attackers, saying, “Terrorism is about symbolic targets. It’s sending a political message. The World Trade Center sounds in Arabic like ‘center for globalization.’ I think they took it literally, and globalism may be a threat. But in Islamic law, even if you have a good purpose or goal, you have to follow the rules.” Amonette previously served as imam of the Colorado Muslim Society which, during his tenure, hosted an event with then-Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Ekrima Sabry, who has said that it is a “fairytale” that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.

Ammar Amonette’s Islamic Center of Virginia is raising money and supplies for the Afghan refugees at Fort Lee. DiscoveringIslam.org describes Michigan-born Amonette as “an American Islamic scholar who is a convert to Islam. He spent 12 years studying in Saudi Arabia. He initially studied at Umm Al-Qura University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. He later earned a Masters at the Graduate Institute for Preparation of Imams in Mecca.” Amonette’s efforts to help the migrants was profiled this week by CBS 6 Richmond in which he stated that “It’s going to be a long process and it’s only beginning” and said “a new plane is arriving every day” to take refugees to Fort Lee.

In June 2020, Ammar Amonette was the first speaker at a Clergy Action RVA press conference to protest the police beside the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia. On its Facebook page, Clergy Action RVA posts support for Black Lives Matter and George Floyd, supported giving felons the right to vote in Virginia, stated that “As last week’s insurrection at the Capitol demonstrated, the voices of white supremacy are violent and loud,” and held “Election Organizing” and “Election Brainstorming & Organizing” Zoom meetings prior to the 2020 election.

In January 2021, Amonette was quoted as saying that Muslims are not allowed to be vaccine refusers, regardless of whether or not a vaccine contains pork ingredients. He stated: “In case of an epidemic, you’re not allowed to refuse vaccination even if there’s a slight danger to you of a reaction. Although you may be able to refuse treatment when you’re ill, you can’t endanger others in the community. We have a religious duty and obligation to be vaccinated as long as competent science and medical authorities approve the vaccine…Anything that saves lives takes precedence over food prohibitions. Protecting the health of the community takes precedence over some other details of the law.”

Amonette cited the rules of Muslim law when discussing the 9/11 terrorist attacks in an October 17, 2004 interview with Denver Post reporter Eric Gorski headlined “U.S.-born imam turns heads, minds, hearts.” At the time, Amonette worked as an imam for the Colorado Muslim Society. Text of that article is preserved at the World-Wide Religious News website.

Here is a passage from the article (emphasis added): “Given his background, Amonette is in demand as a spokesman for his faith on terrorism. His answer usually goes something like this: The Islamic concept of jihad is similar to Christianity’s just- war theory, which allows war if conditions are met. In Islam it is allowable to defend yourself against armed aggressors. But Islamic law strictly forbids killing innocent civilians.

“Terrorism is about symbolic targets,” he said. “It’s sending a political message. The World Trade Center sounds in Arabic like ‘center for globalization.’ I think they took it literally, and globalism may be a threat. But in Islamic law, even if you have a good purpose or goal, you have to follow the rules.’”

In 2017, Ammar Amonette spoke at an interfaith Ramadan potluck at Bon Air United Methodist Church with then-Virginia governor and current gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe and then-lieutenant governor Ralph Northam. Amonette said at the event: “This is the real America, there’s nothing more American than an interfaith breaking of the fast where we’re not threatened by each other.”

Governor McAuliffe said at the event: “We want to be part of this very special occasion, and when you think about the holy month of Ramadan and how important that is, and the message it conveys, I want everybody to understand that from day one, our administration has fought to make sure Virginia is open and welcome to everyone. And to every member of the Muslim faith, let me be very clear on behalf of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia, we love you, we respect you and we thank you for your contribution to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States of America.”

