Oregon is a state that has been under progressive Democrat control for the last six administrations and its largest city, Portland, has been a hotbed for violence connected to the Marxist revolutionary group Antifa. In response to this, Kerry McQuisten, a native Oregonian and Republican, is running for governor.
She said the current generation of young people have been convinced that they are being marginalized, and this is leading them to accept socialism and eventually communism.
“You know, [Yuri] Bezmenov said that all it took was for them to get [a] hold of one generation of our children, and it would … flip us into communism,” McQuisten told the host of NTD Capitol Report during a recent interview.Play Video
She said this effort to achieve the Marxist goals in the United States requires that a generation feel they don’t have individual rights and reacts as a collective. “And that’s the first step toward communism, you know, these folks have to be a generation convinced that they don’t have these individual rights, they may not see themselves as individuals, they have to slide into this hive mentality.
“And that’s absolutely what we’re seeing in our education system here in Oregon. You know, it’s as if we’re the test run here in the United States to see how far they can push this.”
McQuisten said she is pushing back on the current administration’s effort to use the education system to indoctrinate youth to this type of thinking, and if elected would end the teaching of the critical race theory-based curriculum, which seeks to divide groups based on their race.
Other Republican governors have signed bills into law prohibiting the teaching of such ideology in schools, saying it is divisive and goes against America’s founding principles. Elected specifically on an anti-CRT platform, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, after taking office, signed an executive order (pdf) prohibiting the teaching of CRT.
CRT redefines human history as a struggle between “oppressors”—normally considered to be white people—and the “oppressed” individuals from minority identity groups, and has Marxist underpinnings.
In addition, McQuisten said the gender ideology being pushed in schools does not make sense. “Everything in Oregon is upside down at this point, from crime to education and beyond.
“So aside from critical race theory, we’re seeing right now, at the end of the last legislative session, Kate Brown, our outgoing governor, had signed into law The Menstrual Dignity Act.”
This legislation seeks to put tampons in boys’ locker rooms and school bathrooms. An Oregon Department of Education toolkit (pdf) in part states that the goal is to “provide free menstrual products for all menstruating students in public schools in Oregon.” It later continues, “Importantly, this law affirms the right to menstrual dignity for transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and two-spirit students.”
McQuisten said “what I’m looking at across the United States, and especially Oregon right now, and seeing is that assault on our constitutional rights and our assault on our representative constitutional republic.”
If elected, McQuisten would join a number of governors that are pushing back against this type of ideology.
“I think it’s great legislation,” McQuisten said about Florida Gov. Ron DeStantis’s effort to require that the history of communism be taught in schools. “We need to make people aware of this, because I’m completely aware that communism and socialism is how evil manifests itself through our political system.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “The Victims of Communism Day” legislation (pdf), saying Florida will not “whitewash the history of communism” and will stand for liberty.
“Through HB 395 and the funding announced today, we are guaranteeing that the history of those who fled communist regimes and their experiences are preserved and not forgotten by our students.”
Brown also commuted the sentences of close to 1,000 criminals, said McQuisten. “So, the Democrats in our state have actually created this pro-crime agenda.”
Brown said she granted clemency to nearly 1,000 criminals who were “nonviolent adults” that faced a high risk of COVID-19, battled the wildfires in 2020, or are facing “unjustly long sentences they committed as youth,” in an April social media post.
Meanwhile, McQuisten said Oregon is on “the edge of a cliff” and it needs a leader to fight back against these destructive trends.
Statistically speaking, 90% of all murders occur WITHIN racial groups, despite what the news and the left endlessly promote. Check for yourself. (US Patriot)
Democratic mayor Lori Lightfoot is imposing a weekend curfew for all minors in Chicago following three shootings downtown last weekend that left one teenager dead.
“Young people are absolutely welcome downtown, but in the evening hours they must be accompanied by a responsible adult,” Lightfoot said on Monday after she announced the 10 p.m. curfew. The fatal shooting occurred on Saturday in Millennium Park during a weekend that saw 33 total shootings, 5 of which were fatal.
Hundreds of teenagers gathered in the Chicago Loop over the weekend, in a chaotic scene that halted traffic and saw some jump up on top of cars. Police superintendent David Brown said the crowds appear to have coordinated their efforts on social media. Twenty-six minors and four adults were arrested in connection with the Millennium Park shooting, and police found seven guns among the arrestees.
Chicago in 2021 had its deadliest year in a quarter century, with 797 homicides recorded. Under Democratic governor J.B. Pritzker, Illinois ended cash bail the same year. Law enforcement leaders have criticized the elimination of cash bail, citing cases of released criminals who committed other crimes. In August, a man released on bond bought a handgun that was later used to kill a police officer.
Chicago has long had a curfew for minors at 11 p.m., but it is unclear how strictly it’s been enforced. In addition to beefing up park security, Lightfoot said she has directed the Chicago Police Department to increase tracing for guns found in the possession of minors.
The Illinois ACLU decried the mayor’s curfew order, saying “the promise of strict enforcement will result in unnecessary stops and arrests and further strain relations between CPD and young people of color.”
Former First Lady Melania Trump gave her first interview since leaving the White House, providing a hint that her husband may be seeking another term in office and saying “it’s sad to see” the state of the country under the current administration.
“I think we achieved a lot in four years of the Trump administration,” Melania told Fox News in a Sunday interview, adding that “never say never” when asked about whether she could be again living inside the White House.
“I like Washington, D.C. I know it operates completely different than any other city, but I really like it there. And I enjoyed living in the White House. To be first lady of the United States was my greatest honor. I think we achieved a lot in the four years of Trump administration. I enjoyed taking care of the White House. It was my home for a while. I understood it is people’s house. And it was, it was a privilege to live there,” she continued to say.
When asked by Fox host Pete Hegseth about former first ladies Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton appearing on the cover of Vogue, Melania, a former model, criticized the magazine. Melania appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2005 when she was photographed alongside former President Donald Trump in her wedding dress.
“They’re biased and they have likes and dislikes, and it’s so obvious. And I think American people and everyone sees it. It was their decision, and I have much more important things to do—and I did in the White House—than being on the cover of Vogue,” Melania told the broadcaster.
The former first lady, a native of Slovenia, weighed in on the state of the United States under the Biden administration.
“I think it’s sad to see what’s going on, if you really look deeply into it,” Melania said, adding: “I think a lot of people are struggling and suffering and what is going on around the world as well. So it’s very sad to see and I hope it changes fast,” Melania added.
Donald Trump has not definitively said whether he will run for reelection, although he has suggested in interviews that he might.
Last month, Trump, 75, told the Washington Post that his health could play a role in whether he decides to run or not. In 2024, Trump will turn 78, and should he run—and win—the presidency, he’ll be 82 when he departs. President Joe Biden is slated to turn 80 this November.
“You always have to talk about health. You look like you’re in good health, but tomorrow, you get a letter from a doctor saying come see me again,” he told the outlet in April. ‘That’s not good when they use the word ‘again,’” Trump added, saying he is currently in good health.
During event with teachers’ union leaders, Jahana Hayes heaps praise on House speaker
Swing-district Democrat Jahana Hayes pledged to oppose Nancy Pelosi for House speaker in 2018. Now, the Connecticut congresswoman is one of Pelosi’s biggest supporters.
During a May 5 virtual event with top teachers’ union leaders, Hayes heaped praise on Pelosi, saying she feels “incredibly blessed” and “incredibly privileged” to serve under the California Democrat. “I’m just so humbled to be able to say that I served in the Congress with Nancy Pelosi,” Hayes added.
Hayes’s gushing admiration for Pelosi is a significant shift from the Democrat’s rhetoric during her first congressional run in 2018. Hayes explicitly promised she wouldn’t back Pelosi for House speaker, arguing that Democrats needed a “generational shift in leadership.” But Hayes quickly reneged on that pledge and falsely said a vote against Pelosi would be “a vote for the Republicans.”
The virtual event also saw Hayes express her support for President Joe Biden, who she said “listens” and “wants to be helpful.” Hayes’s decision to tether herself to Biden may backfire as she navigates a difficult reelection bid in Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District. Biden’s political standing in the state has rapidly declined since he won it by a whopping 20 points in 2020. According to a May Civiqs poll, just 38 percent of registered Connecticut voters approve of the president, while 50 percent disapprove.
In addition to Pelosi, Hayes appeared at the virtual event alongside American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten and National Education Association president Becky Pringle. That connection could also provoke political backlash—Connecticut teachers’ union leaders, including the state’s AFT president, in January vocally opposed a return to in-person learning, instead arguing in favor of a remote option due to safety concerns. Some unionized teachers responded by wearing black to school as a form of protest.
Hayes joined Congress in 2019, replacing outgoing Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Esty. While Hayes’s district is the least liberal in Connecticut, she has deep ties to far-left “Squad” members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). In February 2019, the trio appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, which also featured Pelosi.
Hayes’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.
Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) is among the busiest people in the nation’s capital, being both a member of the House of Representatives and a Senate candidate, but during a recent congressional hearing she thought she had found a way to be in two places simultaneously.
Demings attended an April 5 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee virtually, as allowed under rules adopted at the outset of the CCP Virus Pandemic in 2020. Those rules made it acceptable for a House member suffering from the virus or having been recently exposed to it from participating in hearings virtually.
The judiciary panel adopted some amendments to the text, then forwarded the proposal for consideration by the House Committees on Armed Services and Homeland Security. The proposal remains pending a floor vote by the full House.
During the same April hearing, however, Demings was also attending another event via the internet, one in which she was addressing supporters of her campaign to be the Democratic nominee to oppose Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on the November ballot.
The campaign event was a caucus of Duval County Black Democratic Caucus. At one point, Demings pauses, apologizes to those attending the caucus and votes in the hearing.
Her remarks to the caucus were picked up on the hearing audio, with a result that she was asked by the committee chairman to inform her that she was not muting her caucus remarks.
That’s a no-no under multiple House rules, according to the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a non-profit government watchdog group, which filed a complaint with the House Office of Congressional Ethics earlier this week.
“The ability to virtually attend committee proceedings was put in place so the House could continue conducting necessary business during the public health emergency and for no other reason,” said FACT executive director Kendra Arnold in a statement announcing the complaint.
“However, Rep. Demings’ dual attendance at the events suggests that she chose to virtually attend the committee hearing, not for reasons related to COVID-19, but rather to speak at a campaign event,” Arnold said.
“Her campaigning during an official House proceeding also apparently violates the separation between official government business and political activity required under the ethics rules.
“We encourage the Office of Congressional Ethics to immediately investigate Representative Demings and impose the proper penalties if found guilty,” she said.
A spokesman for Demings in her Capitol Hill office did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
The complaint filed by FACT notes that, “House ethics rules require members to ‘conduct themselves at all times in a manner that reflects creditably on the House.’ This is a broad and ‘comprehensive provision’ that is applied to any conduct taken in a member’s official capacity.
“For example, members have been investigated and disciplined under this rule related to ‘making statements that impugned the reputation of the House’ and ‘making false statements to the [ethics] committee.’
“In addition, members are required to adhere both to the spirit and the letter of the House ethics rules, and thus they must read all the rules and ethical requirements broadly.
“This includes the House rules adopted ‘to ensure Congress can continue legislation during COVID-19,’ under which members are only permitted to vote by proxy and attend committee proceedings virtually when needed because ‘a public health emergency due to a novel coronavirus is in effect.’
“Finally, the House ethics rules require strict separation between campaign and official acts. This rule is applicable to every type of official activity, for instance a member cannot campaign from government buildings, use official resources for campaign purposes, or have any political information on official social media pages or websites.”
Demings was first elected to the House in 2016 after a long career with the Orlando Police Department, including tenure as Chief of Police. She represents the 10th congressional district, which includes nearly equal portions of white, black and Hispanic voters.
Rubio was first elected to the Senate in the 2010 Tea Party flood that put Republicans in the majority in the House and almost did so in the Senate as well. Rubio was re-elected in 2016 after an unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination.
The FACT website describes the group as “a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting accountability, ethics, and transparency in government and civic arenas by hanging a lantern over public officials who put their own interests over the interests of the public good.”
Free Beacon Investigates: Five cities, five free crack pipes
Crack pipes are distributed in safe-smoking kits up and down the East Coast, raising questions about the Biden administration’s assertion that its multimillion-dollar harm reduction grant program wouldn’t funnel taxpayer dollars to drug paraphernalia.
The findings are the result of Washington Free Beacon visits to five harm-reduction organizations and calls to over two dozen more. In fact, every organization we visited—facilities in Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Richmond, Va.—included crack pipes in the kits.
The kits became the subject of national attention in the wake of a Free Beaconreport in February indicating that a $30 million harm-reduction program was set to fund the distribution of free crack pipes in “safe-smoking kits.” Pressed on the matter in a Feb. 9 press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki issued a full-throated denial.
“They were never a part of the kit, it was inaccurate reporting,” Psaki said of the pipes. “A safe smoking kit may contain alcohol swabs, lip balm, other materials to promote hygiene and reduce the transmission of diseases.”
While the contents of safe-smoking kits vary from one organization to another—and while those from some organizations may not contain crack pipes—all of the organizations we visited made crack pipes as well as paraphernalia for the use of heroin, cocaine, and crystal methamphetamine readily available without requiring or offering rehabilitation services, suggesting that pipes are included in many if not most of the kits distributed across the country. All of the centers we visited are run by health-focused nonprofits and government agencies—the types of groups eligible to receive funding, starting this month, from the Biden administration’s $30 million grant program.
None of the organizations responded to inquiries about whether they applied for government grants. It is not clear which organizations will receive those grants, nor has the administration said how it will ensure the kits will not contain crack pipes. The Department of Health and Human Services, which will oversee the Biden grant program, declined to provide a list of groups that have applied for funding, citing “confidentiality.” The Biden administration is set to announce grant recipients on May 15.
The Free Beacon‘s findings contradict claims from a raft of fact-checkers who, based on the White House’s ex-post-facto denial, deemed the Free Beacon‘s reporting false.
A USA Today headline asking, “What’s inside a safe smoking kit?” answered: “No, it’s not a crack pipe.” The outlet based its fact-check solely on the administration’s denial and does not appear to have done any additional research on safe smoking kits. The author, Michelle Shen, did not respond to a request for comment.
A survey of more than two dozen harm reduction organizations found that not all harm reduction organizations distribute safe smoking kits, but those that do almost always provide crack pipes. The few that don’t include crack pipes in their kits say they are willing to, but unable to.
At Washington, D.C.’s Family and Medical Counseling Service, Inc., for example, a member of the group’s needle exchange team told the Free Beacon that the organization would love to offer crack pipes as part of its safe smoking kit but hasn’t been able to purchase them.
“I would if I knew how,” said Tyrone Pinkney, who distributes clean needles from a recreational vehicle and said he did not know where to buy crack pipes to include in the kits.
Pinkney, however, appears to be an exception. Here is what the Free Beacon found in each city.
Baltimore
At Charm City Care Connection, a nonprofit that provides harm reduction services to combat “oppression,” an employee said that identification is not required to receive a smoking kit, but did ask for initials, a date of birth, and zip code before handing over two smoking kits containing glass crack pipes as well as Chore Boy copper mesh, a cleaning product used to hold the crack rock at the end of the pipe.
The bag included directions for how to use the pipe, heat-resistant mouthpieces, wooden sticks for packing the mesh into the pipe, and alcohol wipes. Most importantly, the organization provides all drug paraphernalia recipients an “Authorized Harm Reduction Program Participant Card” that serves as a get-out-of-jail-free card to show to law enforcement, because the paraphernalia is otherwise illegal in the state of Maryland.
Charm City Care Connection receives funding from both the Baltimore city and Maryland state governments, as well as at least $200,000 from left-wing billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations as part of the organization’s “Addiction and Health Equity Program.” According to the group’s disclosures, it received $200,000 in government grants in 2019. It has a partnership with Johns Hopkins University and half of its board of directors work for the university.
Women in Baltimore can have crack pipes delivered to their door. Katie Evans, the outreach director of the SPARC Women’s Center, says the organization will deliver smoking kits with crack pipes to anyone with “non-men identities.” The center, which is run through Johns Hopkins University, will also deliver syringes, snorting kits, and “sex supplies,” Evans said.
Evans would not say whether SPARC Women’s Center applied for a Health and Human Services grant. Charm City Care Connection also did not respond to a request for comment about whether it had applied for a Health and Human Services grant.
Boston
In Boston’s South End neighborhood, a man was seen injecting a needle into his calf about 30 feet away from a police car outside the Access, Harm Reduction, Overdose Prevention and Education facility, which is run by the Boston Public Health Commission.
Inside the facility, an employee recorded our initials, date of birth, housing situation, and HIV status before offering an array of drug equipment. The bin of crack pipes was visible just above a bin of syringes labeled “biggie smalls” and “ultra fine,” different options for injecting drugs into different parts of the body.
“One pipe per person, once a day,” a worker, who emerged with a crack pipe, meth pipe, and additional drug accessories such as Chore Boy copper, told the Free Beacon.
An employee said the facility no longer offers get-out-of-jail-free cards because the police don’t arrest people for drug possession any longer.
“We’re way past that,” the employee said, though possession of drug paraphernalia is still a crime in the city. The Boston Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The Boston Public Health Commission did not respond to a request for comment about whether it had applied for a Health and Human Services grant.
New York City
At the Alliance’s Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center, a young staffer offers up a long menu of drug paraphernalia available free of charge. Included on the menu was a “booty bump” kit for rectal ingestion of narcotics, which is recommended by many harm reduction centers as a safer way to use meth.
After providing initials, date of birth, and zip code, the Free Beacon was given two drug pipes, one for crack and one for meth, as well as an authorized program card similar to what was given out in Baltimore. The smoking kits include literature with “safer smoking tips,” including a warning that “crack and meth use can lead to unprotected sex by increasing your sex drive or making you more sexually passive.” Other tips advise addicts obtain crack from a “source you trust,” and to “smoke only a little bit first if unsure about its purity.”
In addition to the Chore Boy copper mesh, the center gave out pipe screens, which work as an alternative to hold crack rocks in the pipe. The center advertises that its pipes are made of Pyrex, a stronger tempered glass designed for high heat.
The Alliance for Positive Change, also known as AIDS Service Center NYC, has received $20 million from Health and Human Services since 2004—mostly for AIDS and HIV-related programs—with the majority of grants distributed during the Obama administration. The organization has received $74 million in government grants since 2009.
The Alliance for Positive Change did not respond to a request for comment about whether it had applied for a Health and Human Services grant.
Washington, D.C.
Just about a mile from the U.S. Capitol and within blocks of two elementary schools, a harm reduction center in Washington, D.C., had readily available pipes for crack and meth, as well as Chore Boy mesh, copper screens, and the same mouthpieces offered in Baltimore.
“Which kind do you want?” a volunteer asked after this reporter inquired about smoking kits. No information was recorded, and the center declined to look at identification that was offered. Program cards are no longer distributed by the center because possession of drug paraphernalia is decriminalized in the nation’s capital.
The harm reduction center goes by HIPS, which formerly stood for Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive but has been altered to stand for Honoring Individual Power and Strength.
HIPS since 2018 has received $3.1 million from Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which oversees the Biden administration’s harm reduction program. The funds are provided through two separate programs: one for LGBTQ housing and another for medication-assisted treatment.
HIPS did not respond to a request for comment about whether it had applied for a Health and Human Services grant.
Richmond
Employees of the River City Harm Redux organization were found at a table set up outside a hotel on the outskirts of Richmond, Va. This reporter asked for two crack smoking kits, but was told only one remained in the day’s offerings. To make up for the shortcoming, the employees added a meth pipe along with two “snorting kits,” which include straws, a plastic razor blade to break up drugs, short plastic straws, a small spoon, and a bedazzled playing card to snort drugs off of.
The organization is not an authorized harm reduction site recognized by the Virginia Department of Health. Possession of drug paraphernalia in Virginia is a Class 1 misdemeanor. A conviction for possession of drug paraphernalia can result in up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.
“If they are not authorized they are not protected by the law that allows sites to furnish paraphernalia,” Bruce Taylor, the drug use coordinator for the department, told the Free Beacon. Taylor said Virginia does not allow harm reduction facilities to include crack pipes in their smoking kits, and that his department is not aware of River City Harm Redux.
River City Harm Redux did not respond to a request for comment about whether it had applied for a Health and Human Services grant.
A panel in Missouri on May 10 recommended St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner be found guilty of violating ethics rules while investigating former Gov. Eric Greitens.
The Missouri Disciplinary Counsel said Gardner’s misconduct included failing to intervene when former FBI agent William Don Tisaby, who Gardner tapped to help investigate Greitens, falsely claimed that a document filed with the courts was the product of his work when it actually contained findings from Gardner.
Tisaby also gave false statements during a deposition but Gardner did not correct him even though she was in the room.
“Each of those statements was false, and respondent knew the statements were false,” the panel said.
Gardner has said she was not sure at the time what to do in response to Tisaby lying but now acknowledges she should have addressed the matter by telling Tisaby to tell the truth.
Giving the proper evidence to defendants is “one of the most basic responsibilities of a prosecutor,” the panel said.
On the other hand, the charges against Greitens, for allegedly taking a seminude picture of a woman who did not give permission, were eventually dropped, so a wrongful conviction did not happen, panelists noted. They also said that Gardner does not have a criminal history and that the dispute over the disclosure and production of documents “was more an issue of negligence than intentional non-disclosure,” which means that conduct did not rise to the level of “a potential breach of public trust.”
The panel is recommending Gardner be publicly reprimanded, but no further punishment be given.
The Missouri Supreme Court will review the panel’s recommendation and decide whether to issue a reprimand.
Gardner’s office and re-election campaign, and Greitens, did not respond to requests for comment.
Gardner is a Democrat who received major backing from billionaire George Soros while Greitens is a Republican who resigned from office and is now running for a U.S. Senate seat.
The panel findings stemmed from an April hearing in which Gardner admitted she violated rules but described the violations as “mistakes.” She reached a preliminary agreement then with the panel to avoid criminal charges.
Grand jurors in Tisaby’s case recently said in a letter that Gardner’s conduct “was not inadvertent nor inconsequential but was calculated deceit and/or outright incompetence; neither of which is acceptable behavior for a person holding this public office.” They said they were disappointed with the agreement.
Greitens told The Epoch Times in an email after the hearing that the agreement “reaffirms what we have known all along—Soros funded prosecutor Kim Gardner conducted a political witch hunt.”
“From hiring former FBI agent William Tisaby, who just plead[ed] guilty to evidence tampering, to lying and engaging in a coverup to conceal her misconduct, Gardner is the worst type of public official, corrupt and crooked,” he added.
Several of the groups calling on advertisers to boycott Twitter—citing Elon Musk’s objectionable views—are at the forefront of the campaign to boycott Israel and are known for trafficking in anti-Semitic canards.
In the wake of Musk’s $44 billion purchase of the social media site, a coalition of far-left groups is urging Twitter’s advertisers to boycott the sale, claiming that Musk “intends to steamroll” restrictions on speech and “provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation,” according to an open letter sent last week to Twitter’s advertisers, which reportedly include Disney, Coca-Cola, and Kraft.
Yet many of the groups involved in the anti-Musk campaign are known for trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes and promoting falsehoods about Israel, often on social media platforms like Twitter. They include Black Lives Matter, the Women’s March, Kairos, and Friends of the Earth—all of which are known for stoking Jew-hatred and leading the charge to boycott Israel. Musk last week questioned who is funding and organizing these groups, which he says want to “control your access to information.”
The Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, describes Israel as an “apartheid state” and supports efforts by the anti-Israel community to delegitimize the Jewish state.
“We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation (always have. And always will be),” the group tweeted in 2021, along with the hashtag “free Palestine.”
The official Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s Twitter account thanked Black Lives Matter for its support. “From Ferguson to Palestine, our struggles against racism, white supremacy, and for a just world are united!” BDS wrote in a follow-up tweet.
Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of Black Lives Matter’s cofounders, in 2015 traveled to the Palestinian territories and declared in an interview, “This is an apartheid state. … We can’t deny that and if we do deny it we are a part of the Zionist violence.”
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank who studies the BLM movement, said the group’s anti-Israel agenda is at the heart of the movement.
“The heart of the West is Christianity, and Judaism is at the heart of Christianity,” Gonzales wrote in a 2021 analysis. “Christ was a practicing Jew, as were Mary, Joseph, and likely all the apostles, who worshipped at the Jewish temple along with Jesus. Anyone who truly wants to dismantle the West, to ‘problematize’ it in critical race theory lingo, will want to start there first.”
Another group joining the anti-Musk cause is the Women’s March, a far-left coalition of activists who oppose former president Donald Trump. The group has been dogged by charges of anti-Semitism since its inception.
Three Women’s March founders—Palestinian activist and BDS supporter Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Bob Bland—left the organization in 2019 due to their promotion of anti-Semitic tropes and aggressive advocacy against Israel, which was seen as undermining the group’s credibility and isolating Jewish members.
The New York Timesreported in 2018 that the Women’s March was “roiled by accusations of anti-Semitism,” including efforts to remove Jewish members from prominent positions within the group. The Women’s March also formed an alliance with longtime anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam movement.
Sarsour, in particular, has trafficked in anti-Semitism. “Israel was built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else,” she said during a 2019 speech. “How can you be against white supremacy in the United States of America and the idea of living in a supremacist state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is built on supremacy?”
Mallory is a Farrakhan devotee who reportedly said Jewish people are “the mother and father of apartheid.”
The Kairos organization, which also signed the anti-Musk letter, is one of the leading advocates for BDS, which wages economic warfare on Israel. The Canadian government has called the group’s advocacy anti-Semitic in nature.
Friends of the Earth is another member of the global BDS movement. The group is featured on BDS’s official website and supports Israel boycotts. Friends of the Earth has also accused the Jewish state without evidence of preventing Palestinians from accessing clean water.
Musk, these groups wrote in their open letter to Twitter advertisers, will “provide a megaphone to extremists who traffic in disinformation, hate, and harassment. Under the guise of ‘free speech,’ his vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.” The organizations demand that Twitter’s advertisers force Musk to uphold the ban on Trump—whom Musk has pledged to reinstate—and aggressively police speech on the platform.
“As top advertisers on Twitter, your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation, and conspiracy theorists,” the letter states. “Under Musk’s management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached, polluting our information ecosystem in a time where trust in institutions and news media is already at an all-time low.”
Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder Patrisse Cullors has admitted that she used the group’s multi-million-dollar mansion in Los Angeles for two personal parties in 2021, just a month after suggesting that she had never used the property for personal gain.
Cullors, a self-described “trained Marxist,” told The Associated Press on May 9 that she hosted a small party at the mansion in January 2021, to celebrate the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. She added that about 15 people participated in the party, including members from the Los Angeles chapter of BLM.
At the time, Cullors said she was “seeking refugee” at the mansion because there were “threats against her life.”
The second party at the mansion was held in March 2021, Cullors said, a private birthday celebration for her son.
According to AP, BLM said it had billed Cullors a “rental fee” for using the mansion for her son’s birthday party, and Cullors said she intended to make the payment.
“I look back at that and think, that probably wasn’t the best idea,” Cullors said about her two parties at the mansion.
In April, Cullors denied she had ever lived in the mansion or taken advantage of the property for personal reasons, after New York Magazine revealed that the group bought the property for $5.8 million in October 2020. The 6,500-square-foot estate was purchased with money that had been donated to Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, just two weeks after BLM received $66.5 million from its fiscal sponsor.
Dyane Pascall, the financial manager for a consulting firm operated by Cullors and her spouse Janaya Khan, bought the mansion, according to the magazine. Within a week after the purchase, Pascall transferred the ownership of the property to an LLC in Delaware, a move that “ensured that the ultimate identity of the property’s new owner was not disclosed to the public,” the magazine added.
People walk down 16th street after volunteers painted “Black Lives Matter” on the street near the White House in Washington on June 5, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
At the time, Cullors railed against the magazine’s story, saying it was a “despicable abuse of a platform that’s intended to provide information to the public” and a “racist and sexist” attack on BLM.
“The fact that a reputable publication would allow a reporter, with a proven and very public bias against me and other black leaders, to write a piece filled with misinformation, innuendo, and incendiary opinions, is disheartening and unacceptable,” she added.
Cullors also said the mansion was purchased with the intention of being used by the BLM movement community to “work, create content, host meetings, and foster creativity.”
She defended the purchase of the mansion in her interview with AP.
“We really wanted to make sure that the global network foundation had an asset that wasn’t just financial resources,” she said, before adding: “We understood that not many black-led organizations have property. They don’t own their property.”
In May 2021, Cullors resigned as the group’s executive director, amid criticism over her personal wealth and the group’s finances.
Cullors adamantly denied claims that she had personally benefited while guiding the BLM foundation, according to AP.
“The idea that [the foundation] received millions of dollars and then I hid those dollars in my bank account is absolutely false,” she said. “That’s a false narrative. It’s impacted me personally and professionally, that people would accuse me of stealing from black people.”
Looking back, she said BLM wasn’t ready to handle the influx of contributions following George Floyd’s death in May 2020. What’s more, she added that the foundation was slow to build the necessary infrastructure.
“On paper, it looks crazy,” she said. “We use this term in our movement a lot, which is we’re building the plane while flying it. I don’t believe in that anymore. The only regret I have with BLM is wishing that we could have paused for one to two years, to just not do any work and just focus on the infrastructure.”
Shalomyah Bowers, a BLM board member, in a phone interview with AP, said the foundation underwent an independent financial audit. He said the audit and the soon-to-be-released 990 IRS filing will show that “nothing impermissible or nefarious has happened” with BLM’s finances.
“We are now a foundation that is deeply devoted to investing in organizations that are committed to doing the work of abolition [and] committed to building black power,” he said.
On April 26, Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita, filed a lawsuit against the BLM foundation, as part of an ongoing investigation of the organization’s use of funds.
A political consultant who has worked on Democratic South Florida political campaigns allegedly lied on an application for COVID-19 payroll relief, federal prosecutors said on May 9.
The government charged Omar Smith, 42, of Royal Palm Beach, with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud in connection with a Paycheck Protection Program loan (PPP).
Prosecutors sat Smith received more than $200,000 in PPP money, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.
According to state records, Smith’s business A Star For I was filed as a for-profit corporation in January 2012. Its current status is listed as inactive.
A federal court document filed on May 9 shows in June 2020, Smith had applied for a $212,500 loan intended for A Star for I that says he employed 30 people with a payroll of $85,000.
Prosecutors say that Smith had no employees and no payroll expenses.
A co-conspirator, according to prosecutors, prepared the loan application and subsequently submitted it online.
Smith agreed to pay the co-conspirator 20 percent of the loan amount for helping him apply for the loan, all according to court documents.
Smith received the loan on June 2, 2020, and transferred $42,500 a few days later to the co-conspirator, the court document says.
The co-conspirator is alleged to have prepared an IRS Form 941 for the first quarter of 2019, and “falsely wrote” that Smith’s company paid $255,000 in wages for that quarter and listed taxes withheld and submitted it online as part of the PPP application.
Based on the false information, Smith received the loan on June 2, 2020.
Court documents state that Smith began to write checks between July and October 2020 from his company’s bank account to people and was following conditions of the loan “in order to make it appear as if A Star For I had full-time employees.”
Prosecutors said those people “did little, if any, work” for Smith’s company.
Smith’s attorney Nicole Hamil-Scott, told reporters that the investigation continues and that “any and all funds that they have alleged have been taken were repaid in full” by her client.
Hamil-Scott said Smith had “a legitimate company for which he had employees working with him,” and did not know of anyone else who is being prosecuted in this case and said that the events were “unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate in the sense that … here is a company that … funds were obtained from a loan, funds were paid back and an individual is still being prosecuted, facing a possible prison sentence. So it’s unfortunate from that standpoint,” Hamil-Scott told reporters.
A former client of Smith’s—former Broward mayor and current Democratic candidate for Florida’s 20th Congressional District Dale Holness—told reporters on May 9 that he had no information about the allegations against Smith.
Holness said that Smith “no longer works for him” as he chose to “use other people for the campaign and their entities.”
In January, Damara Holness—the former president of the Broward County Democratic Black Caucus and Holness’ daughter—was sentenced to a year and eight months in prison for “lying on an application” for the same type of loan.
Records show that she applied for a $300,000 loan for her company, Holness Consulting, and said she had a monthly payroll totaling $120,000 with 18 employees.
In a January news release, prosecutors said that once Holness got the money, she issued checks to people who “agreed to help with the fraud for a fee.” And for each check, she was profiting by about $1,000 herself.
Smith, if convicted, could face up to 30 years in prison and may have to pay a fine of up to $1 million, according to prosecutors.
A video widely circulated in 2021 that showed a Capitol Police lieutenant asking members of the Oath Keepers for rescue help at the U.S. Capitol blows a hole in the seditious conspiracy charges brought against the group by federal prosecutors, two defense attorneys say.
In the video, Lt. Tarik Khalid Johnson asks a group of men to help him get more than a dozen trapped Capitol Police officers out of the Capitol and through a tightly packed crowd of protesters on the building’s east steps.
It was widely reported in January 2021 that Johnson wore a red Make America Great Again cap on Jan. 6 as a ruse to “trick” supporters of President Donald J. Trump into helping him rescue fellow officers from the Capitol. He was later suspended for wearing the MAGA cap. Johnson is a registered Democrat, according to online records.
The men who answered the call to help were members of the Oath Keepers, a nationwide group of current and former military, law enforcement, and first responders who have been targeted by federal prosecutors for allegedly conspiring to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Lt. Tarik Johnson talks to a group of Oath Keepers about police officers trapped in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Rico La Starza, Archive.org/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
The video is at least the second example showing the Oath Keepers coming to the aid of Capitol Police inside the building on that day.