In 2004, while working as an imam of the Colorado Muslim Society, Amonette reportedly discussed how Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin’s assassination affected the Muslim community in Colorado. In March 2006, the Colorado Muslim Society (where Amonette served as imam) hosted “An Afternoon With Shaikh Ekrima Sabry,” who was then the Yasser Arafat-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine. Years earlier in 2000, Sabry said, with regard to the Holocaust: “Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairytale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity. It is not my fault if Hitler hated Jews, indeed they were hated a little everywhere.” Records confirm Amonette working as an imam for the Colorado Muslim Society both before and after the event.

Amonette expounded on his views in a lecture called “The Need To Rule By ALLAH’s Law.” In his political activism from recent years, Amonette has opposed President Donald Trump. “At US Court of Appeals today protesting Trump’s Muslim Ban,” he wrote on Facebook on May 8, 2017.

In 2015, Amonette joined Democrat Senator Mark Warner for a press conference about alleged anti-Muslim hatred. In July 2018, the Islamic Center of Virginia teamed up with the ACLU of Virginia for the event #NoMuslimBanEver to fight President Donald Trump’s homeland security policy. Amonette spoke at the event. In October 2018, Amonette spoke at a vigil at the Weinstein JCC that attorney general Mark Herring and governor Ralph Northam’s wife Pamela attended. In April 2021, Amonette spoke at a Sikh event that was attended by Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger and governor Ralph Northam’s deputy chief diversity officer and senior policy adviser for immigrant and refugee affairs.

Amonette has appeared at events for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, which advocates for progressive policies and which gave the Islamic Center of Virginia a “Beacon of Light” award. In one entry on its website, the Virginia Interfaith Center announced that “Representatives from the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy lent support today during Attorney General Mark Herring’s announcement of a new legislative push to protect racial, ethnic and religious minorities in Virginia from hate crimes, and to establish a more inclusive definition of “hate crime.”

Several faith leaders joined Herring for his announcement and added their words of support to a new effort to help protect citizens of the Commonwealth from acts of violence, harassment, discrimination or intimidation…Iman Ammar Amonette of the Islamic Center of Virginia in Bon Air, said that “we support everyone’s First Amendment rights, but hate speech emboldens some people to take matters into their own hands and to attack and assault and harass people. Most Muslims have probably been targeted by hateful speech and these incidents are underreported. We appreciate the Attorney General’s strong words and actions to protect us here in Virginia to make people feel safe and welcome and equal citizens under the law.’” (Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy passage ends)

The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy’s “Foundational Partners” include the Center for American Progress, a George Soros-funded leftist group.

Activist Imam Fundraising For Afghan Refugees Discussed ‘Good Purpose’ Of 9/11 Spoke With McAuliffe, Hosted Holocaust Denier – National File

Jihadists disseminate messages to Afghan residents on social media platforms

Taliban leaders used Twitter and WhatsApp to spread propaganda and establish control over Kabul as they stormed the Afghan capital over the weekend. 

On Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted that residents welcomed the Taliban and that “the situation in Kabul is under control.” The jihadist group used WhatsApp to disseminate a similar message to Kabul residents as it entered the city. In recent days, Taliban leaders have circulated WhatsApp numbers that Afghan regime officials or soldiers could call to negotiate their surrender.

The Taliban has swept across Afghanistan in the weeks following Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops, capturing major cities with little resistance. The Pentagon on Sunday deployed an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan to aid evacuation efforts as Afghans and Americans swarmed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Administration officials said in July that they expected a Taliban takeover to take months. 

The Taliban has used WhatsApp and Twitter for years to share official statements, but in the past week it has escalated its use of the platforms, using WhatsApp to announce new rules for Kabul residents.

On Monday, Mujahid tweeted a warning against looting and unauthorized intimidation of Afghan officials. The Taliban’s “complaint commission” posted WhatsApp numbers for city residents to call “if they face threats from anyone” and set up an emergency broadcast system via the app as well.

Twitter and Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, regularly banned ISIS members from their platforms. But the sites appear to let the Taliban broadcast its messages without incident. 