Would a group of men seditiously plotting an attack on the Capitol, allegedly to prevent certification of Electoral College votes, rush into the building to extract police trapped inside—all while being followed by a filmmaker?
‘More Holes Than Swiss Cheese’
“The prosecutors’ narrative has more holes than Swiss cheese, but it [the video] does directly refute their claim,” said Jonathon Moseley, who previously represented Florida Oath Keepers leader Kelly Meggs.
Prosecutors “just keep ignoring the self-contradictions in their stories,” Moseley said.
The video was shot by part-time filmmaker Rico La Starza. One of several versions of the video posted online includes an introduction by La Starza. He said the video shows “me helping a group of Oath Keepers help Capitol Police get out. They looked scared and tired.”
Attorney Brad Geyer said the video should open a lot of eyes about the Oath Keepers.
“America would probably find it surprising, based on how the Oath Keepers had been framed in these now seven superseding indictments,” said Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers member Kenneth Harrelson. “But as far as reality is concerned, this is just another day at doing security details.”
In the middle of the afternoon on Jan. 6, Lt. Johnson appeared on a terrace area near the bottom of the east stairs at the U.S. Capitol. He approached a group of Oath Keepers for help.
Two Oath Keepers and Capitol Police Lt. Tarik Johnson used a “stack formation” to ascend the crowded east steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Rico La Starza, Archive.org/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
“If you guys can help me save some of the guys,” Johnson said to two Oath Keepers. “If you can help me get aside these people, I’d appreciate it. I just need to get these other officers out. They’re scared.
“We’re getting beat up, but the people who didn’t go for help are laughing at us,” Johnson said.
“I can do that. I can help,” said one Oath Keepers member named Michael. Turning around to face Johnson, Michael appeared to flash a badge and again said, “I can help.” Johnson handed Michael a megaphone and they went to the east stairs leading up to the Columbus Doors.
‘We’re Here. We’ve Got You’
“Just let me hold onto you,” Johnson said as they started ascending the steps.
“We’re here. We’ve got you,” Michael said.
The two Oath Keepers shielded Lt. Johnson and walked in a “stack formation” up the steps on the east side of the Capitol. Johnson radioed ahead to say some of the demonstrators were walking him through the crowd toward the entrance.
Some people in the crowd expressed support for the trio. “I’m with you brother,” one said. “Thank you, sir!” replied another.
“We’re Oath Keepers,” the second Oath Keepers member said. He has not been identified.
“Stand aside, make a hole. We’re Oath Keepers, stand aside!” he said as the group reached the historic Columbus Doors.
Two other groups of Oath Keepers that used the same stack formation to navigate the dense crowds and enter the Capitol were accused by prosecutors of using this military tactic as part of their alleged plan to attack the building and stop the certification of Electoral College votes.
Capitol Police Lt. Tarik Johnson and two members of the Oath Keepers enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 to rescue 17 trapped police officers. (Rico La Starza, Archive.org/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
“Watch out, man. They’re trying to get the cops out,” a nearby protester said.
They worked their way through a tightly packed crowd of protesters inside the Columbus Doors and through the interior double doors.
A short time later, Michael appeared at the doors with a megaphone. He advised the crowd—along with some angry agitators near the doors— to back up and let them through.
“We don’t do this (expletive). We don’t do this (expletive)! he said over the megaphone. “Back up and make a hole!”
“(Expletive) you!” one agitator shouted.
“Back up and make a (expletive) hole!” the Oath Keeper retorted.
Michael stretched his arms out and blocked the crowd, pushing backward.
As Capitol Police started to exit the Columbus Doors, they received pats on the back, hugs, and comments such as, “Thank you, sir!” and “Good job!”
‘Anti-Government Militia Group?’
In all, 16 Capitol Police officers were brought out of the Capitol by the Oath Keepers. All but one of the officers were wearing heavy riot gear.
The Wall Street Journal posted the rescue video with a story about Johnson on Jan. 15, 2021. The Journal referred to the Oath Keepers as an “anti-government militia group,” a term the group flatly rejects.
“We were there as a force of good,” Oath Keepers member Roberto Minuta, who was also part of the rescue operation, told The Epoch Times. “I was with the Oath Keepers, and we’ve always done positive work, disaster relief, protecting businesses, aiding people that need help.
“We have no history of violence and no intention of violence,” said Minuta, one of nine Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy on January 6. “We are strictly there to protect the First Amendment because we can’t have one side that’s permitted to have free speech and the other that’s not. That’s not America. That’s not what this country was founded on and when that’s gone, my children’s future looks grim.”
Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III told The Epoch Times his group is hated because it reminds those who took an oath of their duty to disobey unlawful orders.
“And so, out of the gate, the left just hated us because of that,” Rhodes said. “Of course, the big smear is that we’re somehow anti-government, even though we’re defending the Constitution. We’re all about defending the Constitution, which established the federal government.”
Geyer said the rescue of the Capitol Police officers was no surprise to him.
A woman hugs each of the 17 U.S. Capitol police officers rescued from the Capitol by the Oath Keepers on Jan. 6, 2021. (Rico La Starza, Archive.org/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
“The Oath Keepers have been working as a volunteer auxiliary police force around the country now for well over a decade,” Geyer said. “It’s what one might expect that the police would seek Oath Keepers assistance if there’s a crowd-control issue or an issue related to police movements, or if the police needed assistance for whatever reason.
“They were there to support law enforcement,” Geyer said. “And so when their assistance is requested by law enforcement, just like every other time, they’re happy to respond. It’s what they view their role to be.”
In another Jan. 6 incident, a group of Oath Keepers reported that they intervened in a potential conflict between an angry crowd of protesters and Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn.
Dunn “was armed with an M4/AR-15 and was very agitated, scared-looking and was surrounded by a bunch of yelling Trump supporters,” Rhodes said. “The Oath Keepers jumped in between and dialed it all back, calmed him down, calmed the Trump supporters down, and escorted that black police officer to other Capitol police officers and hooked him up with his buddies. So that he wasn’t by himself.”
Rhodes said he mentioned the race of the officer because his group is often falsely maligned as racist and composed of white supremacists.
Obama-Biden alum Jay Carney arranged the massive gift
Faced with scorn from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos appears ready to “grease” his way into the Democratic establishment with a $100 million donation to the Obama Foundation, according to Puck News.
The donation was arranged by Amazon executive and former Obama press secretary Jay Carney. The no-strings-attached gift comes as Bezos faces growing opposition from the left. The gift is the largest ever made to the foundation, which has chosen to forgo the traditional presidential library in favor of building a privately managed presidential center.
Bezos’s donation comes at a difficult political moment for Amazon. Lawmakers from both parties fault the company for its poor treatment of workers and abuse of its market power. The company has also come under fire for banning conservative voices. This year, Amazon banned a book that criticizes transgender ideology and blocked an ad for a book that criticizes the Black Lives Matter movement.
Bezos has tasked Carney, who served as then-vice president Joe Biden’s communications director, to ingratiate Amazon with Democratic lawmakers. Under Carney’s leadership, Amazon’s lobbying team has grown from about two dozen to 250 members. Reuters reported Friday that Carney has successfully lobbied to kill privacy protections for consumers in 25 states.
Amazon is not the only Bezos project to pique the ire of leading Democrats. NASA administrator and former Democratic senator Bill Nelson blamed Bezos’s Blue Origin for causing a delay in a U.S. return to the moon. The space exploration company sued NASA after it lost a major contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Obama’s presidential center is the first presidential library or museum to be run by a partisan nonprofit, rather than by the National Archives and Records Administration. Bezos’s ex-wife Mackenzie Scott and Bill and Melinda Gates have already made substantial donations to the center, which presidential scholars worry will become a partisan slush fund.
Activists on Chicago’s South Side said the center will force out longtime neighborhood residents. The center received a tax-free, 99-year lease on almost 20 acres of public parkland from the city of Chicago, for $10 in total. The center will be allowed to charge fees and keep the profits.
Bezos has ramped up his philanthropy over the past four years, pledging millions of dollars to liberal causes and figures. Earlier this year, he pledged $1 billion to conservation efforts and gave $100 million to CNN contributor Van Jones.
John Chisholm inspired progressive prosecutors like Chesa Boudin
“When we pay too little attention to the underlying causes and characteristics of individuals in the criminal justice system, we make significant errors, which can lead to greater problems,” Milwaukee County district attorney John Chisholm wrote in a 2019 paper about criminal justice reform.
That was before Chisholm conceded Monday that he had set an “inappropriately low” bail amount earlier this month when Darrell Edward Brooks Jr., the lead suspect in Sunday’s deadly car rampage in Waukesha, Wis., was arrested for domestic abuse and eluding police. Chisholm has been a leading figure among “progressive prosecutors,” leftwing lawmen who favor diversionary programs and community-building to locking up criminal defendants. His handling of the Brooks case is already sparking blowback to their growing influence over the justice system, much of which has been boosted by financial contributions from the leftwing billionaire George Soros.
Chisholm, who was elected in 2007, supports deferrals for some misdemeanors and “low-level” felonies in order to cut down on incarcerations. And he’s taken credit for inspiring a new wave of prosecutors in cities like San Francisco, St. Louis, and Philadelphia who have enacted similar reforms. Chisholm congratulated San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin following his election in 2019, and the pair spoke at a forum earlier this year on the status of the progressive prosecutor movement.
Chisholm and other progressives support reforms to the cash-bail system, which they say criminalizes poverty. He has acknowledged that his reform-minded approach could put murderers back on the streets of Milwaukee.
“Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into [a] treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody?” he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007. “You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”
The Milwaukee DA said his office recommended $1,000 bail for Brooks following his arrest on Nov. 5 on charges that he punched his girlfriend in the face and hit her with his vehicle in a gas station parking lot. The woman is identified only by her initials in court papers, which indicate they have a child together. Brooks was also charged with eluding police officers when they arrived to take him into custody.
A review of Wisconsin court records shows Brooks may have been a familiar figure to Chisholm, given that he was arrested and charged about half a dozen times in Milwaukee County during Chisholm’s tenure.
Brooks posted bail on Nov. 11. On Sunday, the 39-year-old aspiring rapper allegedly drove his red Ford SUV into a holiday parade in Waukesha, killing five people. Chisholm said Monday he is reviewing the bail decision for the earlier case, saying it was not high enough for a violent crime.
Brooks’s release this month is not the first time he has been freed after prosecutors lowered his bail. Brooks, whose criminal rap sheet dates back to 1999, was released from jail in February after posting $500 bail on charges of reckless endangerment and felony possession of a firearm. Brooks’s bail was initially set at $10,000 but was drastically lowered because the case was put on hold due to a backlog created by the pandemic.
Court records show that Brooks has two open felony cases in Milwaukee County, both of which involve violent crimes. One is the domestic abuse incident, which occurred Nov. 2. The other dates to July 2020, when Brooks had a fist fight with his nephew over an old cell phone at his grandmother’s house. Brooks fired a 9mm Beretta at his nephew’s car as he drove away from the house. He was arrested with the gun and a small amount of meth.
A search of Wisconsin court records shows Brooks has been charged in Milwaukee County for crimes ranging from marijuana possession to domestic abuse to weapons violations since 2011.
Chisholm has blamed “false information” and “deliberately manipulated” scare stories about rising crime for the sense of unease that is powering opposition to progressive prosecutors. “The progressive message is very difficult to get through,” he has acknowledged, noting that he has repeatedly been the target of “conservative dark money” campaigns aimed at unseating him.
Chisholm has won favorable attention from leftwing criminal justice reformers for collaborating with the Wisconsin public defender, the state unit responsible for representing indigent defendants in court. Chisholm and a coauthor described that work in an extensive 2019 paper for the Harvard Kennedy School.
By their telling, prosecutors, public defenders, and community leaders work together to develop “community-oriented” practices that range from “antiracism” initiatives to diversionary programs for offenders they judge to be “low risk.”
“In most cases, the punitive function of the criminal justice system must be recognized as subordinate to the system’s preventive and remedial functions,” the paper reads. “Punishment is appropriate only when it advances a preventive or remedial purpose.”
Elsewhere in the paper, the pair write that punishment should never be the principal objective of a given defendants’ case, even in “cases which threaten public health and safety in such primary ways that punishment is a key component of the response.”
In a statement which took on a tragic double-meaning after Sunday’s car rampage, the pair wrote that prosecutors should be mindful of stressors and other underlying causes that lead people to commit crimes, particularly when dealing with first-time offenders.
It appears that the man allegedly responsible for the Christmas parade massacre held many antagonistic views toward conservatism and right-wing politics.
That man — identified as Darrell E. Brooks — allegedly drove his SUV through a Waukesha, Wisconsin, Christmas parade on Sunday, killing five and injuring more than 40 people.
Brooks was reportedly released on a low cash bail amount when he committed the attack.
In the past, Brooks — a convicted felon with a long criminal history — has voiced support for the controversial Black Lives Matter organization, according to a report from Heavy.com.
A rapper, Brooks went by the stage name “MathBoi Fly,” and on various social media pages using this name, Brooks voiced support for the above causes, according to Heavy.
In one post, Brooks reportedly quoted black nationalist rhetoric forwarded by Malcolm X.
“…Help African in its struggle to free itself from Western domination. No matter where the black man is, he will never be respected until Africa is a world power,” the quote read.
In another post shared by journalist and author Andy Ngo on Twitter, Brooks allegedly forwarded anti-Semitic views commonly found in black nationalist movements.
Darrell Edward Brooks, the man who was taken into custody by police over the #Waukesha Christmas parade mass casualty incident, expressed hatred of former president Donald Trump in one of his rap tracks. He also expressed black nationalist antisemitic views. #BLMpic.twitter.com/BhT7BrX5mL
The title of the lengthy post reads “HITLER KNEW WHO THE REAL JEWS WERE!”
“The white Jews know that the negros are the real children of Israel,” the post quotes Adolf Hitler as saying.
In another post shared by Ngo and Heavy, Brooks appeared to show support for Black Lives Matter with images of fruit carved with the letters “BLM” and a fist raised.
Predictably, Brooks was also not a fan of former President Donald Trump, according to Heavy.
The convicted felon rapped out the words “f**k Donald Trump” in one of his songs available on SoundCloud.
In Facebook posts, Brooks also voiced frustrations over the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, according to Heavy.
#Waukesha Christmas parade massacre suspect Darrell Edward Brooks posted about knocking white people out, including the elderly. He also expressed apparent frustration over the #Rittenhouse verdict. pic.twitter.com/5499EHEFMF
A friend of Brooks commented on the post, saying of the verdict “[d]oesn’t surprise me, what a joke.”
Brooks responded by saying “frfr…but u rite,I wasn’t surprised 1 bit.”
The 18-year-old Rittenhouse was found not guilty of several charges related to the shooting of three men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Aug. 25, 2020.
Rittenhouse was found not guilty after it was determined he shot the three men in self-defense.
To be clear, as of now, there is no evidence or indication that any of these views, including Brooks’ frustration with the Rittenhouse verdict, had anything to do with Sunday’s attack.
As it turns out, Brooks is a convicted felon with a lengthy criminal record.
This is Darrell Brooks, the person of interest in the Waukesha Christmas parade attack. He is a Milwaukee man with a criminal history dating back to 1999 – with numerous violent felonies, court records show. (Wisconsin Department of Justice) Per @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/GD1ekTeFN4
Heavy reported Monday that a Wisconsin Department of Justice background check performed on Brooks contains a whopping 44 pages of his criminal history dating back to 1999.
Should Brooks have been behind bars at the time of the parade massacre?
Brooks has been convicted of a number of crimes over the years, including multiple charges of carrying a concealed weapon, strangulation and suffocation, multiple charges of aggravated battery and resisting or obstructing an officer.
At the time of the attack, he had multiple open charges pending against him, according to Heavy.
So, where did the justice system go wrong in Brooks’ case?
Well, he was hit with several charges on Nov. 5 after ” a woman told police Brooks purposefully ran her ‘over with his vehicle’ while she was walking through a gas station parking lot after he had followed her there after a fight,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
In spite of that, a judge allowed this career criminal back onto the streets Friday for a mere $1,000 cash bail, according to Heavy.
The judge did so despite the fact that one of the charges pending against Brooks is “felony bail jumping.”
Brooks faces a number of other serious charges, including resisting an officer, second-degree recklessly endangering safety with domestic abuse assessments and disorderly conduct and battery (also with domestic abuse assessments), as reported by Heavy.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Darrell Brooks Jr was out on bail after he was charged with purposely running over a woman with his vehicle
For years now, the left has been pushing for reform for the cash bail system, arguing that it disproportionately targets the poor.
There is certainly some truth to that notion, but overall, bail is a system designed to keep dangerous criminals from being set loose on the streets.
Knowing that there is a significant amount of money to lose should they step out of line creates a great incentive to stay out of trouble.
Thanks to the left, the justice system is becoming more and more lenient to criminals who should be given an incredibly high cash bail amount, if they should even be let out at all.
Convicted felons like Brooks who have an extensive criminal history of physical violence and bail jumping shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt.
Unfortunately, as the left continues to infect the justice system, cases like this likely will become more and more common.
A Sunday Christmas parade turned tragic in Waukesha, Wisconsin, when an SUV plowed into a crowd of people. According to one Illinois Democrat, the tragedy was due to a court decision she did not agree with.
Mary Lemanski, who serves as the social media director for the Democratic Party in DeuPage County, Illinois, mocked the tragedy and connected it to the not-guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial on Friday.
“It was probably just self-defense,” Lemanski said in a since deleted tweet about the tragedy. She also added the hashtag “#KyleRittenhouse” to make it clear that her disgusting comment was a commentary on Friday’s verdict.
Mary Lemanski, the social media manager for the Democratic Party of DuPage County, Illinois, says the deadly #Waukesha Christmas parade incident is karma.
“The blood of Kyle Rittenhouse’s victims is on the hands of Wisconsin citizens, even the children.” pic.twitter.com/3WkzvSJu5J
According to Fox News, that post was just one in a series of deleted tweets about the tragedy. Another tweet sarcastically suggested the suspect “didn’t want to hurt anyone” and simply “came to help people.”
One tweet was still posted as of Monday morning.
You reap what you sow. It’s sad people died, but when you open the door to vigilante justice, everyone seems threatening.
If Lemanski is trying to use this horrible event to get some cheap laughs, it is completely reprehensible. If she is actually trying to compare the suspect to Rittenhouse, she utterly failed to the make connection.
Rittenhouse had a legitimate argument that he went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to defend a business. While he was there, he was attacked multiple times, and he ultimately had to kill two men and wound another in self-defense.
This story was legitimate enough to lead an objective jury to acquit Rittenhouse of all charges. At the very least, they felt the prosecution could not prove without a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse was guilty of murder instead of acting in self-defense.
On the contrary, there does not seem to be a logical argument that the suspect from Sunday’s tragedy was acting in self-defense. Barring the emergence of new evidence, it seems the suspect is clearly liable for the five deaths and over 40 injuries he caused.
According to NBC News correspondent Tom Winter, Darrell Brooks, 39, was taken into custody as a suspect in the attack.
NBC News: Five law enforcement officials say that Darrell Brooks, age 39, from Wisconsin is the individual in custody as a person of interest and is being questioned by law enforcement in connection with the vehicle incident in Waukesha.
Brooks is an aspiring rapper with a long criminal record, Heavy.com reported. He past convictions include felony battery and misdemeanor obstruction of an officer, and he has open cases regarding felony reckless endangerment, felony bail jumping and felony domestic abuse assessments.
When Twitter users called out Lemanski for comparing an innocent 18-year-old to a convicted criminal who allegedly plowed into a helpless crowd, her arguments became even more outlandish and disturbing.
Do these comments disturb you?
“I’m sad,” she said, according to Fox News. “I’m sad anytime anyone dies. I just believe in Karma and this came around quick on the citizens of Wisconsin.”
Other users questioned Lemanski’s faulty logic in suggesting every Wisconsin citizen should be held liable for a decision made by 12 jury members. Even if Lemanski believes it was the wrong decision, it would not make sense to pin that decision on every other citizen of the state.
Sadly, Lemanski failed to recognize this flaw and launched into yet another disgusting accusation.
“The blood of Kyle Rittenhouse’s victims is on the hands of Wisconsin citizens, even the children,” she said.
So there you have it. Since Wisconsin prosecutors were unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rittenhouse murdered anyone, completely unrelated children in the state have blood on their hands. This is the argument Lemanski is making.
Leftists like Lemanski pretend to care about American lives, but they simultaneously use tragic deaths to push their outlandish narratives. It is a sick game to play, and people who make such disgusting suggestions as Lemanski need to be called out for their insanity.
EXCLUSIVE: Darrell Brooks Belongs to Black Supremacist Sect of Islam Called ‘The Five Percent Nation’, He Committed Vehicular Jihad
LOOMERED was first to exclusively report the identity of the Waukesha, WI attacker, Darrell Brooks. Our investigative reporting confirmed that he was the attacker and owner of the RED SUV used in Sunday’s Christmas Parade attack that left at least 5 people dead, and dozens more injured.
We were also first to report that his social media was littered with anti-white and anti-Jewish posts that encouraged the killing of White people and posts that celebrated Hitler for being “right about the real Jews”.
This publication was early to note and report Darrell’s ties to Black Lives Matter, and the fact that he used a vehicle to murder people in an act of vehicular jihad. Laura Loomer posted that the suspect was likely a black Muslim, and now we can exclusively confirm that Darrell Brooks is a supporter of The Five Percent Nation, otherwise known as the Nation of Gods and Earths (NGE or NOGE), a sub-sect of Nation of Islam (NOI).
The Five Percent Nation is a black nationalist movement influenced by Islam. Members of the group call themselves “Allah’s Five Percenters”. The Fiver Percent Nation preaches black supremacy and teaches that black people are the original inhabitants of planet earth, and that the white man is an evil devil.
The term “Five Percenter” comes from the “five percent” who are described in Nation of Islam in their “Lost-Found Muslim Leason No.2”.
This lesson categorizes people in the world into 3 categories, where 85% of the world’s population, which includes White people, are described as “uncivilized people, poison animal eaters, slaves from mental death and power, people who do not know the Living God or their origin in this world, and they worship that which they do not know. They are easily led in the wrong direction, but hard to lead into the right direction.”
The other 10% of the world’s population is described as, “the rich, slave makers of the poor-who teach the poor lies, to believe that the Almighty, True and Living God is a spook and cannot be seen by the physical eye. Otherwise known as the Blood Suckers of the poor.”
The last five percent, known as the “Five Percent Nation” are described as, “the poor, righteous Teachers, who do not believe in the teachings of the 10%, and are all wise and know who the living God is, and teach that the Living God is the Sun of man, the Supreme being (the Black Man) of Asia, and Teach freedom, Justice, and Equality to all of the human family on planet Earth.”
When LOOMERED exclusively reported the fact that Darrell Brooks was a wannabe rapper with a link to his YouTube music video which features the SUV he used in the attack, I noticed his rapper name is MathBoi Fly. Youtube has since deleted the video in their active coverup of this anti-white terrorist attack.
Given that Darrell Brooks can barely form a proper English sentence, his name isn’t MathBoi because he’s good at math! However, his rap name is MathBoi Fly because he belongs to the The Five Percent Nation, which teaches that Supreme Mathematics and Supreme Alphabet are the key to understanding humans’ relationship with the universe. These principles were created and founded by “Allah the Father”, formerly known as Clarence 13X, aka Clarence Edward Smith. The Five Percent Nation is a variation of Nation of Islam’s whose followers are predominantly black men. The founder of The Five Percent Nation founded this sub-sect of Nation of Islam after he left the Nation of Islam’s Temple Number Seven in Harlem, New York, the same temple in Harlem where Malcolm X was a minister from 1960-1963.
LOOMERED uncovered Darrell Brooks’s social media pages before they were wiped from the internet in an active coverup by Big Tech and the pro-BLM media. They are actively trying to cover up this act of black supremacist Islamic inspired terrorism against innocent White people in Wisconsin.
Darrell Brooks’s social media posts, particularly one of his Twitter posts from October 2015, prove that he was a black supremacist and a supporter of Malcom X, who was also a Muslim, and a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. However, Malcolm X was later assassinated in 1965 by three members of Nation of Islam. Ironically, two of the three Nation of Islam members who assassinated Malcolm X, Muhammad A Aziz and Khalil Islam, are set to be exonerated this week by the Manhattan district attorney. Malcolm X was assassinated in February of 1965 by three members of Nation of Islam *after* he denounced Nation of Islam in late 1964.
It is worth noting that Darrell Brooks targeted a Christmas parade in an act of vehicular Jihad, which makes his attack an attack on white Christians. His social media posts show that he also had hatred for Jews. In one Facebook post from November 2015 , he said “Hitler knew who the real Jews were.”
The Five Percent Nation doesn’t believe in a God, but they instead believe that the “Asiatic Blackman” is God, and that his name is “Allah”, the Arabic word for God.
This aligns with Darrell Brook’s social media posts which are inherently anti- white and anti- established religion. In one of his Facebook posts that you can’t see anymore because Facebook has decided to participate in this coverup by deleting Darrell Brooks’s account, he said, “religion is White Supremacy”.
Amid a time where the FBI has decided to weaponize their focus and resources on accusing conservatives and parents of being domestic terrorists, this should be a teaching lesson for the FBI, who should instead focus on investigating the actual criminals and terrorists like Black Supremacist Muslim Darrell Brooks who walk among us.
In 1965, the FBI opened a file on the Five Percenters at the height of the Black Power movements in the US during the civil rights era. The FBI described the Five Percenters as a “loosely knit group of Negro youth gangs”, and the official FBI file stated that these people got their name because they are “the five percent of the Muslims who smoke and drink.”
LOOMERED was first to boldly report that Darrell Brooks was a black Muslim and that his weapon of choice was a vehicle, making his terrorist attack on White people an act of vehicular jihad.
I remain deplatformed on all mainstream social media for speaking truth, but I will continue speaking truth to power and I will never be deterred from reporting the truth. What happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin was a black supremacist, Islamic inspired terrorist attack against White people, and LOOMERED is proud to have broken this story first.
SHAME ON THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA AND BIG TECH FOR COVERING IT UP!
A former New York Times reporter says the liberal newspaper waited until after the presidential election to publish her exposé debunking the narrative that the August 2020 Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, did not harm the local community.
The three-day riots erupted in August 2020 after Kenosha police officers shot Jacob Blake, an armed black man who was resisting arrest following a domestic disturbance call made by his girlfriend.
Independent journalist Nellie Bowles said in a Thursday post on Bari Weiss’ Substack channel, Common Sense, that the Times held her story until after the election.
The move is yet another sign that despite their pretense to journalistic objectivity, the establishment media — especially The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post and MSNBC — are merely purveyors of left-wing propaganda.
Bowles said she was sent to Kenosha last summer to report on the “mainstream liberal argument” that allowing BLM to destroy small businesses was an appropriate way to promote “racial justice” because the businesses could recoup the costs through insurance. She learned that this was false.
“Until quite recently, the mainstream liberal argument was that burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy. Burnings allowed for the expression of righteous rage, and the businesses all had insurance to rebuild,” she wrote.
“When I was at the New York Times, I went to Kenosha to see about this, and it turned out to be not true. The part of Kenosha that people burned in the riots was the poor, multi-racial commercial district, full of small, underinsured cell phone shops and car lots.”
Sam is an Indian immigrant who owns a family-run car dealership that was destroyed by BLM arsonists. “What did we do to deserve all this?” said Sam. pic.twitter.com/hgDjbIq9pA
“I’m a minority too. I’m a brown person. I have nothing to do with this,” said Sam. The 17 people Sam employed have all lost their jobs “for nothing.” Sam has lost “every dime” he has in last few days. pic.twitter.com/VUN08gImg3
While the corporate media dismissed the vandalism and arson as inconsequential property damage, Bowles was horrified to discover the ravaging impact the BLM riots had on the local community.
“It was very sad to see and to hear from people who had suffered,” she wrote. “Beyond the financial loss, small storefronts are quite meaningful to their owners and communities, which continuously baffles the Zoom-class.”
After filing her piece, Bowles was stunned that the Times delayed publishing her exposé for more than two months.
“Something odd happened with that story after I filed it. It didn’t run. It sat and sat,” she wrote.
“A few weeks after I filed, an editor told me: The Times wouldn’t be able to run my Kenosha insurance debacle piece until after the 2020 election, so sorry.”
Her article spotlighting the devastation of the riots eventually ran — six days after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election.
“Eventually the election passed. Biden was in the White House. And my Kenosha story ran,” Bowles wrote. “Whatever the reason for holding the piece, covering the suffering after the riots was not a priority.
Do you have any confidence in today’s establishment media?
“The reality that brought Kyle Rittenhouse into the streets was one we reporters were meant to ignore.”
She continued: “If you lived in those neighborhoods on fire, you were not supposed to get an extinguisher. The proper response — the only acceptable response — was to see the brick and mortar torn down, to watch the fires burn and to say: thank you.”
Bowles’ chilling revelations offer further evidence that the establishment media are little more than leftist political operatives masquerading as “journalists.”
Essentially, the Times buried this story to promote then-candidate Biden. In so doing, it paved the way for the mass media defamation of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who has been relentlessly smeared as a “white supremacist vigilante” simply for defending himself during the Kenosha riots.
The Times’ action helped establish the left-wing narrative that Rittenhouse had “no reason” to be there because the riots weren’t as bad and violent as he claimed.
This is not the first time the newspaper has come under fire for political bias.
In 2019, Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of the Times, said the outlet became “unmistakably anti-Trump” in a bid to bolster profits.
Abramson made the observations in her book, “Merchants of Truth,” where she said the Times trashed then-President Donald Trump nonstop because he was a cash cow.
“Though [executive editor Dean] Baquet said publicly he didn’t want the Times to be the opposition party, his news pages were unmistakably anti-Trump,” Abramson wrote in her book, as excerpted by Fox News. “Some headlines contained raw opinion, as did some of the stories that were labeled as news analysis.”
Abramson — who was the paper’s executive editor from 2011 to 2014 — said the Times had a financial interest in constantly running negative Trump stories because they made money.
She pointed out that the Times enjoyed a massive “Trump bump” during his first six months in office, when its digital subscriptions surged to more than 2 million — an increase of 600,000 subscribers.
“Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers and, despite the blip of cancellations after the election, inflated subscription orders to levels no one anticipated,” she wrote.
Abramson’s comments mirror the observations of legendary journalist Ted Koppel — a liberal who blasted CNN and MSNBC for their nonstop negative coverage of Trump, saying their ratings would tank without Trump.
CNN ratings crash in October, without any regular program averaging 1 million viewers Liberal network shed a whopping 76% of its audience since January! “Cuomo Prime Time” had its worst month since launch and finished behind 15 Fox News and 7 MSNBC shows https://t.co/LCVGdYy8Mwpic.twitter.com/GpBBtQkPVD
Koppel — a former ABC News anchor and winner of 25 Emmy Awards — said liberal outlets needed Trump because he was their holy grail for monster ratings. https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ZOgnHUQ_P8?feature=oembed
“You can’t do without Donald Trump,” Koppel told CNN host Brian Stelter in 2018. “You would be lost without Donald Trump! CNN’s ratings would be in the toilet without Donald Trump.”
When application of the law is based upon reason instead of emotion, truth prevails.
Andrew Coffee IV, a black man, was acquitted of murder by way of self-defense, as reported by WPBF-TV. On the same day, Kyle Rittenhouse was cleared of murder charges by reason of self-defense.
I mention that Coffee was black only because many have been asking what might have happened in the Rittenhouse trial if the defendant was black. The question is usually asked by those who maintain that the U.S. justice system is systematically racist and therefore unjust.
“If Black Kyle Rittenhouse had shown up at an anti-vax rally with a weapon and the crowd chased him down and he shot two people dead, what would have happened? One, he probably would have been shot dead by police or bystanders, and two, he likely would have been portrayed as a thug and convicted in front of an all-white jury,” journalist David Greenwald claimed.
#BREAKING: Andrew Coffee IV found not guilty of murder, attempted murder in Indian River County SWAT raid https://t.co/O5iFtO36hH
In another reaction, Democratic Rep. Cori Bush goes so far as to claim the judge, jury and defendant are white supremacists.
The judge. The jury. The defendant.
It’s white supremacy in action.
This system isn’t built to hold white supremacists accountable. It’s why Black and brown folks are brutalized and put in cages while white supremacist murderers walk free.
The Coffee case just isn’t getting the same fanfare. Leftists are pretty quiet on that front.
Coffee was found not guilty of the murder of his girlfriend Alteria Woods and the attempted murder of Florida Indian River County sheriff deputies during an early morning drug raid in 2017.
Coffee’s defense claimed the defendant was asleep and thought a flash-bang set off by deputies was gunfire. Coffee claimed he fired his gun because he believed he was under attack.
“I was trying to protect me and Alteria,” Coffee said, according to WPBF. “I thought I was doing that, but I feel I didn’t protect her. I can’t sleep with that … They killed her.”
The prosecution maintained that the deputies announced they were there and Coffee shot at them before they returned fire.
Is reason the foundation of Western Civilization?
The jury, after deliberating over the evidence, including Coffee’s testimony, found the defendant not guilty on the murder charges. They did find him guilty of a felon in possession of a firearm for which Coffee faces up to 30 years in prison.
If Rittenhouse had been a felon carrying an illegal weapon, would he have been convicted of the charge? The question is moot. Rittenhouse was not carrying a firearm illegally, and he did not transport it across state lines, despite myths spread by a number of media outlets.