A Twitter spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon that it was “proactively removing content that violates our policies.” The spokeswoman linked to a policy banning “hateful conduct” and another that bans “threatening or promoting terrorism.” The spokeswoman did not comment on whether Twitter considers the Taliban a terrorist organization. A Facebook spokesman told the Free Beacon it would take action against accounts maintained by sanctioned groups in Afghanistan, but would not comment on specific cases.

Several Taliban spokesmen have maintained Twitter accounts for years, regularly tweeting updates on negotiations and regional battles. The accounts often post photos and videos from frontlines, which are then copied and shared by pro-Taliban accounts. Only 15 percent of the Afghan population has access to the internet.

Both Twitter and Facebook removed former president Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riots and have not restored his account, citing “incitement to violence.” 

Taliban Leaders Used Twitter and WhatsApp to Help Capture Kabul (freebeacon.com)

My sources along with media reports have made it clear: Big Tech is offering their multi-billion-dollar platforms to terrorists.

Up until yesterday, the Taliban had been using Facebook’s WhatsApp to coordinate their terrorist activities in Afghanistan.

The rapid takeover of Afghanistan was made possible with the messaging tool WhatsApp, which is owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook.

For years, I have been screaming about the presence of Islamic terrorists on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This isn’t a new phenomenon.

If you recall, CAIR, an Islamic terrorist organization even lobbied Twitter to remove my account.

As for Twitter, they’re allowing the Taliban to operate freely on their platform despite the group being sanctioned as a terrorist organization under U.S. Law.

Twitter acknowledged that they will continue to allow Taliban communication and coordination to take place on Twitter despite the fact that the Taliban is carrying out a murderous rampage in Afghanistan as I write this email to you.

As President Trump remains permanently banned over fears of “inciting violence”, an actual Islamic terrorist group is allowed to operate on Twitter!

This has to end!

Help fund my new lawsuit against Big Tech. Help me stop them.

The Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, is on Twitter with 321k followers and growing.

And thanks to Jack Dorsey and Twitter, the Taliban is quickly gaining support around the world.

A Twitter user named Mohammad Abbas from Pakistan tweeted:
 

Congratulations to the Taliban on their victory over Americans and against NATO. May Allah help the Taliban to run an ideal Islamic government in Afghanistan.

And as American troops are arriving to retake Kabul airport to safely evacuate people, Twitter is allowing coordination like this with Taliban leaders:
 

The tower of Kabul Airfield should not be taken over by the Americans. They should destroy “this system” after it arrives. – Taliban supporter to Zabihullah Mujahid
Facebook and Twitter are aiding and abetting terrorists!

Yet, here in the United States, we can’t even discuss COVID without censorship! We can’t share our conservative views without being banned! A sitting United States President was banned from Twitter, but Islamic terrorists are free to tweet.

This should be eye-opening to you – it was to me. And it has been for years.

This is no longer just about censorship.
 

Twitter is a national security threat, an argument I’ve been making for years.

Twitter is allowing terrorists to organize and coordinate the killing of American soldiers and innocent Afghans who are fleeing for their lives.

It’s happening as you read this email!

An administration that took national security seriously would have Twitter shut down by the morning – but we know that won’t happen under the Biden Regime.

So we’ll have to stop them ourselves, and the best immediate shot we have is forcing them to change through the courts . . . and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

The cost has been great to me. Every spare dime I have is going to fund my legal work and I need your help more than ever.

Chip in as much as you can if you can help.

Thanks so much for your support and please, help me keep fighting.

Respectfully,


Laura Loomer

P.S. Tomorrow I have a call with my attorneys to go over the final draft of my initial court filing. During that call, I expect to hear that my retainer has been depleted because this case is MASSIVE. Please give me a hand to keep going.

The pending report from special counsel John Durham, who was tasked with investigating the origins of the FBI’s Trump–Russia probe, should be released to the public, Senate Republicans argued in a letter this week.