The equal outcomes in Coffee and Rittenhouse trials were not based on race. They were not based on propaganda. They were based on reason.
Western culture was founded upon the concept of Logos or Word. The Greek meaning of Logos, though nuanced, can be seen as the divine underlying Reason that supports reality. Socrates gave up his life in pursuit of this principle. Jesus, the Logos made flesh, was crucified because a mob — spurred-on by leaders who felt their earthly power was threatened — demanded it.
These days, there is little talk of God or philosophy in mainstream culture. Instead, political ideologues use propaganda to stir the emotions of hate and fear. These negative emotions eclipse reason. When reason is eclipsed, mobs spring up.
A culture that believes math, a rarefied form of logic, is racist is not Western because it has abandoned reason. Where there is no reason there can be no God. Hell is the impossibility of reason.
Throw out reason, and the door to chaos and/or dystopia is opened. Those who would rewrite the U.S. Constitution for their own ends must do it by way of emotion. Reason is against them. They will not prevail so long as jurors continue to rely on reason in reaching verdicts. That’s what they did in the Coffee case. That’s what they did in the Rittenhouse trial.
Thank goodness. And thanks to the jurors. These jurors are true American heroes.
Officials confirmed that Darrel E. Brooks, 39, was the alleged driver of an SUV that ran over dozens of people, killing five, during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Sunday evening.
Waukesha Polie Chief Daniel Thompson said Brooks was charged with five counts of intentional homicide. Other charges against the suspect are being considered, he said in a 2 p.m. news conference, adding that the incident was “not a terrorist event.”
Brooks was involved in a “domestic incident” prior to the mass casualty incident, Thompson said, adding there was no police pursuit before he allegedly plowed into the parade. Several mainstream media outlets, citing unnamed sources, claimed there had been.
“We are confident he acted alone,” Thompson also said.
In the incident, five people died and more than 40 were injured, Thompson confirmed earlier Monday. At least 18 children were taken to Children’s Wisconsin hospital in Milwaukee, it said in a statement.
A search of online court records showed a recent open case involving a person named Darrell Brooks, with a birth date that would make him 39 years old. According to the court documents, he is charged with restricting or obstructing an officer, bail jumping, and battery. A $1,000 cash bond was posted earlier this month, the records show.
The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office released a statement on Monday detailing the pending charges against Brooks and said it was conducting an internal review of the decision involving Brook’s bail recommendation.
Police investigate after a vehicle plowed through the Christmas Parade, leaving multiple people injured in Waukesha, Wis., on Nov. 21, 2021. (Mike De Sisti-USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters)Debris litters the street at a crime scene in Waukesha, Wis., on Nov. 21, 2021. (Jim Vondruska/Getty Images)
“The state’s bail recommendation in this case was inappropriately low in light of the nature of the recent charges and the pending charges against Mr. Brooks,” read the statement, which made no reference of the parade tragedy.
Brooks was also reportedly an aspiring rapper, known as “Mathboi Fly,” releasing several songs on YouTube. According to a Twitter page associated with Mathboi Fly, it included photos of a man who strongly resembled Brooks, and a bio for the Twitter page says he is a Milwaukee-based “born and raised” rapper.
Brooks was charged in nearby Milwaukee County on Nov. 5 with two felonies and three misdemeanors in a domestic violence incident in which he allegedly violently resisted a police officer, according to court records. He was also charged with bail jumping, the records show.
About a week later, Brooks posted a $500 cash bond and was released from custody. Other court records suggest his criminal history stretches back to at least 1999.
Brooks in July 2020 was charged with two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm and recklessly endangering safety through the use of a dangerous weapon. In February 2021, his bond was lowered to $500, and he posted it weeks later, the records show.
Videos posted online on Sunday showed a red SUV racing alongside and into the parade, appearing to run over more than a dozen people before crowds ran from sidewalks to help.
Those whose worldview is bereft of universally applied principles, and based solely on tribal allegiances, assume everyone else is plagued by this very deficiency.
The FBI has executed a string of search warrants targeting the homes and cell phones of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and several others associated with that organization. It should require no effort to understand why it is a cause for concern that a Democratic administration is using the FBI to aggressively target an organization devoted to obtaining and reporting incriminating information about Democratic Party leaders and their liberal allies.
That does not mean the FBI investigation is inherently improper. Journalists are no more entitled than any other citizen to commit crimes. If there is reasonable cause to believe O’Keefe and his associates committed federal crimes, then an FBI investigation is warranted as it is for any other case. But there has been no evidence presented that O’Keefe or Project Veritas employees have done anything of the sort, nor any explanation provided to justify these invasive searches. That we should want and need that is self-evident: if the Trump-era FBI had executed search warrants inside the newsrooms of The New York Times and NBC News, we would be demanding evidence to prove it was legally justified. Yet virtually nothing has been provided to justify the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and his colleagues, and the little that has been disclosed by way of justifying this makes no sense.
The FBI investigation concerns the theft last year of the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, yet Project Veritas, while admitting they received a copy from an anonymous source, chose not to publish that diary because they were unable to verify it. Nobody and nothing thus far suggests that Project Veritas played any role in its acquisition, legal or otherwise. There is a cryptic reference in the search warrant to transmitting stolen material across state lines, but it is not illegal for journalists to receive and use material illegally acquired by a source: the most mainstream organizations spent the last month touting documents pilfered from Facebook by their heroic “whistleblower” Frances Haugen.
On Monday night, we produced an in-depth video report examining the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and Project Veritas and the dangers it presents (as we do for all of our Rumble videos, the transcript will soon be made available to subscribers here; for now, you can watch the video at the Rumble link or on the player below). One of the primary topics of our report was the authoritarian tactic that is typically used to justify governmental attacks on those who report news and disseminate information: namely, to decree that the target is not a real journalist and therefore has no entitlement to claim the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.
This not-a-real-journalist tactic was and remains the primary theory used by those who justify the ongoing attempt to imprison Julian Assange. In demanding Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in The Wall Street Journalthat “Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions.” Yet the five-term Senator insisted: “but he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt.”
This not-a-real-journalist slogan was also the one used by both the CIA and the corporate media against myself and my colleagues in both the Snowden reporting we did in 2013, as well as the failed attempt to criminally prosecute me in 2020 for the year-long Brazil exposés we did: punishing them is not an attack on press freedom because they are not journalists and what they did is not journalism.
What is most striking about this weapon is that — like the campaign to agitate for more censorship — it is led by journalists. It is the corporate media that most aggressively insists that those who are independent, those who are outsiders, those who do not submit to their institutional structures are not real journalists the way they are, and thus are not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment. In order to create a framework to deny Project Veritas’s status as journalists, The New York Timesclaimed last week that anyone who uses undercover investigations (as Veritas does) is automatically a non-journalist because that entails lying — even though, just two years earlier, the same paper heralded numerous news outlets such as Al Jazeera and Mother Jones for using undercover investigations to accomplish what they called “compelling” reporting.
I am very well-acquainted with this repressive tactic of trying to decree who is and is not a real journalist for purposes of constitutional protection. Many have forgotten — given the awards it ultimately ended up winning — that the NSA/Snowden reporting we did in 2013 was originally maligned as quasi-criminal not just by Obama national security officials such as James Clapper but also by The New York Times. The first profile the Paper of Record published about me the day after the reporting began referred to me in the headline as an “Anti-Surveillance Activist” and then, once backlash ensued, it was changed to “Blogger” (the original snide, disqualifying headline is still visible in the URL).
The Guardian, Jan. 29, 2014
As the New York Times‘ own Public Editor at the time objected, by purposely denying me the label “journalist,” the paper was knowingly increasing the risks that I could be prosecuted for my reporting. Indeed, recent reporting from Yahoo! News about CIA plots to kidnap or murder Julian Assange reported that denying Assange the label “journalist,” and then re-defining what I and my colleague Laura Poitras were doing from “journalist” to “information broker,” would enable the U.S. Government to spy on or even prosecute us without having to worry about that inconvenient “free press” guarantee of the First Amendment.
New York Times, June 6, 2013
All of this demonstrates how dangerous it is to invoke this very same not-a-real-journalist tactic against O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Yet, if one warns of the dangers of the FBI’s actions, that is precisely what one hears from liberals, from Democrats and from their allies in the media: the FBI’s targeting of Project Veritas has nothing to do with press freedoms since they’re not real journalists. They are invoking the authoritarian theory that maintains that the state (or, in this case, the FBI) is vested with the power to decree who is a “real journalist” — whatever that means — and who is not.
There are so many ironies to the use of this framework. So often, employees of media corporations who have never broken a major story in their lives (and never will) revel in accusing independent journalists who have broken numerous major stories (such as Assange) of not being real journalists. At the height of the Snowden reporting, I went on Meet the Press in July, 2013,only for the host, David Gregory, to suggest that I ought to be in prison alongside my source Edward Snowden because I was not really a journalist the way David Gregory was. At the time, Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine, noted how bizarre it was that the TV personality David Gregory assumed he was a real journalist, whereas I was a non-journalist who belonged in prison for my reporting, given that Gregory — like most employees of large media corporations — had never broken any story in his life. Rich used a Q&A format to make the point this way:
On Sunday, Meet the Press host David Gregory all but accused the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden’s fugitive travels, asking, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” And, speaking to his larger point, do you see Greenwald as a journalist or an activist in this episode? And does it matter?
IsDavid Gregory a journalist? As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, or Chuck Schumer. Meet the Press has fallen behind CBS’s Face the Nation, much as Today has fallen to ABC’s Good Morning America, and my guess is that Gregory didn’t mean to sound like Joe McCarthy (with a splash of the oiliness of Roy Cohn) but was only playing the part to make some noise. In any case, his charge is preposterous. As a columnist who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, Greenwald was doing the job of a journalist — and the fact that he’s an “activist” journalist (i.e., an opinion journalist, like me and a zillion others) is irrelevant to that journalistic function. . . . [I]t’s easier for Gregory to go after Greenwald, a self-professed outsider who is not likely to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and works for a news organization based in London. Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago, he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers. In any case, Greenwald demolished Gregory on air and on Twitter (“Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”).
At the time — both in terms of that exchange with Gregory and my overall reporting on the NSA — I had significant support from the liberal-left (though it was far from universal, given that we were exposing mass, indiscriminate, illegal spying by the Obama administration). But few believed that I ought to be prosecuted on the grounds that, somehow, I was not a real journalist.
So why are so many of them now willing to endorse this same exact theory when it comes to O’Keefe and Project Veritas, or even to justify the prosecution of Julian Assange? The answer is obvious. They are unwilling and/or incapable of thinking in terms of principles, ones that apply universally to everyone regardless of their ideology. Their thought process never even arrives at that destination. When the subject of the FBI’s attacks on O’Keefe is raised, or the DOJ’s prosecution of Assange is discussed, they ask themselves one question and only one question, and that ends the inquiry. It is the exclusive and determinative factor: do I like James O’Keefe and his politics? Do I like Julian Assange and his politics?
This primitive, principle-free, personality-driven prism is the only way they are capable of understanding the world. Because they dislike O’Keefe and/or Assange, they instantly side with whoever is targeting them — the FBI, the DOJ, the security state services — and believe that anyone who defends them is defending a right-wing extremist rather than defending the non-ideological, universally applicable principle of press freedoms. They think only in terms of personalities, not principles.
The FBI’s actions against Project Veritas and O’Keefe are so blatantly alarming that press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (on whose Board I sit) have expressed grave concerns about it, including on their social media accounts for all to see. Even the ACLU — which these days is loathe to speak out in favor of any person or group disliked by their highly partisan liberal donor base — issued a very carefully hedged statement that made clear how much they despise Project Veritas but said: “Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom” (at least thus far, the ACLU has just quietly stuck this statement on its website and not uttered a word about it on its social media accounts, where most of its liberal donors track what they do, but the fact that they felt compelled to say anything in defense of this right-wing boogieman demonstrates how extreme the FBI’s actions are). The federal judge overseeing the warrants has temporarily enjoined the FBI from extracting any more information from the cell phones seized from O’Keefe and other Project Veritas employees pending a determination of their legal justification.
Committee to Protect Journalists, Nov. 15, 2021
The reason this is such a grave press freedom attack is two-fold. First, as indicated, any attempt to anoint oneself the arbiter of who is and is not a “real journalist” for purposes of First Amendment protection is inherently tyrannical. Which institutions are sufficiently trustworthy and competent to decree who is a real journalist meriting First Amendment protection and who falls outside as something else?
But there is a much more significant problem with this framework: namely, the question of who is and is not a real journalist is completely irrelevant to the First Amendment. None of the rights in the Constitution, including press freedom, was intended to apply only to a small, cloistered, credentialed, privileged group of citizens. The exact opposite was true: the only reason they are valuable as rights is because they enjoy universal application, protecting all citizens.
Indeed, one of the most passionate grievances of the American colonists was that nobody was permitted to use the press unless first licensed by the British Crown. Conversely, the most celebrated journalism of the time was undertaken by people like Thomas Paine — who never worked for an established journalistic outlet in his life — as he circulated the pamphlet Common Sense that railed against the abuses of the King. What was protected by the First Amendment was not a small, privileged caste bearing the special label “journalists,” but rather the activity of a free press. The proof of this is clear and ample, and is set forth in the video we produced on Monday night.
But none of this matters. If you express concern for the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe, it will be instantly understood not as a concern about any of these underlying principles but instead as an endorsement of O’Keefe’s politics, journalism, and O’Keefe himself. The same is true for the discourse surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse. If you say that — after having actually watched the trial — you believe the state failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in light of his defense of self-defense, many will disbelieve your sincerity, will insist that your view is based not in some apolitical assessment of the evidence or legal principles about what the state must do in order to imprison a citizen, but rather that you must be a “supporter” of Rittenhouse himself, his ideology (whatever it is assumed to be), and the political movement with which he, in their minds, is associated.
On some level, this is pure projection: those who are incapable of assessing political or legal conflicts through a prism of principles rather than personalities assume that everyone is plagued by the same deficiency. Since they decide whether to support or oppose the FBI’s actions toward O’Keefe based on their personal view of O’Keefe rather than through reference to any principles, they assume that this is how everyone is determining their views of that situation. Similarly, since they base their views on whether Rittenhouse should be convicted or acquitted based on how they personally feel about Rittenhouse and his perceived politics rather than the evidence presented at the trial (which most of them have not watched), they assume that anyone advocating for an acquittal can be doing so only because they like Rittenhouse’s politics and believe that his actions were heroic.
In sum, those who view the world through a prism bereft of principles — either due to lack of intellectual capacity or ethics or both — assume everyone’s world view is similarly craven. It is this same stunted mindset that saddles our discourse with so much illogic and so many twisted presumptions, such as the inability to distinguish between defending someone’s right to express a particular opinion and agreement with that opinion. In a world in which ideology, partisan loyalty, tribal affiliations, in-group identity and personality-driven assessments predominate, there is no room for principles, universally applicable rights, or basic reason.https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/17rlhtzkcSQ?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0
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Virginia Commonwealth’s attorneys frequently let criminals walk
After a registered sex offender was arrested twice in three days on felony charges in Northern Virginia, local leaders are wondering what it takes to land a criminal behind bars when lenient prosecutors backed by George Soros are administering justice.
The serial CVS bandit, Karim Clayton, 44, has a seedy criminal history ranging from menacing a CVS employee with a knife to leading police on a high-speed chase on a major regional thoroughfare.
But Fairfax County prosecutor Steve Descano and Arlington County prosecutor Parisa Dehghani-Tafti—who cruised to victory with six-figure donations from Soros—have brought charges against Clayton at least a dozen times between them, only to abandon their cases or plead him out on paltry misdemeanors with almost no jail time.
“Radical leftist prosecutors like Steve Descano and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti do not represent the public or crime victims,” said Sean Kennedy, president of Virginians for Safe Communities. “Their allegiances lie with criminal defendants first, last, and always.”
A two-year-long spike in violent crime is a political hazard for President Joe Biden and Democrats. Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin (R.) hammered a public safety message throughout his campaign, promising to fully fund law enforcement and fire an inmate-friendly state parole board. Republican candidates in the commonwealth are homing in on a similar strategy ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Thus far, Clayton’s twin arrests in the last week of September have netted him only three months in prison. He was arrested for assault and battery on Sunday, Sept. 26, in Fairfax County and released on bail Monday morning, according to Virginia court records. That case has not yet been resolved. Authorities arrested Clayton the very next day in Arlington County for stealing from a CVS.
Court records show Clayton was sentenced to 12 months in jail after Dehghani-Tafti’s office pled him down to a misdemeanor for the CVS robbery. He can serve nine of those months on probation, however, meaning he will spend just 90 days behind bars.
On a separate occasion in June 2020, Clayton robbed a CVS in Chantilly, Va., in broad daylight. Clayton fled in a 2016 Dodge Journey and led authorities on an extended chase with speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. The chase ended when Clayton crashed in Arlington.
Clayton faced a felony eluding and disregarding police charge, which Descano’s office pled down to a misdemeanor in September 2020, according to court records. He was sentenced to 180 days in prison, but could log up to 170 of them on probation. He also faced a felony assault on law enforcement charge arising from that event from Dehghani-Tafti’s office, which was abandoned in September 2020.
Apart from his Northern Virginia crime spree, Clayton registered as a sex offender in Washington, D.C., following a 2015 conviction for abuse of a child. He lives one-third of a mile from an elementary school, according to a home address listed on a sex offender registry. He’s been prosecuted in D.C. courts for driving under the influence, tampering with a GPS ankle monitor he was required to wear as a condition of parole, and, as ever, robbing a CVS.
According to a report from a case services agency, prosecutors filed the tampering charge in November 2020 after he was cited for five separate dead battery violations. Offenders are responsible for keeping their ankle monitor batteries charged at all times. Three months later, a D.C. Superior Court judge issued a bench warrant for Clayton after he failed to appear at a hearing on the tampering case.
Those two incidents, plus the high-speed chase through Arlington, are strong evidence that Clayton is a flight risk who won’t cooperate with the judicial process. That usually counts heavily against allowing a defendant to bond out of custody.
Soros’s Justice and Public Safety PAC donated more than $600,000 each to Descano and Dehghani-Tafti’s campaigns. Soros has also bankrolled successful prosecutorial campaigns in Loudoun County and Norfolk, Va.
Public safety issues contributed to recent Republican successes in Virginia, and Descano and Dehghani-Tafti could prove an albatross for Democratic lawmakers in 2022. Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D., Va.), who represents a Northern Virginia district where Youngkin made gains in November, is a top target for national Republicans.
“Jennifer Wexton has supported radical prosecutors who give deference to criminals, not victims,” said Jeanine Lawson, a Prince William County supervisor challenging Wexton next year who promises to “oppose the woke anti-police agenda and work with law enforcement.”
Zack Smith, a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a former federal prosecutor, told the Washington Free Beacon that Clayton typifies enforcement patterns that have a trickle-down effect on law enforcement.
“I suspect a large number of crimes simply aren’t being captured because police aren’t going to make arrests,” Smith said. “They’re not going to waste their limited resources arresting someone for a crime they know the prosecutor won’t prosecute, and where they know the person will be released from jail almost instantaneously.”
Progressive prosecutors usually describe offenses like larceny or prostitution as “quality of life” issues, victimless crimes that are better addressed by diversionary programs or social service referrals. Smith takes exception to that idea, noting that Walgreens is shutting down locations around San Francisco due to rampant shoplifting, while other major retailers reduce their hours.
“If you think about it, it’s poor and minority communities that bear the disproportionate brunt of these policies,” Smith told the Free Beacon. “If you’re a middle class family and the closest CVS closes, it’s probably not that big a deal. But if you’re a poor single mother who relies on walking or public transportation, it’s a very big deal.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) on Wednesday lit into Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Eric Swalwell (Calif.), questioning whether the “jihad ‘Squad’ member” and California lawmaker should keep their committee assignments.
“The jihad ‘Squad’ member from Minnesota has paid her husband—and not her ‘brother’ husband, the other one—over a million dollars in campaign funds,” Boebert said of Omar, who funneled $2.7 million to her husband’s consulting firm during the 2020 election cycle. “This member is allowed on the Foreign Affairs Committee while praising terrorists.”
“My colleague and three-month presidential candidate from California, who is on the Intelligence Committee, slept with Fang Fang, a Chinese spy,” the Colorado congresswoman said of Swalwell, who was implicated in an alleged Chinese “honeypot” operation last year. “Let me say that again: A member of Congress who receives classified briefings was sleeping with the enemy. This is unacceptable.”
Buried in a Senate bill meant to increase U.S. competition with China is a measure that allocates $5 million in taxpayer funds for a “chief diversity officer” at the National Science Foundation.
The provision is part of the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), a sprawling bill that seeks to increase American manufacturing and shore up the United States’ supply lines to boost competition with China. Republicans object to several portions of the bill, including a passage that awards $5 million annually to the National Science Foundation for a chief diversity officer who would oversee directives such as “establishing a strategic plan for diverse participation” in federal science programs. The official would also collect and report demographic information, such as gender and race, for patent applicants and ensure that any state seeking science-related grants enacts a plan to address “inequity.” States can do that, the bill says, by giving subgrants to close “equity gaps” and boosting enrollment in computer science education coursework for students who face “systemic barriers.”
The diversity officer would be in charge of developing plans to ensure that “traditionally underrepresented populations,” such as native Hawaiians, Alaska natives, and Indians, get access to federal programs. This would also include “historically Black colleges and universities, Tribal colleges or universities, [and] minority-serving institutions,” according to the legislation.
Senior Republican aides who are tracking the legislation said the addition of these measures into a critical national security bill is part of an effort by the Democratic Party’s far-left flank to mainstream their “woke agenda” and progressive priorities centered on race relations.
“This is a thinly veiled attempt to push a radical woke agenda in what the Democrats say is supposed to be a critical national security bill,” said one Republican official, speaking only on background.
A second senior congressional aide said it is “disappointing that Republican lawmakers are helping them” push this agenda by allowing the bill to go to conference, where it can be debated. Republicans, the source said, should unite in opposition to any form of the bill that is used by Democrats to forward far-left priorities, such as the diversity office.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) have been spearheading efforts to see USICA passed and sent to the White House for approval. Democrats attempted on Monday evening to add the legislation as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense spending bill, but Senate Republicans blocked this effort due to lingering concerns about the USICA bill. The bill will be taken up by House and Senate leaders in a reconciliation process known as a conference committee, in which the two separate versions of the bill are merged into one bipartisan measure.
The National Science Foundation has long been seen as a bastion for what critics call “woke science.”
The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology stated in a November report on politicization in scientific funding that the National Science Foundation—which has an annual budget of around $8 billion dollars—routinely employs “highly politicized terms” in its documents.
“As of 2020, 30.4 percent of all grants had one of the following politicized terms: ‘equity,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘gender,’ ‘marginalize,’ ‘underrepresented,’ or ‘disparity,'” the report stated. “This is up from 2.9 percent in 1990.”
“The results imply that there has been a politicization of scientific funding in the U.S. in recent years and a decrease in the diversity of ideas supported, indicating a possible decline in the quality of research and the potential for decreased trust towards scientific institutions among the general public,” the report concludes.
Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert went nuclear on the House floor and took aim at Democrat Reps. Eric Swalwell, Ilhan Omar, and many others.
While speaking from the floor, Boebert called out Swalwell for his past relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.
She also slammed Democrats for voting to censure GOP Rep. Paul Gosar and strip him of committee assignments for posting an animated video depicting violence against Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Democrat policies are so pathetic and have done so poorly that the left has nothing else to do but trawl the internet looking for ways to get offended and then try to target members and strip them of their committees. This is a dumb waste of the House’s time,” Boebert began.
“But since the Speaker has designated the floor to discuss members’ inappropriate actions, shall we? The Jihad Squad member from Minnesota has paid her husband, and not her brother-husband, the other one, over $1 million in campaign funds. This member is allowed on the Foreign Affairs Committee while praising terrorists,” she declared.
“A Democrat chairwoman incited further violence in the streets outside of a courthouse. And then the cherry on top, my colleague and three-month presidential candidate from California who is on the Intelligence Committee slept with Fang Fang, a Chinese spy. Let me say that again,” she continued.
“A member of Congress who receives classified briefings was from sleeping with the enemy. This is unacceptable,” she concluded.
Boebert then went after Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters and Omar for “inappropriate” behavior that she argued was more worthy of censure than Gosar’s.
“The Jihad Squad member from Minnesota has paid her husband, and not her brother-husband, the other one, over $1 million in campaign funds,” she said of Omar. “This member is allowed on the Foreign Affairs Committee while praising terrorists.
“A Democrat chairwoman incited further violence in the streets outside of a courthouse,” she said of Waters.
Swalwell’s ties to Fang were first revealed by Axios, which reported that Fang helped raise money for Swalwell’s campaign and placed one or more interns in Swalwell’s office.
Republicans have said that somebody who was so egregiously compromised by a foreign power should not remain on the critical intelligence panel.
Back in March, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy filed a resolution aimed at removing Swalwell from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence over past ties to an alleged Chinese spy named Fang Fang.
The two-page resolution says Swalwell “has not denied public reporting that a suspected Chinese intelligence operative helped raise money for Representative Swalwell’s political campaigns” and “other troublesome elements of public reporting.”
McCarthy’s resolution also cites the House rule that “A Member… of the House shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”
One of the two protesters arrested outside the Kenosha County Courthouse where the Kyle Rittenhouse jurors deliberated on Wednesday is a self-proclaimed co-chairperson of a Black Lives Matter chapter in Lake County, Illinois, according to her Facebook profile.
Shaquita Cornelius, 34, was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and marijuana possession as one of two people taken into custody outside of the courthouse.
Her Facebook profile includes an introduction with the words, “MY BLACK BEAUTIFUL, CO-CHAIRMAN OF BLACK LIVES MATTER of LAKE COUNTY IL, OWNER OF SHAYTEEZ & THINGZ.”
Two protesters were arrested outside of the courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Wednesday after one of the two perpetrators allegedly bodyslammed a reporter.
On Thursday morning, jurors began their third day of deliberations on homicide and other charges against Rittenhouse in the shootings that ended the lives of two men and wounded a third during rioting in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020.
On Wednesday, a demonstration outside the courthouse turned violent.
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers will find offensive.
The second individual arrested was a male suspect identified as 20-year-old Anthony Chacon. He wore a T-shirt with the words “F*** Kyle” and was taken into custody after attacking a reporter, according to Fox News.
The Kenosha Sheriff’s Department said Chacon was arrested on charges of battery, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Fox News reported he also is “facing charges related to bail jumping, meaning he has a prior criminal record.”
The sheriff’s department has worked to prepare for what some expect could become a violent response to the Rittenhouse trial verdict.
“At this time, we have no reason to facilitate road closures, enact curfews or ask our communities to modify their daily routines,” the department said in a statement on Tuesday.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin announced on Friday that hundreds of National Guard troops would be active near Kenosha this week as the city, state and country await a verdict in the Rittenhouse case.
Should all violent protesters be arrested?
“Approximately 500 Wisconsin Army National Guard troops are reporting for State Active Duty as authorized by Gov. Tony Evers to support local partners in ensuring public safety in conjunction with hundreds of officers from volunteering law enforcement agencies,” the governor’s office said in a news release.
Evers said in a statement that he is hopeful the situation in the city remains peaceful, and he asked for the public’s assistance with that.
“We continue to be in close contact with our partners at the local level to ensure the state provides support and resources to help keep the Kenosha community and greater area safe,” he said.
“The Kenosha community has been strong, resilient, and has come together through incredibly difficult times these past two years, and that healing is still ongoing,” the governor added.
“I urge folks who are otherwise not from the area to please respect the community by reconsidering any plans to travel there and encourage those who might choose to assemble and exercise their First Amendment rights to do so safely and peacefully.”
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The Chairman of the House Committee on January 6th has numerous ties to extremist groups in America.
Rep. Bennie Thompson – chairman of the Congressional January 6th Commission – praised a program sponsored by a separatist Nation of Islam faction as “absolutely important,” The National Pulse can reveal.
Thompson, who has also supported the extremist secessionist group the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), joined the New Nation of Islam’s (NNOI) radio program in April 2014.
Ahead of Thompson’s hour-long long discussion with the “Son of Man,” the leader of the NNOI, he praised the radio program as “absolutely important”:
“Your program is absolutely important to people in southwest Mississippi that’s why I think it’s so good [unclear] and I appreciate the opportunity of being on it.”
“There’s no substitute for accurate information, and that’s why your show is so important because what you’re saying is what’s already out here. You can put opinions on it, but nobody can ever say that the facts you present were anything other than the facts,” Thompson reiterates roughly one hour into the program.
The NNOI website reveals that the “Son of Man” is a follower of the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islam (NOI) from 1934 to 1975 and counted Malcolm X and anti-semite Louis Farrakhan as mentees:
“In 1973, the Son of Man visited Muhammad’s Temple where he heard and accepted the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He attended Temple #27 in Los Angeles, California. After the Honorable Elijah Muhammad passed in 1975, the Son of Man realized, thanks to the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, that he is the Son of Man whom that teaching was designed to raise from a dead level to a living perpendicular.”
Among the demands called for by the NNOI are a “separate state or territory of our own”:
“WE WANT our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves, to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of our own – either on this continent or elsewhere.”
“Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality, after giving them 400 or more years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced. We believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by white America more than justifies our demands; and our complete separation in a state or territory of our own,” adds the NNOI before insisting:
“We know that the above plan for the solution of the black and white conflict is the best and only answer to the problems between the two peoples.”
Speaking to Dana Perino on Fox News, Mike Rowe posited that the reason for the massive number of people who have left their jobs and not looked for replacement jobs is a “topography that ultimately encourages people to not work.”
Perino noted that more than 4.4 million people quit their jobs in September but reports said there were over 10 million job openings. She asked, “Why are all these people quitting their jobs but not taking the other jobs?”
“Look, I mean, the honest answer is the 300-page book I can’t get around to finishing, but in general, I think it’s coming down to the ever-evolving definition of what a good job is, the expectations that most people have when it comes to determining what they want to do with the useful part of their life,” Rowe answered. “Money, incentives, disincentives, uncertainty, it’s all swirling around.”
“And look, it’s really tempting to get on the back porch and scream at the kids to get off the lawn vis-a-vis laziness and all of the other work ethic things that I do love to talk about,” he continued. “But we can’t blame people for acting in their own interests. And if we lay out a topography that ultimately encourages people to not work, then I’m afraid that’s the fault in our stars. We’re not going to do it. And so that’s part of the problem. But ultimately I think it’s a real complex thing.”
“Fundamentally, though, you can’t argue with the numbers. 10.4 million open jobs,” he stated. “That has to mean, among other things, that opportunity is not dead if we can simply get around to making a more persuasive case for the opportunities we have. “
Perino asked, “So if parents or grandparents or young people are watching, this program or ‘How America Works’ on Fox Business, what could they learn maybe start to change that perception of what is a good job?”
“I think so much of the debate always — the way we set the table, is here are the employers and here are the employees and here’s the gap and here’s the problem,” Rowe replied. “The shows I work on all attempt to remind the rest of us how much skin we have in the game. So on ‘How America Works,’ for instance, tonight we look at salt production. We meet the men, a guy named Raul Flores, down in Carlsbad, New Mexico, to get a better understanding of how reliant we are on salt and what it takes to get it out of the ground and on to the roads so interstate commerce can exist. It’s a real simple look at that job. It’s also a very clever recruiting mechanism, because when you look at a show like this, you see people who love their jobs; you see them prospering; you see them moving the needle and contributing in a meaningful way to society.”
“So my thing is to try and get to 300 million other people who are daily unimpressed with the fact that the lights come on when we flick the switch or the poop goes away when we flush the toilet. We have to remember we’re all connected,” he concluded.
As the trial for 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse drew to a close, leftists continued their efforts to revise history in favor of their narrative. That included lead prosecutor Thomas Binger, who praised a crowd full of violent rioters on Monday.
During his closing argument, Binger said that the mob in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was composed of “heroes.”
Binger describes the mob in Kenosha that was burning the city as a “crowd full of heroes” who tried to stop an “active shooter” in Kyle Rittenhouse.
Since the riots in the city over the justified police shooting of Jacob Blake took place over a year ago, some people might need a refresher of what happened. Luckily, The Post Millennial editor Andy Ngo posted videos on Twitter showing Binger’s “heroes” committing various acts of arson.
WARNING: The following videos contain vulgar language that some viewers will find offensive.
The trial of accused teen shooter Kyle #Rittenhouse in #Kenosha, Wisc. has brought in a new round of gaslighting mainstream press coverage that obfuscates how violent the BLM-Antifa riots were there. Video by @Julio_Rosas11: pic.twitter.com/zCGGB864td
BLM rioters also threatened to kill people who attempted to protect businesses and promised to “burn your shop down too.”
Armed BLM rioters attacked & threatened to kill the group protecting a gasoline station as fires and violence engulfed #Kenosha, Wisc. in August 2020: pic.twitter.com/hrUUGUzf00
Flashback August 2020 in #Kenosha: “We’ll burn your shop down too”
For days, the city was under siege by rioters who rampaged through the streets destroying property, starting fires & promising violence against the locals. #Rittenhousepic.twitter.com/m41xhcbowt
Sarcasm aside, lies like these are incredibly dangerous. By calling these criminals “heroes,” Binger is trying to demonize Rittenhouse for defending himself against them.
To anyone who has seen videos from the Kenosha riots, Binger’s characterization of the mob is ridiculous. Sadly, not everyone has seen those videos, and those who are ill-informed about the riots may believe Binger’s lies.
In reality, the three men who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse were far from heroes. According to NBC News, Rittenhouse testified that Joseph Rosenbaum chased him after previously telling Rittenhouse and others he would “cut your f—ing hearts out.” Rittenhouse said he killed Rosenbaum in self-defense.
Were the rioters in Kenosha “heroes”?
Rittenhouse testified that Anthony Huber, the second man he killed, was beating him with a skateboard and attempted to take his gun before he shot him. Gauge Grosskreutz, whom Rittenhouse shot and injured but did not kill, allegedly pointed a pistol at Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse shot him.
Binger attempted to argue the men were trying to strip Rittenhouse of his gun to protect others, but he failed to provide convincing evidence to prove that point. Rittenhouse said he did not kill anyone until he felt his life was in danger, and there has been no evidence presented that would prove his claim false.
It is now up to the jury to decide whether or not Rittenhouse acted in self-defense, and they should be allowed to reach their own verdict without the fear of outside influence. But as they deliberate, they should not be swayed by Binger’s blatant misrepresentation of the rioters that night.
The Twitter executive responsible for blocking stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop is one of several advisers to the Aspen Institute’s disinformation commission.
Yoel Roth is one of several questionable advisers to Aspen’s Commission on Information Disorder, which on Monday released its much-anticipated report. Commission members include Katie Couric, who recently acknowledged that she edited comments on National Anthem protests out of a 2016 interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg to preserve the justice’s reputation with liberals. Another commissioner, Rashad Robinson, helped fuel actor Jussie Smollett’s hate crime hoax.
Commission members’ censorship of legitimate news stories could undercut their lofty mission. The commission blamed “decreasing levels of public trust” in public institutions for the crisis, which it dubs a “whole-of-society problem that can have life-or-death consequences.” Its report calls for Congress and the White House to take action to counteract disinformation.
Roth, the head of site integrity at Twitter, blocked access to an Oct. 14, 2020, New York Post article regarding emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop. Roth told the Federal Elections Commission he blocked the story in part because the intelligence community had briefed him that foreign governments might release hacked materials prior to the election. No evidence has emerged that Biden’s laptop was stolen or hacked, and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has since acknowledged that the company should not have blocked links to the story.
The Aspen Commission report criticizes Twitter and other social media companies for failures to rein in disinformation but does not cite Twitter’s censorship of the Biden article.
The tech billionaire who funded the commission, Craig Newmark, has sponsored research that pushed disinformation about Biden’s laptop. Newmark paid for a study from New York University that asserted that social media companies are not biased against conservatives. The report defended Twitter’s decision to block the Hunter Biden laptop story and pushed the unsubstantiated claim that the news reports were based on “stolen” documents.
Undisclosed in either the Aspen Institute report or the New York University study is that Newmark donated more than $100,000 to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
Robinson, the president of the racial justice group Color of Change, repeatedlycirculated the false claim that Smollett, who is black and gay, was attacked by two white Trump supporters who hurled bigoted slurs at him. Robinson pushed the hate crime allegation even after evidence emerged that Smollett staged the attack.
Another commission adviser, Renee DiResta, advised American Engagement Technologies, a tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama. The company, which was funded by progressive tech billionaire Reid Hoffman, created fake Russian bots to follow the Republican candidate. DiResta denied knowledge of the Alabama initiative and later joined another tech company, New Knowledge, that took part in the disinformation project.
The Aspen Institute did not respond to requests for comment.
Three corporate CEOs are making a name for themselves – as ‘woke’ enemies of the people.
Ed Bastian of Delta Air Lines, Ryan Marshall of PulteGroup, and AT&T CEO John Stankey are just the latest CEOs to announce they are going SJW.
Delta CEO Bastian stated after a Georgia voting bill was passed, “After having time to now fully understand all that is in the bill, coupled with discussions with leaders and employees in the Black community, it’s evident that the (voting) bill includes provisions that will make it harder for many underrepresented voters, particularly Black voters, to exercise their constitutional right to elect their representatives. That is wrong,” said Bastian.
Bastian is perpetuating the lie that voting integrity is somehow racist. Additionally, according to insiders, Mr. Bastian has made it apparent that he will pursue what he perceives to be “Delta’s values” inside the company.
Will Delta go as far as AT&T?
John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, told the company’s 230,000 employees in an April 2021 email that white employees should read an article saying that they are racist, to confess their ‘white privilege’ and acknowledge ‘systemic racism,’ and engage with this Marxist struggle session or suffer penalties in their performance reviews.
Stankey coerced his workers to use AT&T’s “anti-racism portal” where they are told “American racism is a uniquely white trait and that black people cannot be racist.”
An AT&T senior employee that blew the whistle to journalist Chris Rufo described the pressure to take the anti-racism training. “If you don’t do it, you’re a racist,” said the whistleblower.
Walmart has launched a similar critical race theory training program that denounces the United States as a “white supremacy system” and teaches white hourly-wage workers that they are guilty of “white supremacy thinking” and “internalized racial superiority.”
Ryan Marshall of PulteGroup has made it mandatory that recurring meetings and announcements of a Diversity and Inclusion Board begin at the company. According to one insider, despite Mr. Marshall’s mandatory Diversity and Inclusion Board, “there doesn’t appear to be any accomplishments of the Diversity Board,” and its “likely just a smokescreen while black employees aren’t actually seen or heard from in any real way that changes this company.” Marshall, like many of these CEOs, may be using these diversity struggle sessions as a way to weed out employees that are not completely subservient liberal yes men and yes women.
One CEO, Marc Lobliner of MTS Nutrition, is standing up to the woke mob. When Disneyland’s Snow White ride was under fire from the left online, because Snow White was “kissed without her consent,” Lobliner tweeted, “CANCEL DISNEY!!!! They’re as woke as anyone. Let them eat themselves.”
Lobliner has been standing tall against the leftist insanity.
“Political views shouldn’t affect how we think of others. But the ‘woke’ cancel those who disagree,” said Lobliner. “Liberals are easy to fool. They just want to be on team woke.”
Lobliner is the creator of the Outright Bar and the Chief Marketing Officer of TigerFitness.com.
When the right supports CEOs that stand up for America and conservative values, the culture war gains supply lines, and becomes a fight that patriots can win.
Christina Karaoli Taylor, Multicultural Competency Trainer, CKT Cultural Strategies: “I challenge you [journalists] to stop thinking in terms of objective journalism. We’ll discuss why that’s not really feasible anymore.”
Ron Treviño, CBS Houston News Anchor: “I don’t really care if people trust us or not, we still have to do our job. Whether they trust us is the least of my concerns — whether they trust me or not.”
Grady Tripp, Tegna Chief Diversity Officer: “At this point, if you’re not listening to a podcast, or looking at a video, or reading any of the information that’s out as far as equality and social justice and race, you don’t care…The other thing is we’re going to be holding stations accountable, right? We’re going to be holding stations accountable because we know it’s important to the organization. KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] are going to change, right? KPIs are going to reflect diversity and inclusion from a representation standpoint.”
Brett Mauser, Former CBS San Antonio Promotions Producer and Whistleblower: “I don’t want to destroy the news. I don’t want anybody to get fired. I want people to change and realize that they are supposed to be objective.”
Mauser: “Teaching journalists at a national level, ‘Don’t be objective.’ To me, that was what journalism always was: to be objective. In my mind, if journalism is not objective, it’s not journalism — it’s propaganda.”
Mauser: “This mindset has been able to grow and infect what was supposed to be the fourth pillar of society. The journalists are supposed to be our watchdogs. They’re the ones that are supposed to be protecting us from tyranny and supposed to be going out there and finding out and giving us the truth.”
Mauser: “I would tell people — my friends, family — you can’t trust the news. ‘You’re being manipulated. Well, how do you know? I work in the news!’”
CBS San Antonio RESPONDS: “A journalist’s job is to present the truth and report the facts, not cater to opinions. Our inclusivity program makes our journalism stronger, particularly for communities that have not been well-served by our industry. We will continue this important work.”
[SAN ANTONIO – Nov. 16, 2021]
Project Veritas released a new video today featuring an interview with CBS San Antonio [KENS 5] whistleblower, Brett Mauser, who exposes his colleagues and outside corporate partners for promoting a political ideology rather than objective journalism in the newsroom.Play
In one instance, Christina Karaoli Taylor, CKT Cultural Strategies’ Multicultural Competency Trainer, was brought in to train CBS San Antonio journalists and defined the expectations.
“Much of what we’re gonna talk about today is going to center around the main code of ethics of journalism. And a couple things — during this workshop and throughout your day, I challenge you to stop thinking in terms of objective journalism. We’ll discuss why that’s not really feasible anymore. But [think] in terms of accuracy, fairness, and transparency — always striving for objectivity is not feasible,” Taylor said.
“That was the one that blew my mind. Teaching journalists at a national level, ‘Don’t be objective.’ To me, that was what journalism always was: to be objective. In my mind, if journalism is not objective, it’s not journalism — it’s propaganda,” Mauser said.
Ron Treviño, who serves as one of CBS Houston’s [KHOU] most experienced and main news anchors, was recorded admitting that he is indifferent about conveying trust to the public through his reporting.
“I don’t really care if people trust us or not, we still have to do our job. Whether they trust us is the least of my concerns — whether they trust me or not,” Treviño said.
“To me that seems like — that’s part of the job. That you need trust to be able to do your job. Your job is to inform. If you can’t trust who you’re getting the news from — you’re not doing your job,” Mauser said in response to watching Treviño’s statement.
On another occasion, Tegna’s Chief Diversity Officer, Grady Tripp, can be seen describing how employees should be evaluated more heavily on their adherence to a political ideology rather than their skillset in journalism. Tegna is the parent company of CBS San Antonio and CBS Houston, along with 62 other news stations across the country.
“At this point, if you’re not listening to a podcast, or looking at a video, or reading any of the information that’s out as far as equality and social justice and race, you don’t care…The other thing is we’re going to be holding stations accountable, right? We’re going to be holding stations accountable because we know it’s important to the organization. KPIs [Key Performance Indicators] are going to change, right? KPIs are going to reflect diversity and inclusion from a representation standpoint,” Tripp said.
“It’s about the narrative. It’s about pushing an agenda,” Mauser said to Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe in response to watching Tripp. “It feels almost threatening, doesn’t it?”
Mauser expressed concern for the state of journalism in the United States after witnessing these behaviors at CBS San Antonio on a regular basis.
“This mindset has been able to grow and infect what was supposed to be the fourth pillar of society. The journalists are supposed to be our watchdogs. They’re the ones that are supposed to be protecting us from tyranny and supposed to be going out there and finding out and giving us the truth,” he said.
“I would tell people — my friends, family — you can’t trust the news. ‘You’re being manipulated. Well, how do you know? I work in the news!’”
Mauser explained to O’Keefe why he decided to come forward to Project Veritas.
“I don’t want to destroy the news. I don’t want anybody to get fired. I want people to change and realize that they are supposed to be objective. They are being told by another company and by their parent company to ‘not be objective’ — to be divisive. I just want them [CBS San Antonio] to admit they have a problem.”
In response, CBS San Antonio made the following statement when asked for comment:
“These assertions by a former employee are a severe misunderstanding of what valuing inclusivity, diversity and equity in a newsroom means. This lack of understanding is exactly why we’re doing this training. A non-news employee secretly taped inclusivity training where our journalists were given tools and information and shared perspectives on how we can better serve all our audience. A journalist’s job is to present the truth and report the facts, not cater to opinions. Our inclusivity program makes our journalism stronger, particularly for communities that have not been well-served by our industry. We will continue this important work.”
About Project Veritas
James O’Keefe established Project Veritas in 2010 as a non-profit journalism enterprise to continue his undercover reporting work. Today, Project Veritas investigates and exposes corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions to achieve a more ethical and transparent society and to engage in litigation to: protect, defend and expand human and civil rights secured by law, specifically First Amendment rights including promoting the free exchange of ideas in a digital world; combat and defeat censorship of any ideology; promote truthful reporting; and defend freedom of speech and association issues including the right to anonymity. O’Keefe serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Board so that he can continue to lead and teach his fellow journalists, as well as protect and nurture the Project Veritas culture.
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations.
A Kenyan man who formerly worked as a home health care worker is now on trial after police say he killed 18 women in the Dallas, Texas, area over a two-year period.
But prosecutors say he might have killed as many as 24 women — and potentially more beyond that.
Billy Chemirmir, 48, was arrested in 2018 after the smothering death of 81-year-old Lu Thi Harris in her home. Police say Harris’ death was discovered after another woman, 91-year-old Mary Bartel, survived an attempted smothering by a man alleged to be Chemirmir in the Dallas suburb of Plano, The Dallas Morning News reported.
In that attack, Bartel said a man matching the defendant’s description forced his way into her apartment at an assisted living facility and tried to suffocate her with a pillow. She survived, but her attacker, allegedly Chemirmir, made off with jewelry, according to the Associated Press.
During the attack, the accused allegedly told Bartel, “Go to bed. Don’t fight me,” the AP reported.
A trial has begun for a man charged with killing 18 older women in and around Dallas, and stealing jewelry and other valuables. Billy Chemirmir, 48, is being tried in one of the deaths. His attorney has called the evidence against him circumstantial. https://t.co/0ffSoHjga7
Law enforcement officials from Plano have stated that the attacks on Harris and Bartel match other killings where elderly women were victimized inside of their homes and had possessions stolen. Chemirmir was arrested at his north Dallas apartment in March 2018.
Police say they found evidence linking him to both Harris and Bartel during his arrest.
Do you think Chemirmir should face the death penalty, if convicted?
But soon after he was taken in, the suspicious deaths of other elderly women came to light, and detectives began looking at Chemirmir in those cases. The Associated Press reported that Leah Corken, 83, was found dead in her apartment in Dallas.
Corken was believed to have died of a stroke, but her daughter said she had doubts about that assessment.
Billy Chemirmir has been charged with killing 18 older women across the Dallas area over a two-year span. Most of the victims were killed at independent living communities for older people, where Chemirmir allegedly forced his way into apartments. https://t.co/CviNtyDV7L
The woman told the AP that on the night before her mother had died, her hair was well put together and they had enjoyed a movie and gone shopping. When her body was found, her hair was in disarray, and her makeup was found smudged on a pillow.
“I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know,” M.J. Jennings told the AP. “I didn’t know it was murder.”
Prosecutors in Chemirmir’s murder trial, which began this week, say the deaths of more elderly women living at assisted living facilities were scrutinized. In each death, the victims shared something in common beyond age and gender.
Their jewelry and other valuables had been taken.
With the possibility that they might be dealing with a serial killer, police focused on hundreds of deaths. Eight of the women he is charged with killing all lived at the Tradition-Prestonwood Independent Living facility in Dallas. The other ten victims each resided in or north of Dallas.
One more death at the Tradition-Prestonwood facility is linked to Chemirmir, who was kicked off the property for alleged trespassing in 2016 after his release from jail on an unrelated matter. Prosecutors say he might have entered the homes of the victims by posing as a handyman, People Magazine reported.
The alleged killer faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The prosecution has declined to seek the death penalty, but more suspicious deaths are being probed.
Prosecutor Glen Fitzmartin, in his opening statement to jurors on Tuesday, said the defendant is guilty of “stalking, smothering and stealing,” according to the AP.
Attorneys for Chemirmir did not offer an opening statement, the Morning News reported. The defendant has denied any involvement in the slayings.
Chemirmir is originally from Kenya, but he has permanent legal resident status in the U.S.
If the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial weren’t already aware of the high-stakes politics surrounding their deliberations, Judge Bruce Schroeder has made it absolutely clear.
In his instructions on Monday, Schroeder emphasized that the jury must make its decision on its own, without interference from anywhere — especially not from President Joe Biden.
“You will pay no heed to the opinions of anyone — even the president of the United States or the president before him,” Schroeder said.
The Aug. 25, 2020, shooting was a national story from the moment it took place, with the mainstream media, leftist activists and major figures in the Democratic Party rushing to paint the then-17-year-old Rittenhouse as a savage racist hellbent on causing trouble among demonstrators protesting a police shooting of a black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
At an Aug. 30, 2020, news briefing, in fact, then-President Trump was asked if he would “condemn the actions of vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse.”
Trump has rarely been accused of being overly judicial in his choice of words, but this time, his answer was dead on.
“We’re looking at all of it. And that was an interesting situation,” he said.
Do you think Kyle Rittenhouse should be acquitted?
“You saw the same tape as I saw. And he was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like. And he fell, and then they very violently attacked him. And it was something that we’re looking at right now, and it’s under investigation.”
In other words, after giving a brief summary of what it “looks like” on video seen by virtually the entire country, Trump concluded only that “it’s under investigation.”
Unfortunately for the cause of the American system of justice, Trump’s then-Democratic opponent Joe Biden and his presidential campaign showed no such restraint.
In an Aug. 27 interview with CNN, Biden acknowledged his own ignorance about the case, but immediately suggested through his response to a question from Anderson Cooper that Rittenhouse was a “militia” member who had gone to Kenosha with criminal intent — and, of course, Biden then attacked Trump for not attacking “white supremacy.”
And that was no slip of the tongue in the middle of a television interview.
In a Twitter post published after the first Trump-Biden debate (a debacle moderated by a disastrous Chris Wallace of Fox News), Biden used Rittenhouse’s image in a video, again attacking Trump for allegedly failing to denounce “white supremacists.”
Nothing like a presidential campaign ad to poison a jury pool.
Rittenhouse’s mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, took to Fox News’ “Hannity” program last week to blast Biden for the ad.
“When I saw that, I was in shock, I was angry,” she said.
“President Biden don’t know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And he did that for the votes.”
“And I was so angry for a while at him and what he did to my son. He defamed him,” Rittenhouse said.
That’s putting it mildly.
Fair-minded Americans should be disgusted at the political posturing that’s surrounded the Rittenhouse case, as left-wing politicians and media outlets that normally drip with sympathy for criminal defendants howl for the blood of a teenager who defended himself while caught in a potentially deadly situation.
And fair-minded Americans should be praying that those jurors in the case really are immune to the politics outside the courthouse.
To come to a just verdict, they need to disregard everything but the facts of the criminal case and how they apply to Wisconsin self-defense law.
That means disregarding the intense political pressure that’s surrounding the case from the left.
And it especially means disregarding statements from the man now in the White House.
If you go to work at one New York City school, a teacher said, it’s OK to wear a Black Lives Matter t-shirt — but don’t you dare wear a shirt that says “Proud Zionist” with the flag of Israel on it.
According to a report in Sunday’s New York Post, Jeffrey Levy — a teacher at MS 51 in the extremely woke neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn — says he was told by the school’s principal not to wear the shirt in school, even though Black Lives Matter and women’s rights shirts have been donned by other staff members.
In a discrimination complaint Levy filed, he said principal Neal Singh told him that students and staff at the school complained about the “Proud Zionist” shirt and a previous “Back the Blue” pro-police tee he wore.
“Singh told me that my t-shirt with an Israeli flag on it and the words ‘Proud Zionist’ were ‘politically explosive,’” read his complaint, which was filed Sept. 30 with the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity at the New York City’s Department of Education.
“He told me that Zionism involves the retaking of Palestinian land and is ‘offensive,’” the complaint added.
“Schools are not public forums for advancing personal political views, and per Department of Education regulations, employees are prohibited from using schools for the purpose of political expression,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon.
Is anti-Semitism a serious problem in NYC?
“This principal’s request followed complaints from students and staff and is consistent with policies around political neutrality in schools.”
There’s a question as to whether or not the shirts were in violation of city school regulations.
“School buildings are not public forums for purposes of community or political expression,” Chancellor’s Regulation D-130 reads.
“While on duty or in contact with students, school personnel may not wear buttons, pins, articles of clothing or any other items advocating a candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political organization/committee.”
Levy argued “Proud Zionist” doesn’t violate that, given that it has nothing to do with political expression or advocating for a candidate — noting in his complaint Zionism is a religious movement in support of the creation and maintenance of the state of Israel.
However, he highlighted in his complaint that, to the extent that it was political, there was a clear double standard at work at MS 51.
“Singh has permitted other staff to wear attire with ‘Black Lives Matter,’ ‘Feminism is the radical idea that women are people,’ ‘Feminist’ and [female Supreme Court justices] ‘O’Connor & Ginsburg & Sotomayor & Kagan,’” his complaint read.
“Singh’s definition of politically explosive attire appears limited to Jews only,” the teacher said.
“None of my attire, actions or beliefs endanger the emotional or physical safety of students or staff, which Singh accused me of … I have conducted myself professionally and have always respected the beliefs of all while doing my job neutrally and without bias … His attempt to threaten and intimidate me is anti-Semitic.”
Both Levy and the group Americans Against Antisemitism — headed by former state Assemblyman Dov Hikind — provided the Post with pictures of some of the shirts worn by other teachers; the Post’s article included one which said “Feminist.”
In a video for Americans Against Antisemitism, one which says “Black Lives Matter” can also be seen.
BREAKING: NYC Public School Teacher’s Job Threatened for Wearing Zionist T-shirt to School
Teachers there wear BLM and other political t-shirts, but only the Zionist was threatened!
“How insulting. This is sick. This is pathetic. This is anti-Semitic,” Hikind told the Post regarding Levy’s treatment.
“You can’t say you’re a proud Jew and supportive of the people and the State of Israel?”
Hikind, who is a Democrat, said the city’s Department of Education was “representing the extreme left, the radical wing of the Democratic Party” by having different standards for “Proud Zionist” t-shirts than it did for “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts.
“There should be one standard for all. But this is what’s going on in our city,” Hikind said.
Indeed, this is one of the more unfortunate problems of the de Blasio years in New York City — with anti-Semitic hate crimes up and city hall taking an unusually strong interest in cracking down on Orthodox Jewish communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is only a complaint at the moment, but it’s certainly a complaint that’s entirely believable given the priorities of the city’s leadership.
What gets defined as “politically explosive” only runs one way for the woke, after all — and support for Israel, unfortunately, very much runs that way.
Educators pursuing a career as a middle or high school English teacher should be “trained in anti-racism,” according to a newly released set of teaching standards created by National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
The NCTE last revised its standards for educators preparing to teach English language arts (ELA) in grades 7 to 12 in 2012. The professional organization said that since then, literacy demands “have changed the landscape significantly” and that “the issues of justice, equity, and diversity” have become central for English teachers and learners.
The latest NCTE standards, released last week, replace the term “social justice” in the 2012 version with “anti-racist” and “anti-bias” based on “expert advice,” according to the council. It now recommends that prospective English teachers “apply and demonstrate knowledge of learners and learning to foster inclusive learning environments that support coherent, relevant, standards-aligned, differentiated, and antiracist/antibias instruction to engage grade 7–12 learners in ELA.”
“Bigotry, discrimination, oppression, divisiveness, and racism are part of the world in which future teachers of English are working,” NCTE President Alfredo Celedon Lujan said in a statement announcing the standards. “These new standards seek to support educators as they prepare to go into the classroom.”
When it comes to the definition of racism, the council defines racism in America as the “systematic mistreatment and disenfranchisement of people of color who currently and historically possess less power and privilege than white Americans.”
“Racism … and other forms of discrimination continue to be a part of American society, continuing to affect all students and their education,” the council declares, asking that teachers “explicitly push for anti-racism by participating in ongoing professional development for educators to succeed in countering racism and other forms of bigotry.”
Anti-racism is one of the concepts popularized by proponents of critical race theory (CRT), an outgrowth from Marxism that views society through the lens of a power struggle between white and non-white people, which proponents assign the labels of “oppressors” and “oppressed,” respectively. CRT advocates see deeply embedded racism in all aspects of American society and deem it to be the root cause of racial inequity, or different outcomes for different races.
Rather than teaching children tolerance, it requires discriminatory “antiracist” practices to solve the perceived inequity, according to CRT advocates. As explained in Ibram X. Kendi’s 2019 book “How to Be an Antiracist,” discrimination should be considered “anti-racist” so long it is “creating equity.”
“The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi.
The NCET didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The council will be holding its annual convention next week, featuring guest speakers such as former first lady Michelle Obama and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the leading author of The New York Times’ controversial “1619 Project,” a collection of historically revisionist literature promoting the idea that the United States is an inherently racist nation founded to preserve slavery.
Many people scratched their heads when Joe Biden picked Harris as his running mate. The media claimed it was because she was an amazing politician. It had nothing to do with her race or gender. But since entering office, the woman has not had a stellar record.
She has a worse approval than Biden. That’s probably because she has done nothing with the jobs given to her. But recently she managed to drain even more water out of the shallow end. Just see what she asked NASA… about trees.
From The Right Scoop/ Twitter:
Kamala Harris interrupts a NASA presentation to ask if NASA “can measure trees” as part of “environmental justice.” pic.twitter.com/POoArDzaGc
Kamala Harris is a very special vice president don’t you think? Special. And she asked a very special question, interrupting a NASA presentation to do it, on the issue of tree justice.
That’s right, she wanted to know if NASA can use satellites to “track” how many trees there are on a neighborhood by neighborhood level, with those neighborhoods being apportioned by race, for the sake of environmental justice.
I think it’s safe to say that “social justice” has gone too far. No longer able to find real sources of racism in America, Kamala Harris is now asking about how racist a neighborhood is—based on its trees. Harris asked NASA if they could track tree density, per neighborhood, as some form of “environmental justice.”
Because, as we all know, racists love cutting down trees in majority-black neighborhoods.
What is Harris thinking? Does she really expect us to believe that a lack of trees in a neighborhood indicates its racial makeup? Or does she have a hunch and wants NASA to prove it? But we shouldn’t be all too surprised for her to think this way.
The left casts everything in the mold of race. She is assuming that, if there are lots of trees in a neighborhood, it’s because it is made of up rich people who planted them. And, as all social justice warriors know, rich equals white. So, if there are too many trees in a neighborhood… racism!
Has this woman ever gone to Brooklyn? There are lots of trees in the city—especially in the many parks managed by both the city and private communities. There are so many trees, despite the fact that the area is very racially diverse.
She should also visit cities outside the liberal bubble, where white, black, and other races get along very well. And guess what—plenty of trees!
Maybe there is a lack of trees in some areas because urban density meant they needed to be cut down. It had nothing to do with race, just the need to build more homes and buildings?
But nobody tell Harris that—she won’t understand!
Key Takeaways:
Kamala Harris asked if NASA could track trees for “environmental justice.”
The leftist seemed to think trees indicated the racial profile of a community.
Harris tried to tie the number of trees to racism, it seems.
Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says Kyle Rittenhouse “should be acquitted” of killing two men and wounding a third during riots and protests last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and he should file defamation lawsuits against media outlets for claiming that he’s guilty of murder.
“If I were a juror, I would vote that there was reasonable doubt [and] that he did act in self-defense,” Dershowitz told Newsmax on Nov. 13.
Rittenhouse, if acquitted, should then “bring lawsuits” against corporate news outlets for articles claiming the teen engaged in “vigilante justice,” Dershowitz said.
“It’s CNN who is involved in vigilante justice. It’s The New Yorker that’s guilty of vigilante justice,” he said.
Several years ago, then-Kentucky high school student Nicholas Sandmann filed defamation suits against CNN, The Washington Post, and other outlets following accusations of racism against him after a viral video showed an encounter with a Native American activist in Washington, D.C. Last year, Sandmann ended up reaching a settlement with CNN and The Washington Post.
“The idea is to make the media accountable for deliberate and willful lies,” said Dershowitz, referring to Sandmann’s case.
Now, left-leaning media outlets “want an outcome” in the trial, Dershowitz said.
“They want a result, and if they don’t get their results—and you know this seeps through to the jury. I worry that the jury could be influenced by the fear that if they vote to acquit, they’ll be called racist and they’ll be attacked.”
Rittenhouse, 18, is charged with killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, in Kenosha on Aug. 25, 2020, during protests and rioting that followed a police-involved shooting. Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty.
According to video footage of the incident, both Huber and Grosskreutz chased Rittenhouse as he was trying to run toward police after shooting Rosenbaum. Several videos and photos also show Huber hitting Rittenhouse with a skateboard, while Grosskreutz, who himself was armed with a handgun, testified last week that he thought Huber was attempting to attack Rittenhouse.
Dershowitz’s remarks come after Judge Bruce Schroeder, the presiding judge in the case, said he may allow the jury to consider several lesser charges in addition to the murder charges that prosecutors brought against Rittenhouse.
On Nov. 12, he told Rittenhouse that with the lesser charges, “you’re raising the risk of conviction, although you’re avoiding the possibility that the jury will end up compromising on the more serious crime.”
“You’re also decreasing the risk that you’ll end up with a second trial because the jury is unable to agree,” he said. Rittenhouse confirmed that he understood.
With the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial set to begin deliberating next week, it’s important to look back at what happened to another man who was ruthlessly assaulted by a mob in the same city during that series of riots.
Robert Cobb, 71, was minding his own business when civil unrest enveloped the area near his home in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Kenosha News reported Cobb did what he could to save the 100-year-old Danish Brotherhood Lodge after it was sacked by rioters.
Aug. 24, the night before Rittenhouse had run-ins with Anthony Huber, Joseph Rosenbaum and Gaige Grosskreutz, Cobb had attempted to protect the historic building with a fire extinguisher.
At one point, he began spraying rioters in the face with the fire extinguisher, as he would later explain, so that they might take off their masks and be filmed. He hoped that might identify them. He was hit in the head with concrete, suffered a broken jaw and needed stitches on his head.
WARNING: the following video is graphic and contains language which might offend some viewers.
Cobb’s story is one that we saw play out throughout the summer of 2020 in cities from Dallas to Portland. Good samaritans who wanted to protect their community were overwhelmed by mobs and attacked.
Do you think Rittenhouse will be found guilty?
Rittenhouse easily could have suffered the same fate — or much worse. He could have been killed during either of his two deadly interactions the following night. One could argue that rioters were incensed by the teen’s rifle, but seeing another person in possession of a rifle is not a justification to attack or kill them.
A rifle in a riot is also not the only deadly weapon.
In the teen’s first deadly encounter, he shot Rosenbaum, who he said was pursuing him, and who was not deterred by the presence of his gun.
R: He could have ran away instead of trying to take my gun from me, but..it didn’t stop him.
B: Mr. Rittenhouse, You’re telling us that you felt like you were about to die, right.
R: Yes.
B: But when you point the gun…that’s going to make them feel like they’re about to die. pic.twitter.com/HgauT7fq4Q
Rosenbaum, in every video shown to the jury, possessed two hands and two feet. Both are potentially deadly weapons. Rittenhouse made a decision to fire as Rosenbaum closed in on him. The man died while apparently trying to take possession of the teen’s gun.
That brings us to the second deadly interaction, when the teen was surrounded by people, including Huber and Grosskreutz. Huber struck Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard and Rittenhouse shot him once. Huber died from a chest wound.
Somehow not mentioned in this CNN story: Getty photos show that Huber was actually beating Rittenhouse with his skateboard pic.twitter.com/J83ZbKbKy1
A skateboard is a deadly weapon when in the wrong hands. Run a Google search on “deadly skateboard attack” and look at all the coverage of people who were beaten to death with what Rittenhouse prosecutor Thomas Binger would probably call a benign piece of plywood sports equipment with plastic wheels.
As Binger has made abundantly clear, guns can be deadly. Grosskreutz himself has admitted he was pointing a pistol at Rittenhouse when he was shot through the right bicep.
#KyleRittenhouse – Under cross-examination Gaige Grosskreutz agrees that Rittenhouse did not fire at him when he had his hands up and that when Grosskreutz pointed his own gun at Rittenhouse while advancing on Rittenhouse, is when Rittenhouse shot him. Watch: pic.twitter.com/HSSFoINLCE
We’ll never know if Grosskreutz might have ended up firing. Rittenhouse didn’t wait to find out.
In just under three minutes, Rittenhouse went from walking toward a gas station to puttting out a fire to reporting he had just used deadly force to a line of police officers.
Rittenhouse, when looking at all the evidence presented, chose to live. He used his rifle when the mob came for him.
There are valid arguments that none of this would have happened if the teen had stayed home, or had refrained from carrying a firearm with him, but Cobb was only armed with a fire extinguisher. He was attacked without mercy.
Imagine what might have become of Rittenhouse if the mob had gotten its ugly hands on him after the first shot was fired. Imagine the beating — or worse — had he not kept his gun in his own hands.
Multiple Jan. 6 defendants were taken out of their cells on stretchers on Thursday, according to a court filing.
The situation started when one of the defendants refused to wear a mask, family members of Kelly Meggs, who is being held in the D.C. Jail, told Meggs lawyer.
Prison guards began spraying a chemical substance described as “some kind of mace or pepper spray, according to a filing in federal court.
“They sprayed mace or some type of gas at an inmate and kept missing so it went into an intake that fed into other cells and the lady with the key left because she didn’t like the gas, so the inmates in the cells who were being fed the gas from that intake were locked in for like 15 minutes while it was going into their rooms and they couldn’t see/breathe,” the family told Jonathon Moseley, the lawyer.
More than one of the defendants was taken out on stretchers to medical bays.
Julie Kelly, a writer for the American Greatness, reported on Wednesday that prison guards filled an area of the jail with chemical spray and three detainees had to be taken out on stretchers.
Moseley and the D.C. Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.
The lawyer said his client was not in one of the cells that the gas was cycled into by the ventilation system. He urged the court to explore with the Bureau of Prisons and Congress whether any federal funds are already or can be allocated to repair and upgrade the D.C. Jail facilities.
Neither prosecutors nor the judge has yet responded to the filing.