More than 40 Republican senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), signed a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking that Durham, a former U.S. attorney, be allowed to continue his investigation and that his report is released to the public.

There have been questions about whether Durham’s investigation will lack funding past the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30. He was tapped by then-Attorney General William Barr to investigate the FBI’s operations when it surveilled former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Barr elevated Durham to become special counsel in October 2020.

“The Special Counsel’s ongoing work is important to many Americans who were disturbed that government agents subverted lawful process to conduct inappropriate surveillance for political purposes,” the Republican senators’ letter reads. “The truth pursued by this investigation is necessary to ensure transparency in our intelligence agencies and restore faith in our civil liberties. Thus, it is essential that the Special Counsel’s ongoing review should be allowed to continue unimpeded and without undue limitations.”

The Republicans called on Garland to make a pledge to release the full report and allow Durham to investigate past September.

“We are over two years into the investigation of how the Obama–Biden FBI spied on an incoming president, and we still do not have answers. America’s national security apparatus was weaponized to take down President Trump, and the American people deserve to know how this occurred,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is leading the effort, said in a statement.

In recent months, however, there have been scant reports about the progress of Durham’s investigation. According to an Aug. 13 report from The Wall Street Journal, Durham’s investigation is still active and is presenting evidence to a grand jury. The WSJ report cited anonymous sources.

If Durham presents evidence before a grand jury, it suggests that he’s considering more criminal charges beyond the case against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who pleaded guilty to altering an email about former Trump campaign aide Carter Page. During the 2016 campaign, Page was placed under FBI surveillance in an operation that was later flagged in a December 2019 report (pdf) conducted by the Department of Justice’s inspector general, who found errors and omissions in how the agency operated.

The Department of Justice didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

44 Senate Republicans Demand John Durham Report Be Made Public (theepochtimes.com)

The thousands of prisoners freed by the Taliban in Afghanistan after the terrorist group took over the country pose a “serious concern to the security of the United States,” top Republicans in the House of Representatives warned national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Wednesday.

Prisoners freed from Pul-e-Charkhi prison and Bagram Air Base, among other lockups, are reported to include Taliban terrorists, senior Al-Qaeda operatives, and former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

“This development is found to be more troubling considering recent reports of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General [Mark] Milley’s observation that terror groups like Al-Qaeda could build up in Afghanistan much sooner than earlier intelligence estimates suggested. With the very real prospect that seasoned terrorist operatives now roam freely in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we write to urgently request information on how the U.S. Government plans to mitigate threats to U.S. interests and the homeland,” the Republicans wrote to Sullivan.

They’re asking for detailed information on the prisoners, including whether the U.S. government is aware of any who were previously involved in plotting terror attacks against the United States.

“As the American people prepare to mark the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, we are soberly reminded of the dangers posed to the homeland by threats borne out of terror safe havens, like Afghanistan,” Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) and two other top Republicans said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Sullivan told reporters on Tuesday that the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan was presenting broad challenges.

“We will remain persistently vigilant against the terrorism threat in Afghanistan,” Sullivan said, asserting that the United States “has proven in other places that we can suppress terrorism without a permanent military presence on the ground.”

“We are going to have to deal with the potential threat of terrorism from Afghanistan going forward, just as we have to deal with potential threat of terrorism in dozens of countries, in multiple continents around the world,” he added.

Katko, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) also linked the threat to the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of people are crossing illegally every day.

Border agents have encountered known or suspected terrorists from far-flung countries. The outgoing Border Patrol Chief said recently that “Unprecedented numbers of known or suspected terrorists have crossed the southern border in recent months.”

As part of their inquiry, the lawmakers want to know whether the intelligence community and U.S. immigration enforcement officials are sharing information related to known or suspected terrorists “seeking to exploit vulnerabilities along the southwest border.”

Katko is the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. McCaul is the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Rogers is the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.

Prisoners Released by Taliban in Afghanistan Pose ‘Serious Concern’ to US Security, Republicans Warn (theepochtimes.com)