The jail has been under heightened scrutiny in recent months due to its holding of dozens of people accused of participating in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
One defendant, Christopher Worrell, was released from pretrial custody last week because U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth became troubled by the lack of proper medical care he received from the jail.
The U.S. Marshals Service showed up unannounced at the facilities in mid-October. Officials deemed the part holding Jan. 6 detainees suitable but found conditions in another part that “do not meet the minimum standards of confinement,” the agency said in a recent statement.
Lamont Ruffin, the acting U.S. Marshal for Washington, told Quincy Booth, director of the D.C. Department of Corrections, in a letter that he personally went to the jail and saw “evidence of systemic failures.”
Prison guards routinely shut off water to cells as punishment and multiple cells had “large amounts of standing human sewage (urine and feces) in the toilets,” inspectors found. Additionally, guards were observed antagonizing detainees and hot meals were observed being served “cold and congealed.”
Jail officials were ordered to transfer around 400 detainees, or 36 percent of the inmates in the Central Treatment Facility, one of the facilities that makes up the D.C. Jail, to a prison in another state.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), after months of attempts, were able to tour the facilities last week. Greene said she witnessed terrible conditions, including Jan. 6 detainees receiving “very poor food” and “virtually no medical care.”
“I want to be very clear that we will deal with those deficiencies so that we have a safe jail until such time that the District is able to build a new one,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat who helped the members secure access, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Avis Buchanan, director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, said in a statement it has called out the treatment of detainees at the D.C. Jail for years.
“The inhumane conditions have included long-term solitary confinement for people with no disciplinary issues, lack of running water, full illumination of cells for 24-hours per day resulting in sleep deprivation, cells soiled with feces and blood, lack of air conditioning during the summer, and heat during the winter, lack of proper medical care, failure to provide mental health treatment, and physical and mental abuse by correctional officers of people in their custody,” Buchanan said.
Councilman Charles Allen, the Democrat chairman of the D.C. City Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, described the situation as “a crisis” during a remote hearing this week.
“I do not use that term lightly. The District of Columbia has a moral and constitutional duty to provide humane and dignified conditions of confinement and to do so immediately. And that’s not happening here,” he added.
D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, a Democrat, acknowledged during the hearing that concerns about the conditions in the jail “received little attention until they were raised, of course, by mostly white defendants accused of perpetrating the Jan. 6” breach, adding, “That’s not because people weren’t complaining.”
Chris Geldart, a deputy mayor, told councilmembers that there are “systemic issues” at the jail and the issues raised by U.S. Marshals were being addressed, but also claimed that the problems were “not so pervasive that [the jail] has become uninhabitable.”
Geldart also confirmed that Marshals were blocked from re-entering the facilities about a week after the inspection, pinning the decision on the warden.
The D.C. Department of Corrections and the U.S. Marshals Service on Nov. 10 entered into a memorandum of understanding that outlines plans to improve conditions at the jail. Each party is forbidden from issuing press releases or speaking to the media about the agreement without consent from the other party.
President Joe Biden is having a hard time escaping the glaring lies he repeated during his 2020 campaign about Kyle Rittenhouse, who is currently standing trial for murder.
The trial has been a massive fiasco for the prosecution even as the establishment media carries water for the increasingly weak claims that Rittenhouse acted maliciously when he shot three people, killing two, amid the violent riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.
So far, the state’s own witness has revealed that one of the men Rittenhouse shot had tried to grab his gun, and Gaige Grosskreutz, another of Rittenhouse’s “victims,” has admitted that Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, fired on him only after he pointed a loaded handgun at the teen.
One of the more painful moments of the trial came when Rittenhouse himself took the stand and broke down while describing the moments leading up to the shooting. As video evidence clearly shows, rioters chased him down before he was ultimately forced to fire in self-defense.
So Biden probably shouldn’t have counted his eggs before they hatched last year as he leveraged Rittenhouse to beef up the narrative that then-President Donald Trump was sympathetic to white supremacists. Now that he’s in office, the lies about both Rittenhouse and Trump are coming back to bite him.
In August 2020, just days after the Rittenhouse shooting, Biden was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper why he thought Trump hadn’t yet spoken publicly about the police shooting of Jacob Blake, which sparked the riots in the first place.
Biden responded by suggesting that Rittenhouse was part of a “militia” and that Trump was unwilling to denounce white supremacists.
“Look, I don’t know enough to know whether that 17-year-old kid — exactly what he did. But allegedly he’s part of a militia coming out of the state of Illinois,” Biden said.
Do you think Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent?
“Have you ever heard this president say one negative thing about white supremacists? Have you ever heard it?” he continued, claiming that Trump had called white supremacists at the 2017 Charlottesville riot “very fine people.”
It really is astounding that Biden so confidently repeated this already exhaustivelydebunked lie.
Trump decidedly and in no uncertain terms condemned white supremacy after the riot, as a matter of fact.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America,” he said in August 2017.
“Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”
If this wasn’t clear enough, Trump immediately followed up his “very fine people” comment by saying, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
That’s right — even though leftists continue to claim to this day that Trump called white supremacists and neo-Nazis “very fine people,” he actually clarified who he was talking about in the same breath and denounced the radical factions present at the Charlottesville riot.
There are no two ways about it: Biden was lying. Trump had denounced white supremacy literally years before Biden campaigned on the insane claim that he hadn’t.
Our current president was not only willing to blatantly lie about Trump, but also to imply that Rittenhouse was probably a racist militia member, too.
Of course, Anderson Cooper, the brilliant and objective journalist that he is, did not push back on this wild suggestion. The media has for well over a year now spouted entirely fabricated claims about Rittenhouse — which is probably why Biden felt perfectly comfortable including the teen’s image in a campaign video about white supremacy.
There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV
The Rittenhouse family has refused to take this bald-faced slander from the media and our now-president sitting down, as well they should not.
“The media has been absolutely irresponsible and purely abhorrent with this entire situation. They’ve been parroting the same false information time after time after time,” Rittenhouse spokesman David Hancock told Fox News on Wednesday. “It’s appalling, absolutely appalling.”
Rittenhouse’s mother also slammed Biden this week for using her son’s image in the campaign video, which recycled the same debunked line that Trump refused to disavow “white supremacists.”
“When I saw that, I was shocked, I was angry,” Wendy Rittenhouse told Fox on Thursday. “President Biden [doesn’t] know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a white supremacist. He’s not a racist. And [Biden] did that for the votes.”
“And I was so angry for a while at him and what he did to my son. He defamed him,” she said.
Who can blame her?
It’s bad enough that the media has so aggressively tried to taint this kid’s name in the court of public opinion. But for a presidential candidate to lump him in with vile racists is quite another matter.
That there’s someone in the White House who has so little regard for the basic principle of presumed innocence should seriously scare us.
Real America’s Voice correspondent Drew Hernandez corroborated Kyle Rittenhouse’s testimony that he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum last summer.
The 18-year-old has been charged in the shooting deaths of Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following a police shooting.
“The first time I saw Kyle, he actually de-escalated the situation,” Hernandez, who was at the scene to record the violent demonstration, testified Thursday during Rittenhouse’s murder trial in Kenosha.
The reporter recounted that on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, “Antifa and the rioters were going head-to-head with the police in front of the courthouse, and as they were doing so, the police then responded. I think they, I believe they called it an unlawful assembly of some sort.”
Hernandez said the rioters were throwing rocks at police officers and launching fireworks and other explosive devices.
“As they were being pushed down the street [by the police], they passed Car Source 2. And the rioters identified individuals with longarm rifles on top of the building, and they immediately attempted to agitate them, to try to start some conflict with them saying, ‘You ain’t the police. You ain’t the police,’” he said.
“At that point Kyle Rittenhouse came out of Car Source 2 and he attempted to de-escalate the situation.”
Witness says Kyle Rittenhouse tried to deescalate the situation. Meanwhile, rioters picked fights with people protecting a business: pic.twitter.com/1YIArIh41p
Hernandez then recreated how Rittenhouse was motioning with his hands trying to get people to settle down.
Do you think Rittenhouse should be found not guilty?
“He clearly attempts to de-escalate the situation. And he actually is successful because then the rioters then disperse,” the reporter said.
Hernandez went on to describe the fatal shooting of Rosenbaum, who he felt had become “triggered and aggravated” in the moments leading up to it. He testified that Rosenbaum had “led the charge into the gas station” and “was getting physically aggressive.”
“Rosenbaum was charging Kyle Rittenhouse from behind,” Hernandez said.
“Kyle is right at the corner … and turns around and Rosenbaum is lunging towards him very clearly, and Kyle fires,” he said, pointing to a video display in court.
The 18-year-old testified that people around him were saying, “Cranium him, kill him,” and he was “just trying to get to the police” where he felt he would be safe.
Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger asked Rittenhouse during cross-examination, “What was the risk to you of death or great bodily harm at the moment you killed Joseph Rosenbaum?”
Prosecutor: “What was the risk to you of death or great bodily harm at the moment you killed Joseph Rosenbaum?”
Rittenhouse: “If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would’ve used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people.” pic.twitter.com/HfAswVqUED
Protests are not inherently bad. There is much good that can be accomplished through protesting in fact. But not all protests are the same.
There is, in fact, a difference between peaceful protesting and rioting.
By definition, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations which largely took place in the summer of 2020 crossed the line from protest to riot very quickly.
Cornell Law School defines a riot as a “concerted action made … through the use or threat of violence, disorder, or terror to the public; and resulting in a disturbance of the peace. Under common law, the crime of riot requires the assemblage of three or more actors.”
A protest, by contrast, is a “public remonstrance or demonstration (usually expressing dissent) centered around an act or policy of a governing body … [which] constitutes as an instance of civil resistance, or nonviolent resistance, when it is part of a larger systematic and peaceful nonviolent campaign aimed at achieving a specific objective by use of pressure and persuasion.”
So by definition, BLM demonstrations can be called riots.
In 2020, the world watched as BLM riots swept across the country. After the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, thousands turned out to take a stand against police violence. Sadly, many of those “peaceful protests” resulted in violence, vandalism and even death.
“The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protests — more than 93% — have been peaceful, according to a new report published Thursday by a nonprofit that researches political violence and protests across the world,” Time Magazine reported.
Harvard Radcliffe Institute wrote, “In fact, the Black Lives Matter uprisings were remarkably nonviolent. When there was violence, very often police or counterprotesters were reportedly directing it at the protesters.”
But in the same breath, the media wants to vilify those who are protesting the vaccine, mask and lockdown mandates which have swept America in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. News headlined that “Mask, Vaccine Conflicts Descend Into Violence and Harassment.” But then the article went on to describe that protesters merely showed shouted at people and showed their anger.
“The Hawaii lieutenant governor watched in horror as protesters showed up outside his condo, yelled at him through bullhorns and beamed strobe lights into the building to harass him over vaccine requirements,” U.S. News reported.
Is there a difference between riots and protests?
Sure, it’s not ideal for protesters to harass officials and show up outside their homes, but that is a far cry from being shot dead while simply on guard duty outside a federal courthouse, as happened to 53-year-old Dave Underwood. That is the fundamental difference between a protest and a riot.
In fact, the COVID-related protests have been marked by unusual peace.
In New Zealand, after knocking down a barricade, protesters made sure to put it back up.
Meanwhile, in September, when COVID protesters gathered in Los Angeles, there were no problems.
“Dozens of anti-vaccination protesters gathered for a rally Saturday in front of Los Angeles City Hall, but unlike previous gatherings no counter-demonstrators turned out and things remained mostly peaceful,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
You can disagree with anti-vaccination, mask and lockdown arguments, but it’s undeniable that these protests have been largely peaceful. They are actual protests, not riots.
Writing for RealClearPolitics, Professor Andrew E. Busch of Claremont McKenna College finds that “one reason for Americans’ increasing political discomfort—the feeling that politics has become a blood sport in which traditional protections and safety nets are no longer present—is that the nonpartisan insulation protecting the rule of law and consent of the governed has frayed. There is a broad pattern of offices that require political neutrality being converted into offices that are genuinely partisan in their operation.”
What, I wonder, was his first clue?
Understandably, Busch concentrates on the most recent examples of this creeping partisanship in places that are supposed to be non-partisan, since the Biden administration represents a quantum leap in the politicization of everything, but especially of the law.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, he writes, “has already used the Justice Department to advance his own party’s version of the stolen-election story by suing to stop state legislative efforts to enhance ballot security, then threatening to sic the FBI on parents who complain to their local school boards about left-wing political indoctrination in the classroom.”
By contrast, Busch praises the non-partisan spirit of former Attorney General William Barr for resigning rather than supporting President Trump’s demand for a thorough investigation of election irregularities.
But then he can’t help noticing the concerted legal efforts by Democratic Attorneys General in swing states last year to change voting laws in order to create those irregularities—and, with them, the opportunities for cheating.
You can see why Busch wants to be even-handed and pretend that the partisan takeover of supposedly non-partisan institutions is coming from both sides, but he can’t quite obscure the fact that the overwhelmingly majority of these efforts have been made—and successfully made, thanks to the compliant media—on behalf of Democrats.
There is nothing like a Republican equivalent, for example, of the partisan takeover of the FBI under James Comey. “The course of the Russia investigation,” writes Busch, “complete with the obvious biases of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, implied that the bureau had picked sides.”
Implied? Can there be any doubt about which side these and others in the bureau were on? Or which side Robert Mueller and his team were on? If there were any doubt about it, it must have been dispelled by the recent revelations, and indictments, coming out of the John Durham investigation.
Busch might also have mentioned the disparity in federal law-enforcement’s treatment of the Capitol rioters of Jan. 6 as constituting an “insurrection” and its almost complete lack of interest in the hundreds of riots, the billions of dollars in property damage and the many deaths that took place around the country last summer.
You don’t have to be particularly good at spotting “implied” biases to tell that the difference between the two was that the first was in support of Donald Trump, the others opposed to him. And, violently, opposed to the police. But why would we expect the federal police, ostensibly there to uphold the rule of law, to care about that?
Also, as I pointed out last summer in these pages, General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the nation’s armed forces, traditionally our number one non-partisan institution, along with the judiciary, testified before Congress on behalf of the Democratic talking point by asserting on the basis of zero evidence that the Capitol riot was motivated by “white rage.”
Milley is also charged with weeding out of the services those identified by the extreme left as members of the “extremist right.”
But the perspicacious could have picked up hints of the erosion of the “nonpartisan insulation” of key institutions long before 2016.
The politicization of the judiciary, I would argue, began at least as far back as 1987 when a certain Joseph R. Biden, newly appointed chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, put the kibosh on President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court for transparently political reasons.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who once said of his fellow judges that “we don’t work as Democrats or Republicans,” has gone to heroic lengths to keep up the pretense of non-partisanship in the judiciary, but then he is also the man who, apparently without irony, once called the U.S. Senate “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”
The politicization of the armed services began even earlier. As the late Colin Powell cheerfully put it in 2007, presumably with reference to his own military career, which started in the Vietnam era, “Anybody who becomes a senior officer had better have some political instincts or you’re going to get ground up. We are a political nation. It is not a dirty word.”
What he meant to say, perhaps, was that it is only a dirty word when applied to constitutionally non-political institutions. Like the military.
I understand that he was talking about the internal politics that are inevitable in any large organization, but in the military, whose most senior officers are appointed by civilian (and political) authority, those politics are always bound up with the other kind.
Under President George W. Bush we learned, at least if we were paying attention, of the politicization of the CIA, which regularly briefed the media (anonymously, of course) against their ostensible commander-in-chief.
Under President Barack Obama we learned, even if we weren’t paying much attention, of the politicization of the Department of Justice and the IRS.
And, as everyone now knows, under President Donald Trump we learned of the politicization not only of the FBI and (again) the Justice Department but also of the State Department. All three, while ostensibly serving the President, were actually undermining him.
It should not be necessary to point out that all of these encroachments of the political onto officially non-political territory have been in one direction and one direction only—leftwards. It’s as if there were some law of political inertia analogous to Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”
Maybe this is what the progressives mean by saying that they are “on the right side of history,” If so, it means that the rest of us, who still treasure what we think is our right to be non-political, must be on the wrong side of history.
CBS on Thursday deleted a social media post that alleged Kyle Rittenhouse “murdered two men” in Kenosha, Wisconsin last year.
Rittenhouse, 18, is on trial for fatally shooting two men and wounding another.
One of the men had his hand over Rittenhouse’s rifle barrel, according to a pathologist’s testimony. Another smacked Rittenhouse with a skateboard and was reaching for his gun, according to video footage and testimony during the trial. The third was pointing his gun at Rittenhouse when he was shot.
“Kyle Rittenhouse testified in his murder trial yesterday, breaking down in tears as he told the jury he murdered two men at a Black Lives Matter protest last year in self-defense,” a post on Twitter from CBS Mornings stated.
The post drew quick backlash, with some lawyers asserting it could be grounds for a libel case.
“Hard to believe that’s a real tweet. Straight up libel from CBS. I look forward to Rittenhouse’s numerous lawsuits, some of which will be successful,” lawyer Mike Cernovich wrote on the social media website.
“Oh, well, then. No need for trials, CBS News has delivered its verdict!” added Dan McLaughlin, a writer at National Review.
A CBS spokesperson, asked for comment, told The Epoch Times in an email that “the tweet was revised.”
The spokesperson declined to answer who cleared the post and why it was deleted.
The original post was taken down and a new one was put up that used the same language, except it replaced “murdered” with “killed.”
The situation unfolded after David Hancock, a spokesman for Rittenhouse, appeared on Fox News and called the media coverage of the shootings “absolutely irresponsible and purely abhorrent.”
Despite student outrage, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California (USC) is refusing to take down a pro-police flag from his office.
James Moore, who directs the USC’s transportation engineering program, has been displaying a “Thin Blue Line” flag outside of his office door since August when the fall semester began, but has faced a complaint only recently from students who took issue with the flag’s alleged “racist origin,” according to student newspaper Daily Trojan.
“This is an inappropriate and unnecessary symbol to have on an office door where USC is, within the last year or two, trying to have a much broader diversity initiative and to be inclusive, especially in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) area,” one USC graduate student told the newspaper. The student said that he discovered the flag in October and reported the matter to the university’s office of equity and diversity.
Moore explained that he wants to add some diversity of thought to the USC campus by exposing students to a point of view they’re not usually exposed to.
“We are in an environment where there is a lot of homogenization of ideas, and diversity should include diversity of ideas,” the professor said in an interview with education news site The College Fix. “We are charging people very good money to teach them to think. I am just trying to deliver.”
The USC said Moore’s action falls within his freedom of expression and there is no rule that prevents him from hanging such a flag on the door of his own office.
“The university does not have a policy that limits the display of materials in spaces like this, though we are looking at whether it is needed,” a statement provided to the Daily Trojan reads.
This is not the first time Moore’s unpopular viewpoints upset the progressive members of the USC community. In September 2018, Moore responded to a campus-wide invitation to an event focused on believing survivors of alleged sexual assault, saying that “accusers sometimes lie.” Moore’s comment triggered a series of angry responses, including a student-led protest calling for his resignation.
“If some of them are annoyed by ideas that are opposed to theirs, well that’s just preparation for adult life,” Moore told Daily Trojan at that time regarding criticism of his remark.
Moore also expressed disagreement with USC’s policy proposals centered on racial equity in the wake of unrest sparked by George Floyd’s death, such as that faculty members undergo training to address their “unconscious biases.” He told USC President Carol Folt in a letter that the university has no business in correcting his thoughts and decision making.
“My mental and moral development are my own ongoing responsibility. The market for good ideas and sound thinking provides me with ample incentive to deliver both if I can,” Moore wrote in the June 2020 letter. “If I elect to try and improve my decisions via an assessment and awareness of my unconscious biases, this is my own affair, my own duty. I am not inclined to surrender to anyone my own role in deciding how I will decide.”
Journalist Megyn Kelly went scorched earth on NBA superstar LeBron James after he mocked Kyle Rittenhouse for getting emotional during his trial.
Critics blasted James on social media after he attacked Rittenhouse for breaking down in tears during testimony in his murder trial on Wednesday.
During a segment on her popular podcast, Kelly did not waste time going after James.
“LeBron James just tweeted out quote, ‘what tears? I didn’t see one,’” Kelly said. “‘Man, knock it off. That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court.’ Good gracious. Where’s your humanity?”
“Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the House Democratic caucus, tweeted ‘lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key,’” she added. “Do you know anything about law, about criminal law? Anything at all? Have you bothered to look into it, even a little? Have you followed the trial at all before you decided to make a public comment from that post?”
“Disgusting, dishonest,” Kelly continued. “And the natural product of what happens when the false, ideological social justice crew meets actual, fact-based courtroom justice. Where truth and fairness still matter.”
James came under heavy fire this week for his tweet mocking Rittenhouse.
“What tears????? I didn’t see one. Man knock it off! That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court,” James noted derisively on Twitter in a post that included a clip of the 18-year-old beginning to cry uncontrollably as he attempted to recount the Aug. 25, 2020 shootings that left two men dead and a third man wounded.
What tears????? I didn’t see one. Man knock it off! That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court. 🤣🤣🤣 https://t.co/LKwYssIUmD
Fox News noted that social media users blasted the NBA star for his remark:
Critics lambasted James on social media, with some referring to him as a “coward,” and others suggesting he didn’t have the credibility to chime in on Rittenhouse’s emotions considering he was “known as the king of faking injuries, flopping, and crying to refs.” James is an outspoken progressive on domestic political issues.
You like picking on the powerless a teenager while turning a blind eye to true evil like your Chinese CCP masters that have 2 million Muslims in concentration camps making your sneakers.
Hey King, any support for your fellow NBA player @EnesKanter speaking out against the mass extermination of ethnic Muslims in China? You fucking coward.
LeBron James appears to be mocking people dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in this post. Why? Is this a joke to you? Not a good look!
As it became apparent that Rittenhouse could not continue his testimony, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is presiding over the case, called a short recess so the teen could compose himself.
Later in the day, Schroeder took a prosecutor to task for repeated violations of protocol and pre-trial orders.
At one point, after he instructed the jury to go to the library, the judge ripped Binger, saying that he had committed a “grave constitutional violation” after discussing Rittenhouse’s right to remain silent.
“You’re right on the borderline. You may be over. But it better stop,” the judge warned.
The judge ordered the jury to leave his chambers for a second time during cross-examination after the prosecutor asked the teen about an Aug. 10 incident that had been excluded under a pre-trial order.
“Why would you think that made it okay for you to bring this matter before the jury?” Schroeder hollered at Binger.
“I was astonished when you began his examination by commenting on the defendant’s post-arrest silence. That’s basic law. It’s been basic law in this country for 40 years, 50 years. I have no idea why you would do something like that,” he added. “I don’t know what you’re up to.”
The defense team for Kyle Rittenhouse has rested its case and his mom is furious with President Joe Biden for the way, she said, he has portrayed her son.
Last year, during the presidential election campaign, Biden attacked Donald Trump for not disavowing “white supremacists” as he tweeted a video featuring a photo of the teenage Rittenhouse.
“There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night,” he said.
There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV
“When I saw that I was shocked, I was angry. President Biden don’t [sic] know my son whatsoever, and he’s not a White supremacist. He’s not a racist. And [Biden] did that for the votes. And I was so angry for a while at him and what he did to my son, he defamed him,” Wendy Rittenhouse said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, Fox News reported.
Rittenhouse was charged with two counts of homicide for shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, with an AR-15. The third person Rittenhouse shot, Gaige Grosskreutz, survived and testified Monday.
Rittenhouse was also charged with possessing a weapon by a person under 18, and multiple counts of reckless endangerment.
At trial, the prosecution tried to convey that the defendant went to the riots and had a gun with him because he intended to use it. The defendant pleaded not guilty to all charges and testified that he fired his weapon, all eight times, in self-defense.
“I see this man trying to kick my son in the face …. When I look at the video with that guy pointing a gun to my son’s head, I thought: he was going to die,” she said of the video of the shooting.
She said that her son “has a lot of healing to do” and experiences “nightmares.”
But she did have nice things to say about the judge in the case.
“The judge is very fair. The people that I talked to that lived in Kenosha all their lives. They told me that Judge Schroeder is a very fair judge and he doesn’t allow no nonsense [sic] in his courtroom,” she said.
The judge has been hammering the prosecution this week.
Sparks flew during the eighth day of Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial in Kenosha, Wis., after Judge Bruce Schroeder yelled at one of the prosecutors.
According to reports, the heated exchange between Schroeder and Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger came following his cross-examination of the teen who had earlier broken down on the stand, leading Schroeder to call for recess.
“The first rift between Binger and Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder broke out after the district attorney pressed Rittenhouse if he was telling his account of August 25, 2020—when he fatally shot two men and wounded a third—for the first time,” Newsweek reported.
After he instructed the jury to go to the library, the judge ripped Binger, saying that he had committed a “grave constitutional violation” after discussing Rittenhouse’s right to remain silent.
“You’re right on the borderline. You may be over. But it better stop,” the judge warned.
The judge ordered the jury to leave his chambers for a second time during cross-examination after the prosecutor asked the teen about an Aug. 10 incident that had been excluded under a pre-trial order.
“Why would you think that made it okay for you to bring this matter before the jury?” Schroeder hollered at Binger.
“I was astonished when you began his examination by commenting on the defendant’s post-arrest silence. That’s basic law. It’s been basic law in this country for 40 years, 50 years. I have no idea why you would do something like that,” he added. “I don’t know what you’re up to.”
Binger replied that he was attempting to impeach Rittenhouse during his line of questioning, but that didn’t go over at all with Schroeder.
“Don’t get brazen with me!” Schroeder yelled at Binger. “You know very well that an attorney can’t go into these types of areas when the judge has already ruled, without asking outside the presence of the jury to do so. So don’t give me that!”
The judge went on to say that he did not want to have another issue with the prosecutor.
Twitter, Facebook deemed defendant guilty immediately after Wisconsin shooting
And if Kyle was black and the rioters were KKK…? [US Patriot]
Social media platforms rendered a verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse long before he went to trial, suppressing claims that he was innocent and blocking users from searching for details of the case.
Immediately after the anti-police riots that thrust Rittenhouse into the national spotlight, social media companies began to block users who expressed support for the Illinois teen. Twitter suspended the accounts of users who called Rittenhouse innocent, including the defendant’s own lawyer. Facebook said it “designated this shooting as a mass murder and … removed the shooter’s accounts from Facebook and Instagram.” The platform also blocked searches for “Kyle Rittenhouse.”
Social media platforms often intervene to suppress posts expressing a particular stance on controversial issues. Both platforms censored news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the month before the 2020 election. Facebook blocked a Gold Star mother’s criticism of President Joe Biden and suppressed a song that criticized the president. Twitter and Facebook also suspended users who oppose vaccine mandates.
The fundraising platform GoFundMe also removed a page set up to support Rittenhouse, which the company said violated its ban on fundraisers involving “the legal defense of alleged crimes associated with hate, violence, harassment, bullying, discrimination, terrorism, or intolerance.” GoFundMe supported fundraising for the family of one of Rittenhouse’s assailants, Anthony Huber. The site regularly hosts fundraisers for individuals associated with Black Lives Matter.
When smaller platforms began raising funds for Rittenhouse, hackers breached the donation lists. News outlets doxxed paramedics and police officers who gave small donations to Rittenhouse’s defense.
Twitter is still banning or suspending users for supporting Rittenhouse, even as the trial proceeds. Facebook searches for Rittenhouse’s name turn up no results. Neither platform responded to requests for comment.
Rittenhouse faces six charges, including two counts of homicide, after shooting three men who attacked him during last August’s anti-police riots in Kenosha, Wis. His murder trial began on Nov. 1. His defense hopes that videos that show rioters assaulting Rittenhouse will bolster his self-defense claim.
Earlier this year, many California citizens moved to oust Governor Gavin Newsom via recall petition and election. This ultimately ended up falling shy, however, as Newsom easily avoided the recall.
However, now another top progressive leader is on the hot seat in the Golden State. And those seeking to get rid of him already have enough signatures on the recall petition.
If successful, his career could hit a serious roadblock.
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is a progressive prosecutor, and thousands have been trying to remove him from office for much of 2021.
In fact, this is the second recall effort against him: the first didn’t manage to round up enough signatures, but the second is moving along at a much faster pace.
Now, with enough signatures, Boudin will have to face a recall election next year. And though Newsom didn’t fall in his election, it’s very possible that Boudin will have a tougher time hanging onto his spot.
Director of Elections John Arntz announced that the petition to remove Boudin “contains a sufficient number of valid signatures.”
This means the embattled DA will be forced to defend himself come 2022.
From Fox News:
As the first petition to recall Boudin failed to garner enough signatures to trigger a special election, news of a second recall effort against Boudin came in August.
Last month, prior to the certification of the petition, NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit reported ‘more than 83,000 signatures’ had already been submitted to force Boudin into a special election during the statewide primary election on June 7, 2022.
The Department reviewed 4,174 signatures, selected at random from the total 83,484 signatures collected.
This review showed that the petition had more than the minimum of 51,325 valid signatures, so it’s officially successful. This kicks off the second phase, which is a recall election next June.
Boudin has responded with a “Friends of Chesa” group that fights back against the recall.
They’re saying petitioners spent $1.4 million and used “shady tactics” to get the recall on the ballot. Spokesperson Julie Edwards said they’re “confident San Francisco voters will reject this Republican-funded and endorsed effort.”
But Boudin has been under fire for a while, primarily for “his lack of commitment to prosecuting crimes.”
If he falls in the recall election, San Francisco Mayor London Breed will have to find a temporary replacement, until the city elects a new District Attorney in November.
Even if Boudin avoids the recall as Newsom did, this petition is more proof that many California residents aren’t happy with their leadership. And it’s obvious that thousands are pushing back.
This could hint at a seismic shift in the traditionally Democrat-dominated state in the future.
And if that happens, things could look very different come 2024, when the next presidential election begins.
Key Takeaways:
San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin will face a recall election in June 2022.
The recall petition is officially successful, having garnered enough valid signatures (a total of 83,484 were collected).
Boudin has been criticized for not committing to his prosecution of crimes.
A New York City Black Lives Matter group threatened NYC Mayor-elect Eric Adams with “riots” and “bloodshed” if Adams restores the New York City Police Department’s anti-crime units.
The police anti-crime units were disbanded last year in reaction to Black Lives Matter protests and riots and calls to “defund” police departments. Adams, a Democrat, won election after campaigning on a tough-on-crime agenda and pledging to restore the NYPD’s anti-crime units.
Adams met with leaders of New York City’s Black Lives Matter movement at Brooklyn Borough Hall. After the meeting, Hawk Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, and his sister Chivona Newsome, also a co-founder of the group, threatened civil unrest and violence if Adams kept to his campaign pledge.
“If he thinks that they’re going to go back to the old ways of policing, then we are going to take to the streets again. There will be riots, there will be fire and there will be bloodshed because we believe in defending our people,” Newsome told the New York Daily News after the meeting.
“So there is no way that he is going to let some Gestapo come in here and harm our people,” he continued. “We pray for peace but … prepare for the worst.”
His sister added: “We will shut the city down. We will shut down City Hall, and we will give him hell and make it a nightmare.”
During the meeting, Adams “erupted” at Newsome after the BLM leader swore to hold Adams responsible for any future misconduct by the NYPD, according to the Daily News.
“You’re on the ground: Stop the violence in my community. I’m holding you accountable,” Adams said.
“Don’t hold me accountable,” he continued. “Being the mayor, being the borough president, being the state senator — I put my body on the line for my community, so I’m not here for folks to come and say, ‘Eric, we’re gonna hold you accountable.’”
“No, it’s us. We need to do this together,” Adams said.
Last year, Newsome suggested that his group would use violence and chaos to push its policy goals while claiming “self-defense.”
“If this country doesn’t give us what we want then we will burn down the system and replace it,” he said in a June 2020 interview with Fox News. “All right. And I could be speaking figuratively, I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation. Like let’s be very real and observe the history of the 1960s. When black people were rioting we have their highest growth and wealth and property ownership.”
The NYPD eliminated its anti-crime unit earlier that same month, reassigning roughly 600 officers from the units into other posts at the NYPD. At the time, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea defended the decision as a chance to “move forward and change how we police in this city.”
“This is 21st-century policing: intelligence, data, ShotSpotter, video, DNA, and building prosecutable cases,” Shea said. “It continues to be building these cases—cases on a small number of people that unfortunately still terrorize a part of this city. I would consider this in the realm of closing on one of the last chapters on stop, question and frisk.”
Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton ripped President Joe Biden’s remark that labeled Kyle Rittenhouse a “white supremacist” in a Twitter post last year without considering the evidence.
Cotton shared the comments during a “Fox & Friends” interview Thursday morning.
“I want to focus on what Joe Biden said last year, which is calling this young man a white supremacist based on a few seconds of video,” Cotton said.
“As I often say, when there’s a shooting like this, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on some video circulating on social media. You should allow all the facts to be collected and make a reasoned judgment,” he added.
Cotton also commented that Biden’s critical response has become the “go-to” move of Democrats.
“When Joe Biden called Kyle Rittenhouse a white supremacist last year, it really was just the go-to move of the Democrats,” Cotton said.
“They do this all the time when they’re losing an argument on the merits,” the senator argued.
Cotton then applied the attitude by Democrats to the left’s response to school board issues where parents are viewed as enemies for protesting policies like closures or critical race theory.
Should Rittenhouse be found not guilty?
“They don’t like parents going to school boards to protest what their kids are learning or school closures, so those parents are called racists,” he said.
“They don’t like that Virginians elected Republicans last week, they condemn Virginia voters as racist,” Cotton added.
The senator argued Democrats even apply the same approach to the Constitution when it fits their agenda.
“They don’t like the United States Constitution or the norms and the customs of the United States Senate, so they call it racist,” Cotton said.
Cotton noted the name-calling is a losing approach and said it’s “not a sign” of a strong party.
“They are constantly losing arguments with the American people, and then they just revert to name-calling towards their opponents. It’s not a sign of a party that is strong or healthy,” he said.
Last night was a clear indication that the American people are disappointed, dissatisfied, and disgusted with the modern Democratic Party. pic.twitter.com/Y5cmVg4Gw7
Rev. Brian Hawkins doesn’t try to hide his troubled past. He believes in learning from mistakes, and he admits he’s made a few.
An ex-felon who spent 10 years in state prison for a series of low-level crimes, Hawkins eventually turned to faith. He is now a married Christian pastor and a devoted family man who cares deeply about his children’s education. Last year, he was elected to the city council in San Jacinto, Calif., and he’s running for Congress in 2022.
Hawkins, 43, believes in truth, forgiveness, and redemption, which are some of the many reasons he rejects critical race theory (CRT).
“I’m teaching my children how to respect people, how to care for all people. We’re teaching our children to not think of themselves more highly than anyone else, to have work ethic and positive attitude and mindset,” he said.
“I’m exposing my children to the history of America without them hating the history of America.”
Hands-on History
Last fall, Hawkins, his wife, Terri, and their children drove cross-country to Washington, D.C., where he stood in front of the slave auction block at Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“Had I not been able to see that stone, I wouldn’t have been able to tell my children that part of history,” said Hawkins.
“I said, ‘Listen, we’re looking at this through a museum, but 150 to 200 years ago, there were actual slaves—blacks or African Americans—who actually stood on this. But we’re not standing on this block anymore,” Hawkins said.
“So, my daughter looks at me and says, ‘Dad, we’ve come a long way.’ That moved me,” he said. “When you remove history, you don’t get to tell history. You don’t get to explain history.”
The family journeyed to Jamestown, Virginia to see where the first slaves were brought to America, to Washington, and to New York to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to learn about immigrants who fled other countries to come to America for a better life.
“We wanted our children to learn history, not to hate people or not to look down on people for the color of their skin, or to blame the past or that someone else is responsible for your future. You charter your own destiny,” Hawkins said.
“We’re Christian and we’re raising out children in a Christian home, and so it’s alarming that my children have been subjected to so much hate and anger. … Those are the things that really bothered me in 2020.”
The anger that filled the streets and “really the atmosphere” during the summer of 2020 affected his children, he said, but as parents he and Terri were able to help them find their way through the crisis.
“I noticed that it put my kids in a different mindset from what we really wanted to teach them,” he said.
“I want to show them what life really is. I don’t have to teach my kids that we’re in 1963, 1854, or 1921, or different periods of time in history that are ridden with atrocities. I can teach my kids where we are right now.”
A Tale of ‘Equity’
With California’s Reparations Task Force talking about ways to close the wealth gap between black and white Americans, Hawkins, who is a descendant of slaves, likes to tells a different story about equity and incentives from the perspective of his nine-year old daughter, Naariah.
“She really looks up to me,” he said. “When I ran for council, she ran for school council, and she won last year. She was excited.”
Naariah Hawkins displays a poster she made for school. (Courtesy Brian Hawkins)
Not long after Hawkins announced he would run for Congress, the fourth-grader decided to run for the Eagle Elite Student Leadership Team at her school the San Jacinto Unified School District (SJUSD).
To qualify, students must campaign for the position. They were required to create an advertising poster board, take it to school, and talk to other students about why they were running for Eagle Elite and why they wanted to be a leader.
“So, my daughter over the weekend makes this beautiful board. She uses Stephen Covey’s [book] because she goes to a school where they use a curriculum from Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” Hawkins said.
She was one of three students to vie for Eagle Elite but the only one to make the poster.
“Nobody else did it,” Hawkins said.
Theoretically, because her opponents hadn’t followed the rules, they should have been disqualified, but they weren’t, he said.
Naariah campaigned on the issue, asking her schoolmates to vote for her because, unlike her opponents, she had followed the rules. But then her teacher announced all three students had won.
And, even though the teacher later whispered to Naariah she had earned the most votes, Hawkins said Naariah was disappointed.
The message of equity, social passes, and trophies for all is sending children the wrong message, that they don’t have to try to win, he said.
“It discouraged my daughter because she put forth all the effort to win only to turn around and find out that her efforts were meaningless because they were all winners,” Hawkins said.
Troubled Times
When Naariah came home from school with a teacher-recommended reading list that included a children’s book about Black Lives Matter (BLM), Hawkins decided it was time to get more involved in her education.
The book, “A Good Kind of Trouble,” essentially encourages young kids to get involved in the BLM movement, he said.
(Courtesy Brian Hawkins)
Hawkins ordered the book so he and Naariah could read it together.
The book’s main character, Shay, is allergic to trouble. Her sister Hana is involved in Black Lives Matter and after attending a protest, Shay decides some rules are worth breaking and wears an armband to school in support of the BLM movement.
“Tensions are high over the trial of a police officer who shot an unarmed Black man. When the officer is set free, and Shay goes with her family to a silent protest, she starts to see that some trouble is worth making,” is how Publishers Weekly describes the book by debut author Lisa Moore Ramée on its anti-racist children’s and young adults reading list.
But the lesson Naariah learned wasn’t the same. After reading the book, she told her dad she would never join BLM and that “it wasn’t for her,” Hawkins said.
Amazon describes the book as a “funny and big-hearted debut middle grade novel about friendship, family, and standing up for what’s right,” but Hawkins doesn’t buy the assumption BLM is fighting for a just cause.
To advance its own opportunistic and Marxist agenda, BLM has reopened old wounds to portray a false sense of history that ignores the fact slaves were freed more than 150 years ago, he said.
“They want to make it seem like it never happened so you can keep people in that mindset as though it’s still happening,” Hawkins said.
Ethnic Studies
During the summer, Hawkins attended several different school board and regional government meetings to protest CRT being taught in California classrooms under the guise of ethnic studies.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Oct. 8 making ethnic studies a statewide requirement for high school graduation starting in the 2029–30 school year. State Assembly Bill 101 also requires junior high schools to offer at least a one-semester course in ethnic studies by the 2025–26 school year.
(Courtesy Brian Hawkins)
Newsom signed the bill in the wake of the National School Board Association (NSBA) comparing angry parents protesting ethnic studies at school board meetings in recent months to a form of “domestic terrorism.” The NSBA later apologized for the remark.
The mainstream media has “hijacked” the conversation on CRT and pushed it to “uncomfortable levels” for many parents and students, he said.
At a Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) board meeting in Riverside County, Hawkins urged the board of trustees to abandon the ethnic studies program which he sees as divisive and destructive. He asked trustees to level with parents about the intent of the curriculum and admit that it’s connected to CRT.
Many school board members, principals and teachers who claim CRT isn’t part of the ethnic studies program “have never studied critical race theory to qualify that,” Hawkins told the board at a July meeting.
“One of the principals said that it’s not intended to teach critical race theory, so I want to enlighten you, because eventually parents are going to come to understand that ethnic studies is the result of critical race theory.”
Hawkins cited Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a leading scholar of CRT and professor at UCLA Law School and Columbia Law School. Crenshaw is best known for developing the theory of “intersectionality,” a term she coined in a 1989 paper, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.”
“So, to suggest that ethnic studies is not critical race theory, well, that’s far from the truth because right in your own curriculum is the word intersectionality,” he said. “To sit up here and play parents as though they’re not intelligent is going to be the worst mistake that you can ever make.”
Rather than ranking students on their level of “privilege” and portraying people of color as “the oppressed” and white people as their “oppressors,” schools should be teaching about children about freedom and equal opportunity, not pushing for guaranteed outcomes in the form of equity, Hawkins said.
(Courtesy Brian Hawkins)
“I’m teaching my children not to be angry at white people, not to be mad at history, but to understand it,” he told the board.
In the words on one principal, he said, it could “mess up a lot of students if the wrong person teaches ethnics studies.
“That’s a concern for me. The only people that are qualified to teach this class are totally biased. And, if you don’t think … black folks are prejudiced towards white people, you’re fooling yourself,” Hawkins said.
“There’s anger out there and society is feeding into that narrative. I grew up in the inner city, I know what it’s like,” he said. “I know the conversation that they’re having at barbecues and salons. Some of them won’t be honest enough to tell you, but they have been waiting. … There are some folks that are really ready for anarchy in this country.”
Hawkins said “it hurt” to see protesters burning the American flag on the Fourth of July. He celebrates Independence Day and Juneteenth because he believes “there’s a space in all of this for everybody to be equally respected.”
Hawkins told the board said he’s talked to Riverside County Sherriff Chad Bianco to “be a bridge” between law enforcement and the community.
“That’s something that I love calling myself—a bridge—because that’s what we need in society,” he said.
Hawkins warned if nothing is done to promote unity rather than the divisive rhetoric of CRT in California classrooms, eventually the blame will fall on the shoulders of school boards who refused to stand with the parents.
“It’s only going to get worse. And guess what? Some politicians are banking on this. Racism is a huge hustle,” he said.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has vetoed a legislative package that would have granted tax credits for contributions to scholarship programs that could help low-income students to have a private school education they may not have otherwise been able to afford.
Collectively, the Senate Bills 687 and 688 and House Bills 5404 and 5405 would create Michigan Opportunity Scholarship Accounts that could be used by families to cover education expenses, including those related to non-public schools, courses, and programs. Michigan residents and businesses who donate to the scholarship accounts would receive a state tax credit equal to the value of their contribution.
Once established, the scholarships would prioritize students most in need, including those receiving free and reduced lunch, those living in foster care, and those with disabilities.
Whitmer, a Democrat, promised last month to veto the Republican-sponsored school choice bills, which the Democratic minority in the state legislature argue would have steered public money into private education.
“Simply put, our schools cannot provide the high-quality education our kids deserve if we turn private schools into tax shelters for the wealthy,” Whitmer said in her Nov. 5 veto message. “The movement to privatize education in this state has been a catastrophic failure, causing Michigan students to fall behind the rest of the nation.”
The Republicans decried the veto, saying that their plan was meant to help students get better educational outcomes after more than a year of school closures and the resulting stress, anxiety, and learning loss.
“Instead of empowering parents to give students—especially students with special needs or from underserved communities—better opportunities to learn and succeed, the governor has again rejected progress for the same old, tired, and failing approach to education, because she is beholden to the teachers’ unions and their generous donations,” said Republican state Sen. Lana Theis, who chairs the Michigan Senate Education Committee, said in a statement following the veto.
The Michigan Education Association (MEA), the state’s largest public sector union representing about 120,000 public school employees, applauded Whitmer’s decision. MEA President Paula Herbart criticized the Republican scholarship plan, characterizing it as an “unconstitutional school voucher.”
Herbart claimed that the plan would only benefit wealthy donors like Betsy DeVos, a Michigan-born billionaire whose tenure as the U.S. Secretary of Education was marked by increased federal support for charter and private schools.
“Michigan voters have resoundingly opposed attempts by mega-donors like Betsy DeVos to enact voucher schemes in our state,” Herbart said. “We value our neighborhood public schools and know that funneling money to private schools does nothing to provide equal opportunity for Michigan students.”
Cortez Rice is the reported nephew of George Floyd, whose May 2020 death while in police custody triggered a summer of rioting, looting and mayhem. And he has a message for the Kyle Rittenhouse trial jury.
In a chilling video that was clearly designed to intimidate, Rice told members of the jury they’re being watched and that he fully expects a guilty verdict. In a menacing tone of voice, he says, “I ain’t even gonna name the people that I know that’s up in the Kenosha [Wisconsin] trial. But it’s cameras in there. It’s definitely cameras up in there. There’s definitely people taking pictures of the juries and everything like that.”
“We know what’s going on, so we need the same results, man. We need the same results,” he said, referencing the guilty verdicts delivered by the jurors in the Derek Chauvin murder trial in April.
George Floyd’s nephew, Cortez Rice, makes a claim that he knows people taking photos of jurors during the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His goal is to dox jurors if they do not convict. pic.twitter.com/uwLuV2ftfV
Rice’s relation to Floyd is a bit hazy, as severaloutlets have reported Rice is Floyd’s nephew, while others have said Rice’s relationship with Floyd was as close as a family bond would be, though the two were just friends.
Cortez Rice was not blood related to George Floyd but has continuously referred to himself as Floyd’s nephew, although they were merely friends.
Rice, a self-professed civil rights activist & advocate for the people, admins a private group on Facebook called “United We Walk”.
Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, has pleaded not guilty to seven charges which include “first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide and first-degree attempted intentional homicide,” according to CNN. He shot two individuals fatally and wounded a third during the Kenosha riots last August.
Do you think Cortez Rice should be prosecuted for intimidating a jury?
His lawyers are making the case that Rittenhouse fired the shots in self-defense. His case was bolstered last week by aerial footage taken by the FBI which supports Rittenhouse’s version of events. He received a second boost on Monday when the survivor of the men he shot told the court he had pointed a gun at Rittenhouse before Rittenhouse fired his own gun, according to Reuters.
Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is presiding over the case, told the court Tuesday it had been reported to him that, the same morning, an individual was found video-recording the jury. Schroeder said, “The officers approached the person and required [them] to delete the video.”
If it happens again, he said, the officers have been instructed to take the phone and bring it to the court.
Evidently, Rice feels his “status” as Floyd’s “nephew” gives him some leverage over those who might dox or otherwise harm the jurors should they return an unsatisfactory verdict.
Because the jurors are not sequestered, it’s very possible that at least some will hear Rice’s messages.
One Twitter user informed his followers that, although Rice deleted his message from his Facebook page, an hour-long stream of the original can be viewed on YouTube.
Cortez Rice deleted the stream off his facebook, probably because he was admitting to crime (not that it’s likely it will be prosecuted given his connection to Saint Floyd)
WARNING: The following video contains graphic content and language.
I suppose there are many ways to influence a jury. One could choose the thuggish approach that Rice did.
Or one might try a more brazen approach as California Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat, tried the weekend before the verdict was reached in the Derek Chauvin trial. She showed up at a riot and essentially told the crowd a manslaughter verdict was unacceptable. If the jury didn’t find Chauvin guilty of murder, they needed to turn up the heat.
Maxine Waters is marching in Brooklyn Center tonight and told people to take to the streets if Chauvin is acquitted pic.twitter.com/RemfvCCLAn
For his part, President Joe Biden said he hoped the jury would make the “right” decision.
Republicans were outraged by Waters and Biden for their efforts to “weigh-in” on the case. Democrats, of course, were fine with it.
Unfortunately, this behavior is impossible to stop and difficult to prosecute. And it clearly marginalizes our system of justice which promises citizens a fair trial.
Hopefully, the city of Kenosha will provide members of the Rittenhouse jury with security for a period of time should they reach an “unpopular verdict.”
How much longer can this go on? As we head into the second year of the President Joe Biden “administration,” with the country in a shambles and heading no place good but full speed ahead, it’s time for all real Americans to take stock of our situation and formulate an emergency plan, with no time to spare.
Back in March, I wrote in these pages: “Biden’s Presidency Seems Ready to End.” In fact, Biden’s sham presidency never really began and whatever there was to it is now long over.
But then Brandon—excuse me! Biden!—isn’t really the president, simply the President in Name Only. Sure, he dutifully signs whatever executive order—increasingly authoritarian and blatantly unconstitutional—is put under his nose, which, at least until the next election, has the force of law until a federal court says otherwise. Even should a court block its implementation, as happened over the weekend with the illegal vaccine mandate being imposed on private industries by the Nixon-era excrescence of OSHA, the White House’s advice is to ignore it.
Biden also makes pro forma appearances on the international stage, including a mysteriously long audience with the former Cardinal Bergoglio (who’s every bit as much a pope as Biden is a president) that instantly gave rise to embarrassing rumors. And from time to time he even makes the short walk from West Wing to the Old Executive Office Building in order to stage something for the cameras in a studio-set version of the Oval Office.
But everybody in Washington knows the puppet presidency has no agency of its own, but is instead controlled from Kalorama by Barack Obama and his minions, including Ron Klain, who now serves as Biden’s chief of staff.
Meanwhile, the country he ostensibly leads is going to hell. We’ve gone from energy independence to passing the gasoline begging bowl, even as the forces behind Biden are busy choking off the domestic energy industry. Perhaps you’ve noticed the effects of this malicious policy at the gas pump.
Our long-neglected infrastructure, which is properly defined as roads, bridges, and buildings, remains a national disgrace, and the recent passage of a pork-laden $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill—with turncoat Republican help—not only won’t help a bit but will be paid for with imaginary money.
Overseas, right in Biden’s vaunted “foreign policy” wheelhouse, the Chinese are testing advanced missiles and expanding their fleet of aircraft carriers while what’s left of our Defense Department celebrates awarding four stars to a man in a skirt and hailing him as a “historic” female admiral.
A Navy sub’s trio of commanders was recently cashiered when the USS Connecticut struck an underseas mountain its crack officer corps somehow didn’t notice, while in San Diego the amphibious assault ship, Bonhomme Richard, was destroyed by an arsonist and a crew too incompetent to put out the blaze.
Oh yes, and the Marines recently got their tails kicked by the British in a desert-warfare exercise at their base at Twenty-Nine Palms in southern California. (The woke Marine Corps, of course, denies it.)
But the void in the White House is really the least of our problems, most of which we have brought upon ourselves. You get what you vote for and the American people, in rejecting Donald Trump, have voted for anarchy. As former New York City mayor Ed Koch said after being defeated for re-election in 1989, “the people have spoken, and they must be punished.”
Punishment is coming from every angle, principally from the criminal organization masquerading as a political party known as the Democrats. We now know that the vindictive but cunning loser Hillary Clinton set in motion the entire “Russian collusion”—in part with the collaboration of the Russophile leftist think tank, the Brookings Institution, and in part through the medium of a British spy channeling deliberate Soviet-style disinformation.
From the jump, it was obvious that the “Steele dossier” was a farrago of standard ex-KGB dirty tricks—in Russia and in Eastern Europe I’d seen this movie a dozen times—and I said so publicly at the time, practically from the day Buzzfeed published the “dossier.”
The American media deliberately weaponized this disinformation—which they knew at the time was false—against the lawfully elected president of the United States and crippled his presidency over it. And then they awarded themselves Pulitzer Prizes for their “reporting” of something that never happened.
Par for the course for the American version of Pravda. If you don’t think the New York Times hasn’t been in love with its Russian socialist confreres—and often actually been in bed with the KGB, its forebears, and its descendants—for the bulk of the 20th century, you need to wake up. Until the power of the Times is broken, the American Republic-as-founded will never have a moment’s peace.
But the weaponization didn’t and doesn’t stop there. “Former” members of the intelligence community now lie brazenly and openly on some of the “news channels,” such as CNN: the spooks are out of the shadows and in your living room.
The FBI is now investigating the alleged theft of Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary—a document that if genuine offers even more repellent insights into this stunningly dysfunctional family. How this is a federal matter is beyond me, unless the FBI has now become the Biden family’s private police force with a mandate to suppress bad news about the family. And if you don’t believe me, ask Hunter Biden.
Americans, quite properly, sense there’s something “off” about Biden and his crew, which is why his approval ratings continue to crater. But as long as the radical Left holds the media high ground, it’s hard for most people not obsessed by politics to grasp just how malignant these people are. For decades, they’ve made no bones about their desire to replace the United States of the founding with something “progressive.”
They’ve overtly collaborated with the Soviets, infiltrated the civil-rights movement, absorbed the legacy media, corrupted the lawmakers, overpowered academe, seized hold of the education of our children and now, in their moment of triumph, are forcing us to live in a fantasy world of their own psycho-sexual device, while their pet shrinks tell us that we’re the crazy bigots, via the media.
We can say this about the Chandler Unified School District in Chandler, Arizona: They didn’t need Attorney General Merrick Garland to start spying on parents and coordinating their arrest.
According to the Daily Caller, emails uncovered by a parents group revealed that CUSD’s director of school safety, Tanya Smith, was in contact with Chandler police Sgt. Greg Howarth in April and May as parents were protesting against mask mandates in schools.
The situation was complicated by a long battle in the district over critical race theory. After a series of 2019 reports spotlighted a controversial teacher training program called “Deep Equity” being used across the country, including in Chandler, parents began to revolt. The pandemic no doubt exacerbated existing problems.
So Tanya Smith did what any director of school safety would do: She exchanged emails with police, asking them to provide information on parents groups as the mask mandate battle intensified.
In a May 4 email, Smith notified police of a May 12 board meeting dealing with mask mandates. She said she was scouring social media to see who would attend and asked law enforcement, “If you hear anything specific, can you please let us know.”
“Hours later, Howarth said that he had access to the websites of concerned parent groups and would ‘be monitoring all of them’ and updating the district,” the Daily Caller reported.
“In a separate email, Smith told Howarth that CUSD governing board member Jason Olive was in conversations with a school board member in a separate district who had access to a parent Facebook group. Olive’s inside source claimed that CUSD’s governing board meeting would be the next ‘target’ of parent activists who wanted to end mandatory masking.”
The police department not only complied with Smith’s request but set up an intelligence task force.
On May 27, Howarth emailed police Lt. Jason Sieczkowski about three parents groups — a progressive group police apparently had no issue with and two groups labeled “disruptors.”
One of the “disruptors” was called Patriot Party of Arizona. The group has less than 1,000 followers on Twitter, and it’s unclear how it is related to the Patriot Party movement that The Wall Street Journal reported last month was being suppressed by Facebook.
Do you support mask mandates?
What is clear, however, is that the group was considered a threat by Chandler police in part because of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Howarth’s ‘intel’ included links to the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘hate watch’ page. The intelligence was focused more on the fringe political group and its leader than on actual parent groups that were protesting the mask mandates,” the Daily Caller reported.
“Other links included in the ‘intel’ report were to articles that dubbed passionate parents … disruptive for speaking out against their school board. The examples of ‘disruptive’ protests included three examples of parents refusing to wear their masks.”
Howarth said CUSD should “cut the mic” on parents speaking at meetings without a mask.
“If someone doesn’t comply and you want them removed from the property let us know,” Howarth said. “If they fail to leave let us know that you want them trespassed and we can do that.”
District parent Jennifer Alvey called the coordination with police and threats of arrest “egregious.”
“At worst, these emails would seem to indicate that [the Chandler Police Department] suggested to CUSD officials that they be anticipating and selectively looking for any opportunity to silence, trespass, [or] remove the anti-mask meeting participants, using CPD as the willing muscle to help CUSD remove we parents for non-legally enforceable issues,” Alvey said.
“[This] is pretty egregious for we community members to contemplate.”
And yet this is where we are.
Let’s not forget that while CUSD was enforcing mask mandates in schools, it was also canceling prom and severely limiting invitations for graduation until it was revealed that the district superintendent’s retirement party would go on as scheduled.
Now we know the school district was likely involved in a campaign of suborned surveillance against its civilian opponents. This is the blueprint for what Attorney General Merrick Garland wanted.
One of the attorneys prosecuting Kyle Rittenhouse advised Kenosha Police Department Detective Ben Antaramian to not execute a warrant to search the cell phone records of Gaige Grosskreutz, a key witness of the shooting.
During his cross-examination on Nov. 8, Antaramian confirmed that one of the prosecutors advised him to not execute a warrant to search the phone of Grosskreutz, who was shot in the bicep by Rittenhouse.
“As was discussed previously, we were advised, given Marcy’s law, it would not be ideal to execute that search warrant,” Antaramian said in response to a question on the matter from Rittenhouse’s defense attorney, Corey Chirafisi.
When asked who had advised the detectives to not execute the warrant, Antaramian identified one of the prosecutors in the case, Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger, as one of the people involved.
“The prosecutors in this case advised you not to execute the search warrant on Gaige Grosskreutz’s phone?” Chirafisi asked.
“That sounds correct,” Antaramian responded.
“Have you ever had a prosecutor say to you, ‘detective, you have a valid search warrant, don’t execute it’?” Chirafisi asked.
“Not that I can recall, no,” Antaramian answered.
Gaige Grosskreutz demonstrates how he was standing when he was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse on Aug. 25, 2020, during Rittenhouse’s trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., U.S. on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021. (Sean Krajacic/Pool via REUTERS)
Grosskreutz, a crucial first-hand witness in the case, agreed on Monday that he had his gun drawn and pointed at Rittenhouse as he advanced toward the teen before being shot. Grosskreutz also admitted that he carried a concealed gun illegally because his concealed carry permit was expired on the day of the shooting.
Rittenhouse’s defense attorneys argue that he acted in self-defense because he feared for his life when he killed two people and injured Grosskreutz. The 18-year-old faces life in prison if convicted of all the charges against him.
Grosskreutz, a former paramedic, was carrying a medical kit and said he had come to help the injured, as he had at dozens of Black Lives Matter protests prior to that night. He said he followed Rittenhouse because he saw the potential for trouble and thought he might need to provide medical aid.
“I thought that the defendant was an active shooter,” Grosskreutz told the jury.
Grosskreutz represented the only chance for lawyers from both sides to question a survivor and elicit testimony on his mindset and actions, which is crucial to determining whether Rittenhouse had reason to fear for his life.
Rittenhouse’s lawyers sought to portray Grosskreutz as dishonest, noting that he did not tell the police in his initial interview that he was armed, and pointing out some inconsistencies in his early accounts of that night.
The jury was shown video of an earlier encounter between Rittenhouse and Grosskreutz in which the teen said he was going to the police.
The man who survived a gunshot wound by Kyle Rittenhouse in Wisconsin last year said on Nov. 4 that he was pointing his gun at the teenager when the then-17-year-old shot him.
Witness Gaige Grosskreutz, who was one of three people shot by Rittenhouse during protests against racial injustice in Kenosha and the only survivor, was testifying during Rittenhouse’s murder trial in Kenosha, where the shootings happened on Aug. 25, 2020.
“It wasn’t until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun … that he fired, right?” Corey Chirafisi, part of Rittenhouse’s defense team, asked Grosskreutz.
“Correct,” he replied.
Rittenhouse had earlier fired on Joseph Rosenbaum, who witnesses said was acting aggressively and lunged at the teenager in the parking lot of a car dealership. Rosenbaum died from his wounds. After Rittenhouse took off running, he was attacked by Anthony Huber, who swung a skateboard at his head. Rittenhouse also is accused of fatally shooting Huber.
Grosskreutz, 27, then moved toward Rittenhouse while holding a gun, video footage showed, and Rittenhouse appeared to shoot him.
Kyle Rittenhouse and lead defense attorney Mark Richards arrive for his trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 8, 2021. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool/Getty Images)
Grosskreutz had heard gunshots from several blocks away and sprinted toward the sounds.
He said he thought Rittenhouse was an “active shooter,” prompting him to act.
But even though he was within arm’s length of Rittenhouse, he expressed ambivalence about the idea of shooting the teen, claiming that preserving his own life “while also taking the life of another is not something that I’m capable of or comfortable in doing.”
Thomas Binger, a prosecutor, wondered why Grosskreutz hadn’t fired first.
“That’s not the kind of person that I am. That’s not why I was out there,” Grosskreutz said. “It’s not who I am. And definitely not somebody I would want to become.”
Jacob Marshall, a roommate of Grosskreutz, posted on Facebook shortly after the shooting that Grosskreutz conveyed to him that “his only regret was not killing the kid and hesitating to pull the gun [sic] before emptying the entire mag into him.”
Grosskreutz denied making those comments. Marshall is scheduled to testify on Nov. 10.
Corey Chirafisi, an attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, cross-examines Gage Groskreutz during Rittenhouse’s trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 8, 2021. (Sean Krajacic/Pool/Getty Images)
Rittenhouse, 18, had been in Kenosha to help defend businesses against rioters and medically assist people in distress. Grosskreutz, 23, who has worked as a paramedic, also went to the city to help with medical situations.
The Milwaukee resident, who was active in so-called social justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, acknowledged that his concealed carry permit was expired, meaning he couldn’t legally carry the .40-caliber handgun he had with him that night.
“I believe in the Second Amendment. I’m for people’s right to carry and bear arms,” he said. “And that night was no different than any other day. It’s keys, phone, wallet, gun.”
Chirafisi pressed the witness on how he’d told officers after the shooting that his Glock fell from his belt clip.
“You didn’t take the Glock out of your back here and run with it?” he asked.
“I did,” Grosskreutz said.
“So it didn’t fall off your waist; it was in your hand?” the lawyer said.
“That’s correct,” Grosskreutz said.
Grosskreutz said he didn’t see his comments to police as a lie and also pushed back when Chirafisi asserted he was chasing Rittenhouse.
Chirafisi noted that Grosskreutz quickly brought a $10 million civil suit against the city and county of Kenosha for allegedly failing to keep the peace during the rioting and that there was no mention of Grosskreutz holding a weapon when he was shot.
“You left that part out, right?” he said.
“That’s correct,” Grosskreutz said.
Grosskreutz was struck in his right bicep. He said he still suffers from the wound, including difficulty lifting some heavy objects.
According to a report from Fox News on Thursday, the University of North Carolina Wilmington paid “The 1619 Project” writer and impresario Nikole Hannah-Jones over $16,500 to speak at a 55-minute event at the school this week.
“Nikole Hannah-Jones in Conversation,” which took place Tuesday, was part of the school’s “Writers Week.” On the university’s events page, it’s described as the “Department of Creative Writing’s annual celebration of the written word” where “authors, editors, students, faculty and the community join in discussions of literary craft and current issues of the profession.”
Hannah-Jones was the keynote speaker for the week. It shouldn’t be surprising that the rest of the speakers also seemed to skew left; of the other participants I knew, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino and “The House on Mango Street” author Sandra Cisneros were both identifiably liberal. Not that I expected for there to be a panel discussion of Ayn Rand’s work, but it gives one a general idea of what “Writers Week” is about.
It’s Hannah-Jones’ contract for the event that’s drawing some attention, however — particularly the reported $16,570 price tag.
The university also reportedly paid for her airfare, meals, transportation, and accommodations for two nights.
Just got to Wilmington, NC, for @UNCWilmington Writers Week, checked into my room, and I have to say, y’all know how to treat a gal. 😍 🥃 pic.twitter.com/rqDfwn4uWT
“The event consisted of a 40-minute speech from Hannah-Jones and a 15-minute Q&A period,” Fox News reported.
Is critical race theory an issue in America’s schools?
“The contract lists a 15-minute meet and greet with students, but is crossed out in the signed version of the contract.”
This, in other words, puts the event at 55 minutes — over a whopping $300 a minute for someone to peddle the bible of critical race theory, a left-wing school of thought that states America and Western societies are founded on systemic racism.
Because, make no mistake, that’s what Jones’ “1619 Project” is. In the introduction to the project, published in The New York Times, 1619 should be considered “the country’s very origin” because that’s when the first slaves arrived in America.
“Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day,” the introduction said.
“The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.”
Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize in 2o2o for her introductory essay to the project, although historians noted it was riddled with errors. Beyond the obvious lie of “reframing” our founding to 1619 for narrative reasons, several prominent historians publicly called out the Times and Jones for claims like the American Revolution was actually fought so Americans could keep their slaves.
“These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing,’” read the December 2019 letter, signed by five prominent historians — including two Pulitzer Prize winners.
“They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism. They suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology. Dismissal of objections on racial grounds — that they are the objections of only ‘white historians’ — has affirmed that displacement.”
But never mind that. This is all about the narrative. For Hannah-Jones, that narrative could be summed up best with this delightfully race-baiting quote she gave in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in 2019.
When asked if America could change its racial trajectory, Hannah-Jones said: “Whiteness cannot exist without blackness, so until white people are willing to give up whiteness, you will never see an end, really, to racism that is built on antiblackness, and I don’t have hope for that. It is really the oldest American value, and it continues to be so.”
Last November, Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Antiracist,” was reportedly paid $20,000 by the University of Michigan for an hour-long virtual discussion via Zoom, according to Campus Reform.
That event, the University of Michigan said, was paid for out of the university’s general fund, which “comes from a variety of sources, including student tuition and fees, state appropriations and costs recovered from sponsored research activities.”
In the case of Hannah-Jones, UNC Wilmington told Fox News the money was covered by a “donor-supported fund managed by the department.”
Either way, it’s a nice hustle to have, being so oppressed. Of course, one is left to wonder how many economically oppressed students at these woke institutions might have benefited from that money being used on lowering tuition instead.
Fake news isn’t just a meme; it could be the undoing of our legal system.
If that sounds far-fetched, consider the warning of Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder, who is presiding over the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.
The 18-year-old is charged with homicide and reckless endangerment for shooting three men, two of them fatally, during the Kenosha riots in August 2020. Rittenhouse says he fired in self-defense as the men attacked him.
Schroeder has been under fire from the establishment media simply for doing what he can to provide the fair trial Rittenhouse is entitled to under the U.S. Constitution, though the media have twisted proceedings into what the judge called “the most divisive trial in the country.”
That decision, coupled with a recent ruling to allow video evidence of the men’s involvement in those illegal activities prior to being shot by Rittenhouse, led to an uproar in the courtroom Wednesday — and Schroeder halted proceedings to respond with a sober warning.
“Anything that undermines public confidence in what happens here is very important,” he said to the defense and prosecution but away from the jury, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“It’s important for this town. It’s important for this country to have people have confidence in the result of this trial,” the judge added.
“Whatever it is — and I don’t care what it is — but people have to be confident,” Schroeder said.Do you think Kyle Rittenhouse is getting a fair trial?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
The judge then shifted into criticism of the establishment media for its role in continually undermining the justice system in the eyes of the public.
“There are people in the media, on reputable sites, that are saying things that are totally bizarre,” Schroeder said.
Shilling for the radical left, CNN had mischaracterized the judge’s first decision as “incomprehensible” despite its sound legal reasoning for not painting the men shot — who may have been the aggressors — as victims.
The network’s disgraced legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin also referred to that ruling as a “really unnecessary and unfortunate beginning to this really important case.”
The media had immediately painted him as a bloodthirsty white supremacist in a sea of peaceful protestors — even though the men he shot were all white and participated in the rioting that night.
As with many of these high-profile cases where the media are heavily invested in a guilty verdict, the facts on the ground or even in the courtroom seemed to be irrelevant to the liberal outlets.
Rather than present events from a position of disinterested neutrality, they pick the winners and losers in these cases before the bodies are even cold.
They disseminate their version of the facts as the indisputable truth and then record the public’s outrage when the justice system rules as it should rather than kowtowing to public opinion — and maybe that’s the whole point.
“The case against Rittenhouse is so incredibly weak, his innocence so glaringly obvious, that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they did all of this in order to intentionally provoke more riots once he’s inevitably exonerated,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh pointed out Thursday.
The case against Rittenhouse is so incredibly weak, his innocence so glaringly obvious, that it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they did all of this in order to intentionally provoke more riots once he’s inevitably exonerated
Justice doesn’t seem to be the order of the day based on how the media have treated Rittenhouse and then Schroeder, so the explanation has to be something more.
Riots are good for ratings, and the constant divisiveness they usher in presents an us-against-them mentality that keeps people tuned into the outlets they believe are on their side.
Whether it’s ratings or simple bias that creates this environment, it has the same damaging effect — the public won’t trust the justice system if it’s repeatedly set up to be on the wrong side of a verdict.
Since the founding of this great nation, a God-blessed America has offered the hope of liberty to the world. In more recent years, we have come to realize that should our experiment in self-governance fail, there would be no other nation on Earth that could fill the void left in its wake as defender of such freedom. Never before had any nation been founded to safeguard the rights of the individual, which changed the course of human history from brute force dictating propriety to recognition that every individual has value. Our Declaration of Independence enshrined the truth that individual rights come from the hand of our Creator, acknowledging them to be established by the Almighty and therefore not defined by the brute force realm of human power.
It took a Civil War and Civil Rights movement for America to grow into the profound commitments of its Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The Declaration has stood the test of time to ensure liberty for all in our nation and as the beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Our nation has continued to move to right the wrongs of fallible human beings and build upon the past. We were getting exceedingly close.
Under Biden’s rule, for the first time in our history, normalizing the denial of civil rights and civil liberties based on ideology, not wrongdoing, is presented as a noble cause. Equal justice under the law for the Biden Department of Justice has taken a giant leap backwards in embracing the medieval notion of might makes right in glorifying the denial of civil rights for political opponents. It is shameful and dangerous.
For months, elected officials representing the citizens of this country have been seeking truthful, non-politicized answers from the government about the events that unfolded on January 6. We have been continually stonewalled, belittled, ignored, and even demonized by the Department of Justice, leadership at the Capitol Police, and the Bureau of Prisons. They each ignore requests and questions, refusing to allow oversight of their actions which gives every appearance of a cover-up of wrongdoing. Think of the legal doctrine of spoliation. In court, if one party holds evidence and destroys it or refuses to produce it, the judge may instruct the jury to infer that the evidence is completely against the party hiding it. This is exactly what they are doing.
Should ideology and abuse of power continue to drive this administration’s actions, the Rule of Law will cease to exist. The only safeguard against these obvious improprieties is transparency. Until recent times, our country protected our individual freedoms by dragging every ugly wart out into the light of day to examine the actions of our government. We gave deference to individual rights. By its actions, the Biden Administration is shredding the foundations of our legal system and the rights of the people’s representatives to protect them from government abuse.
A number of January 6 prisoners were held behind bars for months without ever being charged with a crime, and some without ever seeing evidence for or against them. Some have already accepted plea deals despite not having access to all of the evidence involving their cases, which is a civil rights violation and potential Brady violation. There have also been reports of heinous mental and physical abuses against these prisoners at the D.C. Central Detention Facility, although a recently released prisoner said things got better after four of members of Congress attempted to tour the facility.
Now, imagine the outrage from Democrats and their accomplices in the media had Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters been prosecuted with a fraction of the vigor with which the DOJ has gone after the January 6 defendants. Undoubtedly, there would be Leftists, including elected officials, chomping at the bit to call on their supporters to donate funds to assist these terrorists, just as our now-Vice President did last year. For reference, the riots in the summer of 2020 were reported, based on insurance claims, to be the most destructive riots in U.S. history.
Those riotous individuals terrorized American cities for months, set fires to federal and law enforcement buildings and destroyed the livelihoods of innocent Americans. More than 2,000 law enforcement officers were injured during these “mostly peaceful” protests. These groups even attempted to breach the White House in May of 2020, creating a threat so serious that Secret Service agents were forced to rush then-President Trump into a secure bunker.
Of course, most of them will never face a day of judgment in court because, despite all of their criminal and terroristic actions, these rioters didn’t express their support for Donald Trump. In the mind of their Democrat apologists including quite a number of Biden Administration officials, they are absolved no matter the statutory offenses because they worship at the altar of wokeness with the heartfelt belief that America is evil and must endlessly be punished for its transgressions.
The apparent political revenge and retaliation against some of the January 6 detainees by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice should chill every American to their core. Even the way many were arrested is more reminiscent of Gestapo tactics, than those of a once admired FBI. Those on the Left have made one thing perfectly clear: if you are a Trump supporter facing prosecution, or even Donald Trump himself, you are guilty until proven innocent and are undeserving of the basic civil rights which all other Americans are supposed to be afforded under the Constitution.
It appears that at least some of those treated so vilely for suspected involvement in the January 6 events are political prisoners of the U.S. government. If we as a country continue to allow this abuse of power to unfold and turn this nation into a banana republic, there is nowhere left in the world to take refuge for lovers of liberty and freedom.
The major takeaway from the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two rioters during an altercation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, has been that regardless of what one might think about a minor showing up at a riot to help guard private property with his AR-15, the teen appears to have been well within his rights to fire the weapon when he did.
Attorneys began their arguments in the high-profile case this week, which had already begun favorably for Rittenhouse when Judge Bruce Schroeder determined that the men Rittenhouse shot could not be referred to as “victims,” but rather “looters,” “rioters” and “arsonists.”
Now, the prosecution appears to have told a flat-out lie about Rittenhouse’s actions on the evening that only seem to further underscore how far-flung the charges he’s facing really are.
Eighteen-year-old Rittenhouse, who was 17 when he shot Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz on the night of Aug. 25, 2020, is facing charges of reckless homicide and attempted reckless homicide, recklessly endangering safety, as well as the lesser crimes of possessing a weapon as a minor and failure to comply with curfew.
He has pled not guilty on all charges according to NPR, and his defense is arguing that the shooting was in self-defense.
Rosenbaum and Huber were killed and Grosskreutz was wounded in a series of events that was well-documented by photo and video evidence widely shared on social media amid the fiery-but-mostly-peaceful riots which followed the police shooting of Kenosha resident Jacob Blake.
Rittenhouse supporters have long maintained that he was being attacked by rioters when the shooting transpired.
The three men who were shot seem to have been engaged in mostly peaceful arson and looting of that fateful evening; Rittenhouse, for his part, had driven from his home in Illinois to help protect a local car dealership from the kind of senseless violence that can only be defended with the full girth of the ideological mainstream media characterizing it as necessary for social justice to back you up.
Meanwhile, although newly released footage of the events that transpired seems to completely settle the case that Rittenhouse was being chased before he ultimately fired on the three men, the state just argued that he was the pursuer and cruelly chased down his non-victims.
Do you believe Rittenhouse is innocent?
NPR reported that on Tuesday, prosecutors tried to frame Rittenhouse as the aggressor as he had “initiated” contact with Rosenbaum.
Fully admitting that Rosenbaum had acted “agitated,” and was “getting in people’s faces,” Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger argued that Rittenhouse had been the first to initiate contact and had “pursued” him.
“Their interaction in the lot was captured only by infrared camera recorded from a law enforcement plane flying overhead, so there is no detailed video or audio evidence of the encounter,” NPR noted.
“But afterward, the infrared footage shows, Rosenbaum begins to run toward Rittenhouse, who then shot him in his lower body, Binger said. Rosenbaum fell, then Rittenhouse shot again, striking him in the back,” the outlet explained.
“The shot that killed Mr. Rosenbaum was a shot to the back. This occurred after the defendant chased down Mr. Rosenbaum and confronted him while wielding that AR-15,” Binger declared.
This is the opposite of what appears to have been happening when Rittenhouse confronted Rosenbaum, who can be heard shouting profanities just seconds before the shooting and seen rushing at the armed teenager in footage obtained by reporter Jack Posobiec.
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language and graphic content.
Posobiec claimed that the FBI “refused to allow this video to be broadcast publicly and covered up the testimony of the pilot who flew the plane.”
Whatever the case may be, the prosecution certainly seems to be either totally ignorant of its existence somehow — or perhaps twisting the truth beyond recognition to the jury.
Just like the 2016 Brexit campaign, Obama’s intervention may well have backfired.
n April 2016, just months before he was due to leave the White House, then-U.S. President Barack Obama travelled to London, England to engage in a far shadier attempt at “foreign intervention” in another country’s election process than Donald Trump was ever party to.
Arriving in London, he told an audience that Britain would find herself “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the United States if the public insisted on voting to leave the European Union.
At that point in the campaign, the “Remain” or anti-Brexit side had a 10 point lead in the polls, according to Ipsos Mori. Thanks to Mr. Obama, that lead would soon be transformed into an unprecedented victory for team Brexit, who capitalized on the former President’s remarks to highlight the elitist, globalist ambitions of the European Union.
Obama was still a relatively popular figure back then, even in Britain. But if there’s one thing Britons share with our cousins in the Commonwealth of Virginia: it’s that we loathe being patronized, and lament being told what to do by someone so far removed from ordinary people’s lives and experiences.
Brexit, much like the gubernatorial vote in Virginia this week, was not just an expression of rebellion, it was one of revolution.
After the June 23rd vote in 2016, critics suddenly became less bullish about candidate Clinton’s chances against the new bruiser on the block, Donald J. Trump.
“Brexit and Trump are inextricably linked,” former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was oft-heard to remark. His linking of these two, world-changing, populist sentiments were echoed by the fact that Donald Trump himself welcomed Brexit leader Nigel Farage onto multiple campaign stages as November 2016 drew closer.
Instead of learning from Obama’s mistake, Clinton took Farage’s own foreign intervention – which he has described as “payback” – personally, and lashed out:
“Farage has called for a ban on the children of legal immigrants from public schools and health services… has said women are quote ‘worth less’ than men, and supports scrapping laws that prevent employers from discriminating based on race – that’s who Trump wants by his side.”
None of those things were true, of course. And all the attack from a stage in Nevada did was serve to underscore how fundamentally unpopular and increasingly desperate the Clinton campaign had become.
Instead of shifting her tone from Obama’s usual sneering, she adopted it. And that brings us to Virginia, 2021.
For all intents and purposes, Glenn Youngkin is scarcely a Trumpian figure.
For sure, he broke bad on the issues facing Virginians in their schools, their families, and on “critical race theory” (I prefer to call it communism). But he’s still a zip-up-fleece wearing, Carlyle Group operative who finds more friends in the political center than on the so-called “far right”.
As a result, Obama couldn’t outflank him with moderates and independents. And no right winger in their right mind was going to be swayed by the former President’s rhetoric when he took to the stump with cringe-dancer McAuliffe last week.
Obama, quite simply, has boxed himself in as an elitist.
Public polling will likely still show the 44th President of the United States as “popular” or “likeable” but with his bosom buddy Joe Biden’s bungled approach to governance, Obama burns political capital by the day.
Democratic Party candidates should (and will) think twice before deploying figures like him, Biden, Harris, and anyone affiliated.
When Joe Biden called himself a “transitionary” candidate, Barack Obama likely wasn’t intending to be impacted by said “transition”. But he is. And it’s a great, great thing to observe.
Remember CHAZ/CHOP? Voters in Seattle certainly do.
In one of America’s most left-wing cities, three prominent pro-police candidates led big in municipal elections held Tuesday, according to Fox News, all with leads that likely mean they’ll defeat candidates who ran on extreme anti-police platforms.
With the exception of Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, few cities experienced quite as much turmoil as Seattle, where a multi-block lawless area — known alternately as Capitol Hill Occupied Protest or Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone — sprang up during the city’s George Floyd protests.
While Mayor Jenny Durkan said it was like a “block party” and that “we could have a summer of love,” crimes began to pile up and several shootings — along with the inability of police to reach the victims after they were kept out of the area — finally convinced the city to shut it down, according to Fox News.
On Tuesday, in the first municipal elections since the Floyd protests, several of the key races came down to pro-police candidates against ardent de-funders. As it turns out, the residents of the Emerald City hadn’t forgotten CHOP — or the rest of the tumultuous summer of 2020 — and didn’t have particularly fond memories.
In the mayoral race, former Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell holds a gargantuan lead over his opponent, current Seattle City Council President Lorena González, 65 percent to 35 percent, according to Seattle non-profit journalistic outlet Crosscut.
While late-counted ballots often favor progressive candidates like González in Seattle elections — and Crosscut said that total included “roughly 50% of all ballots cast” — no other Seattle candidate has overcome a deficit that wide once the final tallies are taken.
Harrell has promised to bolster Seattle’s police force, which has seen hundreds of retirements and resignations. González, meanwhile, had initially pledged to slash Seattle’s police budget by 50 percent but later reduced that dire number — although still promising to defund.
In addition, Fox News reported that “Harrell has called for the hiring of more police, including some unarmed officers, as well as the appointment of a cabinet-level position to address rising gun violence in the city.”
Do you think voter rejection of leftist candidates will continue into the 2022 midterms?
He said that issue struck a chord with Seattle’s voters.
“I’m not a status-quo politician. [Voters] want the homeless issue addressed with a sense of urgency, they want effective policing … biased-free policing, so we feel very good about the results,” Harrell said, according to Fox.
The race for city attorney, meanwhile, had Republican Ann Davison in the lead over self-declared police and jail “abolitionist” Nicole Thomas-Kennedy.
According to the Seattle Times, Davison’s 58 percent to 41 percent lead was “strong,” with the paper saying “returns Tuesday showing voters rejecting the brash language of her police abolitionist opponent, Nicole Thomas-Kennedy, in favor of Davison’s law-and-order stance.”
KING-TV, meanwhile, was willing to call the race for the Republican candidate, despite the possibility of late ballots breaking for the progressive candidate.
So about that brash language. During the summer of 2020, Thomas-Kennedy tweeted she had a “rabid hatred of the police” and that property destruction in protests was a “moral imperative.” She dismissed these tweets as “deliberately inflammatory” and “absurdist satire” — but on a more serious note, she sought to abolish misdemeanor prosecutions in the city.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Times noted Davison’s “perceived transgression for some in liberal Seattle was seen as being as bad as anything her opponent said on social media: She declared herself a Republican in 2020, while President Donald Trump was in the White House.”
We now have a pretty good idea which one Seattleites prefer, and it’s the Republican who’s said that the city attorney’s office is no “place for radical agenda.” Who would have guessed?
In another closely watched race in the city, Sara Nelson was pronounced the winner in Seattle City Council position 9 with 60 percent of the initial vote to Nikkita Oliver’s 40 percent, according to KING.
The race attracted attention, again, because of Oliver’s outlandish views. The attorney, organizer and educator also wanted to cut city police by 50 percent and institute rent control. That, apparently, didn’t go well.
Mind you, the backlash in municipal elections wasn’t limited to Seattle. In Minneapolis, a much-ballyhooed initiative to replace the police with a new agency failed in the city where George Floyd died and the defund-the-police movement began in earnest, according to The Associated Press.
It’s the results from Seattle that were most striking, however.
One year ago, the city seemed to tolerate a lawless encampment set up in the name of social justice. Now, as candidates who represent something akin to the values espoused there are on the ballot, even the city’s notoriously liberal residents have apparently decided that enough’s enough.
Rep. Cori Bush, a Democrat left-wing “squad” member in the House, attacked Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin for his opposition to the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better Act.
Manchin is “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant,” according to Bush because of his opposition to this megaspending welfare bill.
If Bush wants to identify politicians hurting blacks, children, women, and immigrants, she needn’t go further than to look in the mirror.
Bush represents Missouri’s 1st Congressional district, which includes a big chunk of St. Louis.
The district is 49 percent black. According to Census Reporter, median household income in the district is $50,163, compared with a U.S. average of $65,712; the poverty rate is 16.4 percent, compared with a national average of 12.3 percent; and 41 percent of households are headed by a married couple, compared with a 60 percent nationwide average.
Only someone who thinks history is irrelevant would believe that plunging low-income Americans deeper into government dependency will free them from the cycle of poverty and underachievement.
The Build Back Better Act, with child care subsidies that progressives like Bush are touting as critical for women and low-income families, is effectively a rebirth of the old welfare program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, that devastated black families by penalizing marriage and work to qualify for welfare.
According to University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, the child care subsidies are structured such that single parenthood will be rewarded and marriage punished.
Per Mulligan, a single mother earning 75 percent of median income in her state would pay nothing for child care. But a married couple each earning 75 percent of median income would pay full price.
Further, that “full price” will cost more than today because the bill regulates how much child care providers must be paid—“equivalent to wages for elementary educators with similar credentials and experience.”
Mulligan estimates this would increase the cost of child care providers by some 151 percent.
He also notes that various subsidies in the bill for Medicaid and “affordable housing” will discourage work because subsidies disappear as earned income increases.
Mulligan summarizes saying the result of all this will be “more kids will come home from a regulated child-care facility to an unmarried parent who is out of work.”
The Commerce Department just reported horrible third-quarter results for the American economy, showing growth at a sclerotic 2 percent.
We’re now seeing inflation at higher rates than we’ve seen in years.
Larding down with trillions in ill-conceived welfare spending while holding hostage legitimate work of government—the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill—is not what we need now, and even Democratic voters nationwide are seeing this.
President Joe Biden’s approval ratings are crashing. But so are those of Congress in polling among Democratic voters.
Chuck Todd got to the heart of the matter in last Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” asking his panel, “Is the elected Democrats in Congress farther to the left than the rank-and-file Democratic voter?”
Despite mixed replies from his panel, the answer is clearly yes.
In February, Democrats polled by Gallup gave Congress a 61 percent approval rating. In the latest results in October, this was down to 33 percent. And, of course, Biden’s approval is now 15 points lower than where he stood at the beginning of the year.
Biden is showing himself to be a very weak leader.
The very narrow margin of Democrat control in the House is giving disproportionate power to the progressive caucus. They are causing this havoc.
Their president should be getting them in line. But instead, he is kowtowing to progressive demands that most Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, understand will just hurt the country.
There should have been a separate vote on the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill already. It is a weak president who has allowed some 100 progressives in Congress to hold it hostage.
I wrote a few weeks ago that 2022 is looking good for Republicans. That’s still my message.
Minneapolis residents overwhelmingly rejected a measure to replace the city’s police department with a public safety force on Tuesday.
Voters rejected the measure by a margin of roughly 56 percent to 43 percent, according to the Minnesota state database. The measure proposed to alter the Minneapolis City Charter to completely eliminate the existing police department and replace it with a Department of Public Safety that would combine “public safety functions through a comprehensive public health approach.”
“I like the police. We need the police,” Minneapolis resident Wynn Wever, who only voted to oppose the measure, told the Star Tribune.
Askari Lyons, another city resident, said defunding the police would be “unwise,” according to the Associated Press.
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison endorsed the amendment while Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey joined Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith in opposing it, The New York Times reported.
“The election next week in Minneapolis is no less than a fight of hope vs. fear, of maintaining a broken status quo that killed George Floyd or taking the path of reform,” Omar tweeted on Oct. 26.
“Let’s remember what got us here: the Minneapolis Police Department killed a man, George Floyd, in broad daylight,” she continued.
Let’s remember what got us here: the Minneapolis Police Department killed a man, George Floyd, in broad daylight.
The attempt to replace the city’s police department was largely influenced by the death of George Floyd, who died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for about 10 minutes in May 2020. Following Floyd’s death, thousands of Americans held protests and riots, causing about $1 billion in damage — with many calling for local governments to defund their police departments.
The Minneapolis city council initially voted to dismantle its police department in June. The council also approved a measure to cut the police budget.
A jury found Chauvin guilty of second-degree and third-degree murder earlier this year. Chauvin was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
But violent crime has surged throughout the city over the last year, ABC affiliate KSTP-TV reported. In 2021, gun-related injuries have surged 26 percent, homicides have increased 16 percent, robberies have ticked up 5 percent and aggravated assaults spiked nearly 3 percent year-over-year.
“[Police] may have learned a lesson after George Floyd’s death and what happened to the cop that killed him,” Lyons told the AP.
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NBC “Sunday Night Football” sideline reporter Michele Tafoya filled in on ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday, where she held firm with regard to her opposition to both vaccine mandates and teaching children critical race theory.
Tafoya told Sports Illustrated in 2015 she identifies as a conservative. On Tuesday, she appeared on “The View” in the chair vacated by former co-host Meghan McCain, and she drew the ire of the show’s hosts.
The sports reporter irked the program’s outspoken liberals by opposing two subjects the broader left has strong feelings for. She also came armed with firsthand accounts of how both issues have affected her personally.
“I have a very, very, very close relative who went through COVID, had it, survived, it was difficult. He is on the other end of it,” said Tafoya, who said she is vaccinated, noted. “He’s in his early sixties, big fella. He has more immunity than I do with my two shots. He doesn’t want to get a shot.”
The discussion began over fans of the Atalanta Braves being told not to do the “tomahawk chop” at the World Series in recent says.
TRUMP DOES ‘TOMAHAWK CHOP’ AT WORLD SERIES GAME: Former Pres. Trump participated in the “tomahawk chop” alongside Atlanta Braves fans at the World Series on Saturday as Native American leaders decry the gesture – the co-hosts and #MicheleTafoya weigh in. https://t.co/MPJfK8USKFpic.twitter.com/wTPPTWpI8E
Show co-host Joy Behar, who was visibly upset by the remark from Tafoya about the man with natural immunity wishing to refrain from getting vaccinated, cut her off.
“He doesn’t know how long that immunity will last,” Behar said of her guest co-host’s family member.
Do you think more people in media think like Tafoya than let on?
“Well, neither do we with the shots,” Tafoya said of vaccines. “We really don’t. For the time being, can’t he just get tested? Can’t we just get tested?”
When Tafoya reminded the show’s hosts that people can have different perspectives on the issue, especially with regard to immunity to COVID, Behar cut in: “Isn’t it easier just to get the damn shot?”
“Well, it depends who you are,” shot back Tafoya. “For you, maybe, but for other people — stick a thing up my nose, I don’t care,” Tafoya responded, reminding the ladies of the show that “the flu kills people, too.”
With regard to critical race theory, Tafoya shared that her son had lost contact with close school friends who were sent to so-called “affinity groups” over the years to spend time with people who looked more like themselves — and not like her son.
“Why are we even teaching that the color of the skin matters?” she asked. “To me, what matters is your character and your values.”Co-host Whoopi Goldberg then went on the offensive against Tafoya with regard to race issues.
“You know that the color of the skin has been mattering to people for years,” Goldberg said.
“Can’t we change it?” asked Tafoya
“Well, we need white people to step up and do that,” Goldberg said.
“They’ve been doing that since the Civil War,” Tafoya told Goldberg.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice filled in on the show two weeks ago, where she also opposed critical race theory in a segment that when viral online.
“What happened on January 6th was wrong. I also know that as a government and as a country, we’ve got to be concerned about the things that are making life hard for Americans and hard for American families.” pic.twitter.com/GGA3FGfu3J
“I would like black kids to be completely empowered to know they are beautiful in their blackness,” Rice said on the program. “But in order to do that, I don’t need to make white kids feel bad for being white. This is a conversation that I think has gone in the wrong direction.”
In his new Netflix special, radical leftist Colin Kaepernick compared the NFL combine to slavery. On Monday, another former NFL player called out Kaepernick’s insanity.
A clip from the former San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback’s special, “Colin in Black and White,” depicts NFL players in chains as team representatives evaluate them.
“Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance,” Kaepernick said. “No boundary respected, no dignity left intact.”
Colin Kaepernick compares the NFL combine, which allows all players of all races a voluntary chance to become multi-millionaires, to slavery. Anyone still defending this imbecile lacks a functional brain. pic.twitter.com/rMaKi7c6xh
Kaepernick’s point is utterly ridiculous. The reason teams evaluate players at a combine the players chose to attend is so that they can determine whether they should pay the players millions of dollars to play football. Nothing about that is similar is to slavery.
Jack Brewer, who enjoyed an NFL career of his own as a safety for a handful of teams in the first decade of the century, told Fox News that Kaepernick’s lies are dangerous to minority children.
“This new Colin Kaepernick doctrine that’s penetrating the minds and hearts of so many of our underserved black kids across America is the single largest threat to black men in the United States of America,” Brewer said in an interview Monday.
“Because right now, folks are thinking that they’re victims and they’re living in the most prosperous, the most opportunity of any country in the world…”
Brewer said as a black man who cares deeply about black children, he feels particularly hurt by Kaepernick’s victim act.
“Think about the movement that this guy started, the opportunity that he had that he could actually come and promote positivity to young black men,” he said.
“Telling them how great this country is. He doesn’t have that spirit in him. He has an evil, anti-American spirit and it’s sick and disgusting.”
Brewer is absolutely correct about Kaepernick. As a player who went through the NFL combine himself, Brewer knows it is nothing like slavery.
The NFL offers an opportunity for players to earn millions of dollars to play a game they love regardless of their race. That’s basically the complete opposite of slavery.
Should this documentary be taken off Netflix?
If Kaepernick took two seconds to really think about what he was saying, he would also realize his comparison is ludicrous. Instead, he wants to profit from lies and a fake victimhood mentality.
As Brewer points out, these lies harm more people than just Kaepernick himself. They help promote feelings of helplessness and even anger among young minorities, which is why Brewer said they should not be spread on large platforms like Netflix.
“That even Netflix, someone that big and popular, would even put something out like that to penetrate the mind of these kids should be illegal,” he said.
Kaepernick claims he wants to make a positive change for America, but he continually lies and demonizes American ideals as inherently racist. It’s no wonder no NFL team wants to be associated with him.
Protesters who bring bloody anarchy to cities have become a threat to everyone, according to one top European official.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa tweeted his verdict on antifa on Sunday in response to a post concerning antifa-style protests in Nantes, France.
“Antifa is a global terrorist organization. Supported by the capital of financial speculators forging profits at the expense of the chaos caused by the operation,” he posted, according to a Google translate version of his post.
Antifa je globalna teroristična organizacija. Podprta s kapitalom finančnih špekulantov, ki kujejo dobičke na račun kaosa, ki ga povzroča delovanje #Antifahttps://t.co/wXp52kWxaD
Slovenia has been battling protests for more than a year over a variety of issues. Slovenia, the home country of former first lady Melania Trump, was formerly a part of Yugoslavia. Under its rules that call for a rotating presidency, Jansa – as Slovenia’s leader – is president of the EU Council.
Jansa’s tweet came in response to a post illustrating violence that took place in the French city of Nantes when far-left protesters sought to disrupt an event for French presidential hopeful Eric Zemmour, a conservative writer
The website Breitbart, citing the French-language newspaper Le Figaro, said about 600 far-left protesters fought with police and called for the death of Zemmour.
“We know who Joseph Stalin was, we know the hundreds of thousands of deaths he caused, these people are only his distant descendants,” Zemmour said in response, Breitbart reported.
Should there be a global crackdown on antifa?
Zemmour has been likened by French political observers to a French version of former President Donald Trump, according to France 24.
His campaign for the presidency has focused on the culture wars and immigration.
“I think many French people were waiting for this message, that someone speaks to them about France, about how they feel: that the country is in danger of dying, subverted by an unprecedented wave of migration, that whole areas of the country have become enclaves of foreign Islamists,” he said, according to France 24.
Antifa protests were also held in Italy last month, according to the Daily Mail. The crowd of antifa protesters was estimated to be around 100,000 people.
In January, as his administration was departing the White House, Trump called for antifa to be designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department, but his administration closed without action being taken.
The call was taken up in the current Congress by Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who has sponsored a resolution. calling upon the Biden White House to designate antifa as a terrorist organization.
“Like the toxic cancel culture of the radical left, ANTIFA threatens to silence anyone who opposes them,” Boebert said in a release posted on her website.
“This past summer, ANTIFA laid siege for over 60 days on a U.S. federal courthouse, injuring over 250 federal law enforcement officers. This treasonous insurrection used violence and fear to advance their political agenda—the very definition of terrorism,” she said, referring to violence that took place in the summer of 2020.
“It is time to put the safety of the American people ahead of politics and designate ANTIFA as a terrorist organization and declare that ALL political violence has no place in our great Nation.”
State lawmakers, unlike their federal counterparts, don’t rake in the big bucks.
In two states, they make six-figure salaries — but those states, according to Ballotpedia, are California and New York, where legislators take home $114,877 and $110,000 a year, respectively. And sure, that’ll get you a studio apartment in California, but what about utilities?
In Maryland, the number is roughly half that: $50,330 a year. Thus, many lawmakers not only come from the private sector but stay there after they get elected, particularly if they have high-paying jobs — like, say, being a doctor.
I get that. However, if Maryland state Del. Terri Hill cares about her constituents as much as she cares about her patients, perhaps she should have neither gig.
According to The Associated Press, Hill, a Democrat, was fined $15,000 and hit with a reprimand by the Maryland Board of Physicians for participating in two separate virtual legislative meetings, including a voting session, while she was in the operating room.
Like many states, Maryland’s legislative committee meetings were held via videoconferencing software this year because of COVID-19 protocols. On two occasions, Hill — a board-certified plastic surgeon — left patients on the operating table while she dealt with legislative business.
Earlier this month, Hill signed a consent order which found her guilty of “unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine.”
The first report of Hill’s, um, multitasking came in a March 23 article in the Baltimore Sun. During a February committee meeting of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, she stepped away from a patient to present a bill via Zoom.
During a March 12 meeting of the Maryland House of Delegates Health and Government Operations Committee, which lasted about an hour, Hill’s feed “showed multiple gowned and masked figures moving about, with sets of operating room lights visible on the screen,” the Sun reported. The hearings were being broadcast on both YouTube and the General Assembly’s website as they happened.
Should there be heavier repercussions for Hill’s poor judgment?
“She was positioned under the surgical lights, focused downward, and would occasionally shift, reach for surgical instruments, or adjust the lights,” the report read, adding Hill and her staff “occasionally moved surgical equipment and blood-stained towels so that they were briefly visible on the video feed.”
According to The Hill, the doctor acknowledged to the board her participation wasn’t required in either of the sessions.
Hill, whose district covers areas of Baltimore and Howard counties, insisted this was entirely safe when the Sun first reported on it.
“Had there been any safety or privacy concerns, then I wouldn’t have done it,” Hill told the Sun in March, although she declined to say what the surgeries being performed at the time were.
“I’m a little surprised that this is becoming a big deal because there are no privacy issues. There are no attention-to-duty issues and there’s no dereliction-of-duty issues,” she said.
“So, the only issue is people’s perception of what could or could not or must or must not have been going on.”
The perception of the people on the Maryland Board of Physicians — which I trust to be a bit more educated in the matter — begged to differ.
During an April disciplinary panel hearing, she said that both patients “gave permission” for her to attend the hearings, according to the AP. However, in both cases, the surgery was major, in one case there was no record of consent and in the other, she asked for consent only minutes before surgery started.
“In its findings of fact published on its website, the board cited records that show Hill performed major abdominal surgery on one of the patients in February — and that the patient’s preoperative consent forms do not document consent or notice about Hill participating in a legislative committee during surgery,” the AP reported. “The patient did not recall being asked about participating in a legislative committee meeting by videoconference, according to the board’s report.”
Hill would tell the board’s staff during a May interview that she may have just informed the patient of the possibility she’d have to “take a call” during the procedure and, when asked about the fact the patient couldn’t recall the conversation, said “there was a lot going on, getting the patient to the hospital, getting them to the OR. I’m sure she was nervous.”
“Patient 1 also said that it was a little discomforting that attention was taken away from her during the surgery,” the board’s report read.
The March case involved major abdominal and back surgery. Again, the preoperative forms have no mention of Hill stepping away from legislative meetings. This time, the AP reported, “the patient reported to the board’s disciplinary panel that Hill told her about the committee meeting 10 minutes before surgery started and that she consented to Hill’s participation.”
Furthermore, the fact Hill was presenting legislation from the operating room was noted by committee chairman Del. Kumar Barve during the Feb. 12 incident, given Hill was wearing surgical gear at the time.
“Before we start the timer, are you at work? What’s going on here?” Barve asked.
“I’m at work, yes,” Hill said. “You’re at work, I’m at work.”
“All right, cool,” Barve said. “Go for it.”
The Maryland Board of Physicians was less cool, as indicated by the consent order.
“In a statement Friday night, Hill said she has worked hard to fulfill her professional obligations to both her patients and her constituents during the pandemic — a balance that has been challenging at times,” the AP reported.
“I accept the Board’s decision that I could have done better,” Hill said via text message.
It’s worth noting that while there has been an uptick in demand for plastic surgery in 2021, according to an April media release by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Hill didn’t have to take on more patients than she could handle. It’s also worth noting that, given the fact legislative sessions were virtual in 2021, that meant it was easier than ever for her to attend.
Hill apparently lacks the necessary bandwidth to give her patients and her constituents the attention they need to solve their issues, in other words. Ordinarily, this would mean she’d be the perfect Democratic politician, but the job doesn’t pay as well as plastic surgery.
On one hand, I’m tempted to say perhaps she should leave not caring about the people who elected her to the experts and focus on medicine, instead. On the other hand, though, patients undergoing surgery expect competence and results, something we’ve given up on when it comes to our legislators.
If Hill is the kind of doctor to step away from the operating table to attend committee hearings, maybe politics really is her calling, after all.
Don’t let left-wing politicians and establishment news networks gaslight you.
For months on end, such people have been claiming that teaching critical race theory is akin to teaching the true, racist history of our country’s origins.
They claim that any opposition to intellectually inept ideas like “white privilege” and “systemic racism” is merely political fear-mongering.
Well, one Rutgers professor and pro-critical race theory activist showed the left’s true colors on Oct. 21 during an interview with The Root.
“I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate,” educator Brittney Cooper said.
Cooper holds many of the titles typical of elitist leftist academics — she is a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, according to the New York Post.
In her view, individuals should be judged by what racial group they happen to fall into. One look at a white person tells Cooper everything she needs to know.
“You know, their thinking is so murky and spiritually bankrupt about power that they … they fear this really existentially letting go of power because they cannot imagine another way to be,” she said of white people, according to the Post.
“The thing I want to say to you is we got to take these motherf***ers out,” Cooper said, before quickly adding that she “doesn’t believe in a project of violence.”
Is critical race theory racist?
In general, racial issues in the country are improving in Cooper’s view, but not for the reasons you might think.
She went on to claim that many white people today are “suffering,” which, to Cooper, is a good thing, because “they kind of deserve it.”
“White people’s birth rates are going down … because they literally cannot afford to put their children, newer generations, into the middle class … It’s super perverse, and also they kind of deserve it,” she said, according to the Post.
The professor believes victory for her racial justice movement is close at hand because kids are starting to truly understand the core tenets of critical race theory.
“Kids actually can grasp critical race theory because the issue that the right has, is that critical race theory is just the proper teaching of American history,” she said.
It is puzzling that so many academics like Cooper, fully set on ushering in racial equality in America, have found themselves spouting such vile and disgusting views.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson, in a speech given during one of his many tours around the country, pointed out the fundamental flaw in the thinking of academics like her.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QCPDByRb4no
“The idea that there is more differences between groups than there is between individuals is actually the fundamental racist idea,” Peterson said.
He then gave an example of this racist mindset, the exact same kind of thinking that Cooper uses when she looks at white people.
“Let’s say you’re Asian,” Peterson said. “You’re so different from me that there’s no overlap between our groups. And you’re also so different — and there’s so little difference within your group — that, now that I know that you’re not me, you’re not one of mine, I actually know what you’re like.”
“No. Technically that’s incorrect. That’s wrong. That isn’t how you get diversity.”
Is racism still a major problem in the U.S. today?
As long as companies like AT&T continue to tell their employees “white people, you are the problem,” the answer to that question is a definite yes.
The AT&T Corporation promoted this vile rhetoric as part of a company initiative called “Listen Understand Act,” which teaches far-left principles regarding race and equity.
Prominent CRT critic Christopher F. Rufo spoke to a senior employee at AT&T “who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity” and sifted through the “Listen Understand Act” program documents before publishing a report on the scandal in City Journal.
When the program first launched last year, AT&T CEO John Stankey admitted it was meant as an “obligation to engage on this issue of racial injustice” and push for “systemic reforms in police departments across the country.”
According to Rufo, the program “is based on the core principles of critical race theory, including ‘intersectionality,’ ‘systemic racism,’ ‘white privilege,’ and ‘white fragility.’”
Indeed, many of the figures responsible for these detestable ideas are featured heavily throughout.
According to the source documents obtained by Rufo, the program encourages employees to read books by race hustlers like Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, all of whom have promoted extremely racist ideas, including the notion that all white people are inherently racist.
The program itself doesn’t hide behind these authors, however. AT&T seems to have no problem telling its white employees how racist they are.
Is CRT racist?
“On the first page of AT&T’s Listen Understand Act internal portal, the company encourages employees to study a resource called ‘White America, if you want to know who’s responsible for racism, look in the mirror,’” Rufo reported.
“The article claims that the United States is a ‘racist society’ and lays out its thesis plainly: ‘White people, you are the problem. Regardless of how much you say you detest racism, you are the sole reason it has flourished for centuries.’”
Furthermore, Rufo’s anonymous source added that managers at the company are required to participate in diversity programs based around such principles and “white employees” are “tacitly expected to confess their complicity in ‘white privilege’ and ‘systemic racism’ lest they be “penalized in their performance reviews.”
Employees must also sign a “loyalty pledge” to “keep pushing for change,” with the program suggesting such actions as “reading more about systemic racism” and “challenging others’ language that is hateful.”
“If you don’t do it,” the senior employee reportedly told City Journal, “you’re [considered] a racist.”
There are many names for the left’s new racist framework.
Critical race theory, diversity equity and inclusion, racial equity and social justice, to name a few examples.
All of these terms amount to the same idea — that skin color is essential to one’s identity and that there is no such thing as an individual; everyone is merely a mindless drone representing their race as a whole.
That’s what white supremacists and neo-Nazis believe. It’s what left-wing racial-justice protesters believe.
And now, apparently, it’s what the heads at AT&T believe.
LOS ANGELES—Three women were charged with grand theft and embezzlement in connection with a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands in public funds intended to aid the homeless.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the charges Oct. 21 for Latoi Pledger, 45, Sareena Stevenson, 44, and Valencia Stevenson, 40, with 56 felonies, including grand theft and embezzlement, as well as a special allegation of aggravated white-collar crime with a loss of over $100,000.
Two of the women worked for People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), a Los Angeles-based organization that received a contract from the LA Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) in 2016 to help house homeless Angelenos.
The criminal complaint alleged that from January to September of 2017, the plaintiffs worked together to steal hundreds of thousands from PATH by submitting false referrals and assistance requests for people who were not homeless.
The women allegedly manipulated the identities “through forged and falsified documents, such as leases and income documents” of their friends, family members, and associates to appear eligible for PATH assistance, according to a press release by Bonta.
“By helping families secure a roof over their heads, tax-payer funded programs like PATH provide Californians in need with an invaluable resource,” Bonta said in a statement. “When these programs are taken advantage of or stolen from, the individuals and families who depend on them are the most harmed. We are grateful to the Los Angeles Police Department for their investigation and continued partnership in this matter.”
A PATH spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the organization is aware of and participating in the ongoing legal proceedings.
“At the time, PATH was a victim of a larger scheme that diverted funding from a LAHSA Program. Once PATH became aware of these occurrences, an internal investigation was conducted. All findings were given to the Los Angeles Police Department and appropriate steps were taken to reimburse funds,” a PATH statement said (pdf). “As an organization dedicated to ending homelessness for individuals, families, and communities, we are appalled that people would take away valuable resources from vulnerable, unhoused people.”
Since then, the statement said, PATH has worked to enhance its audit procedures and its system of checks and balances for spending.
The defendants have been arraigned in Los Angeles County Superior Court. All three women are being held on just over $1 million bail.
Rep. Barbara Lee attended the unveiling of a bust of Huey P. Newton
A prominent Democrat over the weekend celebrated Black Panther cofounder and alleged murderer Huey P. Newton.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.) on Sunday attended the unveiling of a bust of Newton, who killed a police officer and allegedly murdered a girl who called him a nickname. The Oakland ceremony marked the 55th anniversary of Newton forming the Black Panther Party. The East Bay Timespublished photos of Lee with Oakland’s mayor at the event.
Lee, who chairs a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, has called for the removal of statues of other problematic historical figures. She cosponsored legislation to tear down statues of members of the Confederate Army.
Lee was affiliated with the Black Panther Party as a community organizer in Oakland. She convened a congressional forum in May with Newton’s cofounder, Bobby Seale, to discuss the FBI’s initiative in the 1960s and 1970s to infiltrate the black nationalist movement.
Newton’s violence against women would seemingly make him a pariah in today’s Democratic Party, though he remains a hero to many on the Left. He was accused of murdering a 17-year-old girl, Kathleen Smith, after she allegedly called him by his nickname, “Baby.” One former Black Panther, Ericka Huggins, has claimed she was repeatedly raped by Newton, and that he once threatened to “knock your teeth down your throat” after she questioned his handling of finances from a Black Panther-affiliated school.
Huggins attended the forum convened by Lee earlier this year, though Lee did not ask about the allegations against Newton. Huggins herself was charged in 1970 with conspiring to murder a fellow Black Panther believed to be cooperating with police. While Huggins was not convicted, audio records showed that she was involved in the interrogation and torture of the victim before he was murdered.
Lee has touted her support for the Violence Against Women Act, bragging earlier this year that she introduced a bill on the issue when she served in the California state legislature.
Newton, who founded the Black Panthers in 1966, was convicted in 1968 of voluntary manslaughter in the killing of Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton killed Frey during a traffic stop in 1967. He claimed at trial that Frey hurled racial epithets at him. His conviction was overturned in 1970 because of a jury instruction error. Newton was also an ally of Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones, who guided hundreds of followers in a mass suicide in Guyana in 1978.
Newton died in 1989 after he was shot by a member of the Black Guerrilla Family gang. His bust was erected two blocks from the site where he was shot, according to reports.
Lee’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Leftists love to publicly accuse the GOP of attempting to maliciously suppress the vote. They want to impress upon Americans that there are a great number of progressive voters who want to participate in elections, but many of them don’t because they can’t.
Another favorite leftist tactic is to accuse opponents of what they themselves are doing.
According to a 2019 internal study obtained by The New York Post, 20 percent of 3,000 U.S. Facebook users reported that they had been exposed to content that discouraged or interfered with them participating in elections.
So who is the real villain here when it comes to suppressing the vote? Why are they doing it?
Facebook, which regularly suspends or bans conservatives such as President Donald Trump and Candace Owens, is the culprit when it comes to suppressing the vote — not the GOP.
The study, “User Perspectives on Voter and Census Disenfranchisement,” was revealed to Congress by the legal counsel of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
The study demonstrated that one in three users reported being exposed to false information about elections. There were also posts discouraging people from voting altogether, and some attempted to teach people how to vote in a way that was either unavailable or illegal.
No matter how they were designed, the goal was always to prevent a U.S. citizen from participating in an election.
They also undermined the public’s confidence in the U.S. Census. About 15 percent of users reported being directed to not participate in the Census.
Is Mark Zuckerberg an evil genius?
Why? It might be that Mark Zuckerberg is all about making money. Greater user-engagement means more revenue. To raise engagement, Facebook allows, even encourages, foment. Strife sells.
This means Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t really care if the platform is used to sell people into slavery, sabotage elections or turn populations against each other.
“When we live in an information environment that is full of angry, hateful, polarizing content it erodes our civic trust, it erodes our faith in each other, it erodes our ability to want to care for each other, the version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world,” said Frances Haugen in an interview on 60 Minutes.
Could it be that Facebook, rather than seeking some nefarious political goal, aims to create discontent? Doubt is corrosive because it undermines both faith and reason.
We live in a highly secular society. Judeo-Christian values are now routinely downplayed in our institutions. In their place, anti-values, such as the racism inherent in Critical Race Theory, are promoted.
Could it be that Zuckerberg is no evil genius but merely an opportunist taking advantage of the situation by stirring-the-pot?
Afterall, what is social media but a massive platform for spreading gossip? Yellow journalism is immoral. Big Tech is unleashing immoral forces across the world.
They must be held accountable for their dirty deeds.
When conservatives protest over ideas like “equity” and “critical race theory,” the average American who is uninterested in politics is left wondering what all the fuss is about.
To them, broad academic concepts like these couldn’t possibly affect their day-to-day lives.
A federal jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, seemed to disagree with that notion on Tuesday, however, when it awarded one man $10 million dollars due to discrimination via his former employer’s equity policy.
Michigan native David Duvall worked as the senior vice president of marketing and communication for Novant Health Inc., a health care system with facilities in North Carolina, up until July of 2018, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
In a 2019 lawsuit against the company, Duvall alleged he was fired without warning and replaced by a white woman and a black woman as the company worked to institute “diversity, inclusion and equity” policies. Duvall accused Novant Health of racial and gender discrimination, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Novant Health contested Duvall’s claims, instead saying he was fired for his “poor leadership skills.” In addition to finding Duvall proved he was wrongfully terminated based on his race and gender, the jury also said Novant Health failed to prove it would have fired Duvall if race was not a factor.
Both Duvall and his lawyer were more than happy with the North Carolina jury’s determination.
“We are pleased that the jury agreed that Duvall’s race and gender were unlawful factors in his termination — that he was fired to make room for more diverse leaders at Novant,” Duvall’s attorney, S. Luke Largess, said in a statement released on Tuesday, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
Largess also noted Duvall was “a strong advocate of diversity at Norvant” and that the two believe the lawsuit “is a message that an employer cannot terminate and replace employees in order to achieve greater diversity in the workforce.”
A federal jury awarded a former Novant Health executive $10 million in damages after he claimed in a lawsuit that he was fired because he’s a white man. https://t.co/cwRRb6mb4i
“We are extremely disappointed with the verdict as we believe it is not supported by the evidence presented at trial, which includes our reason for Mr. Duvall’s termination,” Megan Rivers, a Novant Health spokeswoman, said. “We will pursue all legal options, including appeal, over the next several weeks and months
The jury, however, remained unconvinced and chose to award Duvall a whopping $10 million.
Despite this ruling, Novant Health has stubbornly doubled down on its racist practices, noting that racial equity will remain a central component of its hiring processes going forward.
“Novant Health is one of thousands of organizations to put in place robust diversity and inclusion programs, which we believe can co-exist alongside strong non-discriminatory policies that extend to all races and genders, including white men,” Rivers said. “It’s important for all current and future team members to know that this verdict will not change Novant Health’s steadfast commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity for all.”
“Equity” is perhaps the most pernicious form of racism seen in American society today. Rather than ensure that all people are treated equally, regardless of their race or ethnicity, “equity” ensures people are treated differently according to their race.
The reason left-wing organizations continue to push this notion is because of the false belief that, if not for “racism,” all racial groups would have the exact same amount of representation in every aspect of society.
But such an assumption assumes all groups are exactly the same. No person in their right mind would suggest that people who are white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish and so on are culturally homogenous.
Is “equity” racist?
If they were, what would be the point of celebrating “diversity”?
Moreover, since all of those groups do exhibit cultural differences, they are likely to experience different economic outcomes.
And that isn’t because of racism. Otherwise, as political scientist Wilfred Reilly has explained, the wealthiest racial groups of Americans would not be Indian Americans and Asian Americans.
“The wealthiest group of Americans is not Anglo-Saxon ‘WASPs’ — or Jews as is often claimed — but Indian Americans, with a median household income of $135,816. Taiwanese Americans come in second place, at $102,405,” Reilly wrote.
“All in all, seven of the 10 highest-earning groups — Indians, Taiwanese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Iranians and Lebanese Americans — are not ‘white’ as this term is generally conceptualised. Another Top 10 group — South Africans, with $98,212 — consists of white and black immigrants, who both seem to do quite well away from their homeland’s quarrels.”
Nevertheless, companies like Novant Health will continue to judge applicants based on their gender and the color of their skin, rather than judge them based on their competency, keeping racism and discrimination on life-support at a time when most of the country is ready to move past such bigotry.
In his latest speech on the Senate floor, the Iowa Republican discussed ballot initiatives in two major cities concerning police budgets.
Sen. Chuck Grassley blasted Democrats on Monday for supporting various efforts to “Defund the Police.”
In his latest speech on the Senate floor, the Iowa Republican discussed the latest ballot initiatives in two major cities concerning police budgets.
Grassley pointed out that “Question 2” in Minneapolis will remove the city’s police department and replace it with a “Department of Public Safety.”
“The American voters have news for the people who got this initiative on the ballot in Minneapolis,” Grassley said. “Police officers are absolutely necessary there – and they’re necessary in every other community as well.”
Grassley also discussed how voters in Austin, Texas, are attempting to restore their city’s police budget that was slashed last year by the Austin City Council.
If passed on Nov. 2, “Proposition A” would require Austin city officials to drastically increase the ranks of its police force by ensuring there was at least one police officer for every 1,000 residents.
Despite the proposal in Austin, Grassley noted that “liberal Dark Money groups have pumped half a million dollars into defeating” the proposition.
Grassley concluded his speech by warning voters what can happen if police departments are defunded.
“If Minneapolis and Austin let their police forces wither on the vine, voters all across the nation and all across the political spectrum will send a very clear message to the hard left in the next election. Voters everywhere should stand up and say no,” he said.
Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw mocked Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar for seeking to defund the police while also blaming law enforcement for rising violent crime in Minneapolis.
Crenshaw tweeted a video of the congresswoman Tuesday in which she criticized Minneapolis police officers over the rise in violent crime.
“The person who said ‘we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,’ supported the defunding of that police department, and demonizes law enforcement as a ‘cancer’ on society is now… complaining that police aren’t stopping crime,” Crenshaw tweeted.
“Can’t make this up.”
The person who said “we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department,” supported the defunding of that police department, and demonizes law enforcement as a “cancer” on society is now… complaining that police aren’t stopping crime.
This is not the first time Crenshaw has criticized Omar. In June, he said during a Fox News interview that the congresswoman should be fired after comparing the U.S. and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban.
“The reduction in policing currently in our city and the lawlessness that is happening is due to two things,” Omar said in the video Crenshaw tweeted Tuesday.
Should defunding the police be made illegal?
“One, the police have chosen to not fulfill their oath of office and to provide the public safety they are owed to the citizens they serve. Right, it’s documented.
“But even before it was documented, the Minneapolis Police Department is the most dysfunctional police department in our state and probably in the country,” the congresswoman added.
Omar also addressed the issues of accountability for police actions.
“The second part is that there has to be accountability and someone that is actually taking responsibility for what the police does and doesn’t do. And that doesn’t exist in this moment,” she said.
“I do believe that the current charter that we have does tie the hands of those who want to have that accountability, because we are mandated to have a specific amount of policing.”
Remember when Kamala Harris was supposed to be so ready to take over the Oval Office that she might as well just set up her desk in there?
It seems like just yesterday Joe Biden and Harris were getting sworn in as the president and the next president — an office formerly known as the vice presidency, which has now been sold as a trainee program for Harris, so she’s fully prepared for whenever Biden finally makes a whirring noise and shuts down.
In fact, Biden touted Harris’ readiness vigorously when he introduced her as his running mate in August of 2020, a not-so-subtle hint for Americans who were worried about Uncle Joe’s continued seaworthiness. “Kamala knows how to govern,” he said, according to a Rev.com transcript. “She knows how to make the hard calls. She’s ready to do this job on day one, and we’re both ready to get to work, rebuilding this nation and building it better.”
He would, on other occasions, make it clear he was talking about Harris being ready for the presidency on day one — meaning she was just as ready for the job as he was. (Not that this was a particularly reassuring promise, but Joe sure thought it was.)
According to Joe, he says Kamala is ready to be President on day 1. Which tells me, if he won, he would transfer his power to her on day 1. pic.twitter.com/xJXWVTo9ia
The numbers don’t lie, however. The Los Angeles Times recently compiled a trove of information regarding Vice President Harris’ calendar, and the U.K. Daily Mail went through it. Not only is Harris drifting further apart from President Biden, the data show she’s missed 206 presidential daily briefs in person since the Biden-Harris administration took over at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
In January, Biden made it clear Harris was to be included in these meetings. Biden is “returning to the practice of having his vice president join for the briefing when they’re both in Washington,” officials said, according to NBC News. A vice presidential aid further commented, saying Harris had attended Oval Office briefings Biden’s first week as president, “and that is the plan going forward.”
Of the 275 presidential daily briefs — many of which were in person — between Jan. 20, the day of Biden’s inauguration, and Oct. 22, the last day the Los Angeles Times published her calendar data, Harris only attended 69.
Is Kamala Harris ready to be president?
And let’s be clear: The presidential daily brief isn’t just the Oval Office’s version of that endless morning meeting where Paul can’t stop talking about the grandchildren while he updates everyone on project progress and Anna makes sure to remind everyone to CC her on the expense reports.
As the Intelligence Community’s website notes: “The President’s Daily Brief (PDB) is a daily summary of high-level, all-source information and analysis on national security issues produced for the president and key cabinet members and advisers.”
The daily brief “has been presented in some form to the president since 1946, when President Harry S. Truman received the Daily Summary. Over the years, the PDB has evolved to meet the needs and preferences of each president and has expanded to include more information.”
Harris’ attendance at the presidential daily briefs has also been slipping as time has gone on.
In February, she attended 15 and in March, 17. As of Oct. 22, she’d only attended two this month. In September, she attended five, and in August, Harris appeared at just two. All in all, 39 of the 69 briefings she attended were in the first three months of the administration.
To a certain extent, this mirrors the increased political distancing between Biden and Harris as the first year of the new administration has moved into autumn.
In February, for instance, Harris did 18 open press events with the president. That fell to just one in September and one in October. (In September, she appeared with the president for the commemoration of September 11; in October, it was for the anniversary of the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.)
A former Harris adviser says the president and vice president still don’t fully trust each other and Harris isn’t happy that “she hasn’t been given any all-star portfolio” assignments, according to the Daily Mail.
The White House disputed the claims to the Daily Mail, arguing the schedule didn’t tell the full story: “The vice president keeps a busy schedule doing the work of the administration and always in support of the president,” said Harris spokeswoman Sabrina Singh.
“Sometimes those events are together, other times apart, sometimes she is on the road amplifying the agenda of the administration and highlighting the importance of Build Back Better.”
However, this wasn’t the bill of goods the Biden campaign was selling. It’s not even the bill of goods the administration’s been peddling, either.
The White House has made a big deal of calling this the “Biden-Harris administration,” a double-billing no president in memory has applied to itself. They were supposed to be so close they were co-presidents, with Kamala being ready to take over on day one. That was the message.
The reality appears to be quite different, and looking at how often she attends the president’s daily brief there is one question to ask: Feeling confident, America?
REVIEW: ‘Robert E. Lee: A Life’ by Allen C. Guelzo
I guess only a handful of people know where to find Robert E. Lee nowadays—or rather his most famous likeness, the bronze equestrian statue that for more than a century sat high atop an obelisk rising from a traffic circle on a broad, leafy avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Last month, a large crane was brought in to haul the thing down. Workmen hired by the state sliced the bronze Lee into pieces and boxed them up. Onlookers cheered. The governor of the commonwealth—a man named Ralph Northam, who has proved himself to be a creature not previously thought to exist in nature, a phlegmatic demagogue—was there to make certain he received proper credit for his brave, unbending opposition to human slavery. As the workers trucked the boxes off to an undisclosed location, the governor grinned like a minstrel.
No need to get sentimental about it, but the decapitation and dismemberment of Lee in the onetime capital of the Confederacy felt like the end of something, something big. The statue isn’t simply gone, it’s hidden away, with the implication that it may never again be exposed to general view—certainly never again as a public emblem. Its removal marked more than the end of the years-long controversy about statues honoring the men who fought on the wrong side of the Civil War. Just as likely we’ve reached a terminal point in how we are allowed to talk—and perhaps, in time, to think—about the signal event of American history.
Much of this talk, to put it mildly, lacks historical rigor. The dwindling number of die-hards who cling to the myth of the Lost Cause see slavery as contingent to the war, while the much larger number (far and away a majority) see slavery as the only reason the war was fought. Both sides avoid complication because they use history as a platform for moralizing. Robert E. Lee himself appears either as a marble saint or an ogre of staggering villainy.
We could all take a lesson from perhaps the greatest living historian of the period, Allen C. Guelzo, whose biography of Lee has just been published. In addition to his magisterial achievements in such books as Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President and Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, Guelzo is one of the few academic historians who doesn’t mind being associated with the political right. He’s been a longtime contributor to National Review and the martyred Weekly Standard, and is now affiliated with the James Madison Program at Princeton.
I don’t know Guelzo’s view of removing the Lee statue from Richmond, but I imagine he would disagree that Lee’s status as (to use the go-to phrase) a white supremacist or even as a slave-owner is sufficient reason to expunge him from the rolls of public honor. Tossing down the memory hole every American who comforted himself with notions of racial superiority would leave us with a lot of shredded family albums, not to mention the empty plinths and abandoned historical sites. In every age some number of geniuses have risen above the default prejudices and moral evasions that their friends and neighbors absorb without thinking. These inoculations are rare, however; consider, to take one contemporary example, our almost unanimous tolerance for the industrial torture of animals for the sake of cheap food. No, for Guelzo, Lee’s great offense was not his invidious and (among his peers) universally held ideas about race but an actual, definable, objective crime, and the crime was treason.
Guelzo’s Lee is a man in full: genteel, cruel, loving, intolerant, generous, neither the hero of 19th and 20th century hagiographers nor the figure of unalloyed evil preferred by our contemporaries. But at the heart of the portrait here is the unforgivable crime. As Guelzo reconstructs it, Lee’s treason developed from three sequential decisions made over as many days in early 1861.
After a long and notable career, Lee was one of the most admired military men in the country when the fuse of secession was lit. It was no surprise that Abraham Lincoln, scarcely more than a month into his presidency, wanted to elevate Lee to field commander of the Federal army. (Lincoln’s choice in generals as the war dragged on has been much criticized, but his first one showed he knew what he was about.) Lee met with Lincoln’s intermediary, Francis Preston Blair, and told Blair that he was “devoted to the Union.” Indeed, Lee said, if he had the power he would free every slave in the South to keep the country united.
And yet… “He did not know how he could draw his sword upon his native State,” Virginia. In Richmond the state legislature was still formally undecided on whether to join other southern states in secession. The first of Lee’s fateful decisions was to turn down Lincoln’s offer, hoping that he could somehow stay neutral, even as Virginia stayed neutral, on the assumption the coming unpleasantness would stop short of war. Yet neutrality also made his place in the Army untenable, leading to the second decision, to resign his commission. And the logic of these two decisions pointed inevitably to the third, after Virginia voted officially to secede. When the legislature summoned him to Richmond, he traveled in civilian clothes, but he agreed to assist in organizing the state militia’s response to any “invasion” by the federal government. He would “devote myself to the service of my native state,” he said, “in whose behalf alone will I ever again draw my sword.”
“Thus did Robert E. Lee,” writes Guelzo, “irrevocably, finally, publicly [turn] his back on his service, his flag, and ultimately, his country. All of this was done for the sake of the preservation of a political regime whose acknowledged purpose was the preservation of a system of chattel slavery that he knew to be an evil and for which he felt little affection and whose constitutional basis he dismissed as a fiction…. It would, in the end, cost him nearly everything ….”
Guelzo’s reconstruction of Lee’s turn to treason is meticulous, comprehensive, and fair, a master class in historiography. Lee’s present-day detractors will likely think it’s beside the point, at least for their purpose, which is to place Lee beyond the pale on the basis of his racial views alone. Lee is often described as a traitor today, even among the left, but never as the primary charge in the indictment; his betrayal usually is featured almost as an afterthought, the cherry on top of his inequity, like condemning Charles Manson for his terrible table manners. In the catalogue of evils nowadays, treason, all by itself, ranks pretty low. The Richmond crowd cheering the removal of the Lee statue probably couldn’t work up much righteous anger against Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden.
The relative indifference to treason is a symptom of our intelligentsia’s weakening devotion to the nation state. “In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of globalism,” Guelzo writes, “the notion of treason has acquired an antique feel.” This is a weakening indeed. As Guelzo notes, for all its faults, the nation-state works (imperfectly) as a stay against ethnic, dynastic, and religious mischief of the kind that put Europe in a state of perpetual warfare until the 18th century. “To wave away treason as a crime is to put in jeopardy many of the benefits the nation-state has conferred in the last three centuries.”
Guelzo’s judgment of Lee, balanced as it is, should discomfit conservatives no less than liberals, especially anyone on the right willing to gloss over Lee’s crime against our country in favor of his undoubted martial virtues or some magnolia-fragranced image of agrarian heroism. Most impressive of all, Robert E. Lee: A Life injects learning, subtlety, and even compassion into a debate that has more often been characterized by ignorance, simple-mindedness, and sanctimony. It is Guelzo’s bad luck, and ours, that the debate has been settled by intellectual bullying and brute force, just when we needed his contribution most.
Citigroup agreed to undergo an independent “racial equity audit,” the bank announced on Oct. 22.
“We believe that by advancing our commitments to help close the racial wealth gap in the United States we can have a meaningful impact on our colleagues, clients, and the communities we serve,” the bank said in a statement. “Measurement and transparency are important components of the work we are doing to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, both at our bank and through our contributions to our communities and society more generally.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion training and jargon are closely associated with critical race theory, according to Legal Insurrection’s Criticalrace.org, which tracks critical race theory and the related “anti-racist” movement at schools across the United States. Critical race theory is an offshoot of the Marxist critical theory school of thought that first emerged in Germany in the early 20th century.
Some school districts have carried out “equity audits” to review data on race, which entails the hiring of so-called diversity and inclusion consultants to ensure a focus on race, according to Criticalrace.org
Citibank in September of last year announced that it would conduct an “Action for Racial Equality” (ARE) in the wake of riots, protests, and calls to “defund the police” last summer following the death of George Floyd.
That program, according to the Wall Street bank’s statement, is meant “to (1) provide greater access to banking and credit in communities of color, (2) increase investment in Black-owned businesses, (3) expand affordable housing and homeownership among Black Americans, and (4) advance anti-racist practices in our company and the financial services industry.”
It’s not clear if any other banks will follow suit. Global asset management firm BlackRock previously said it plans to conduct a “racial equity audit” next year.
The audit will be performed by lawyers at Covington & Burling LLP, “who have civil rights expertise and experience leading racial equity audits across various industries,” according to Citibank.
Meanwhile, the audit “will include input from a range of stakeholders, including colleagues involved in implementing ARE as well as civil rights organizations that we anticipate will share the views of the customers and communities ARE is designed to support. We look forward to releasing the results from the audit once it is completed,” the bank added.
Earlier this year, members of the House debated a bill from Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) that would mandate financial companies to carry out racial audits every two years.
It’s the one thing that those who claim former President Donald Trump is a terminal degenerate and a serial sex offender will always fall back on: The “Access Hollywood” tape.
In the last days of the 2016 campaign, unreleased footage from a 2005 shoot Donald Trump did for “Access Hollywood” came into the hands of The Washington Post. Trump, then the host of “The Apprentice,” was doing an appearance on the set of the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.”
The most infamous part of the tape involves Trump making a profoundly obscene remark about the effect fame has on women: “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab ’em by the p***y. You can do anything.”
Yes, it was very wrong. Yes, Trump’s original statement that the remarks were “locker room banter” was insufficient.
However, then-first lady Michelle Obama wasn’t one to talk when she decided to lecture Trump on the campaign trail — and many Americans have no doubt forgotten the double standard in the intervening years
“This wasn’t just locker-room banter,” Michelle Obama said during a trip to New Hampshire shortly after news of the tape broke, according to a transcript from the BBC.
“This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.”
At the time, the now-deceased conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh pointed out the hypocrisy inherent in these statements after the Obamas invited pop music stars to the White House whose lyrics were far more vulgar than anything Trump said.
WARNING: Some of the language quoted below is graphic and may be offensive to some readers.
“Men brag, and she is telling people that she doesn’t know men who brag. You know the people that have been to the White House?” he said, according to a transcript on RushLimbaugh.com.
Do you think Michelle Obama is a hypocrite?
“How about some of the rappers that talk about their b*****s and their hos have performed such lyrics in the White House? But she doesn’t know men who talk and sing about sexual assault. It’s all over hip-hop lyrics and has been for a while!
“So is assault on the police a feature of some hip-hop lyrics, and it’s been performed at the White House. But she doesn’t know men who talk that way. She doesn’t know decent guys who talk that way.”
While what was actually performed at the White House is open to question in this case, there’s no question those who were invited didn’t have a lyrical oeuvre that would match, say, Bob Dylan’s.
Take Pusha T, who visited the White House in 2016, according to the rap website DJ Booth.
“We see a b***h, you fall in love, I fall back cause my b***h date her,” Pusha raps in one song.
Busta Rhymes was another Obama White House guest, according to DJ Booth. One of his songs was titled, “C’mon All My N****z, C’mon All My B****s.” It is, um, somewhat self-explanatory in content.
Jay-Z was another guest, according to DJ Booth, and was known as a friend of the president’s, CNN reported.
Here’s Jay on “99 Problems“: “Now once upon a time not too long ago/ A n***a like myself had to strong-arm a ho / This is not a ho in the sense of having a p***y / But a p***y having no g**damn sense try and push me.”
Let me translate: Jay had a lot of enemies he had to strong-arm like they were misbehaving women. Not that they were misbehaving women, because they didn’t have the requisite equipment. But they were acting like misbehaving women, so they needed the treatment. Just to clear that up.
Limbaugh also brought up a “sermon” by the Obamas’ former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“Yeah, I guess Michelle Obama wasn’t there when the Rev. Wright was talking about Bill Clinton,” Limbaugh said.
“You remember what Rev. Wright said about Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky? … ‘And Bill and Monica Lewinsky was riding dirty. Yeah, chickens have come home to roost, baby.’ ‘Bill was riding dirty,’ and the population, the congregation went nuts.”
And while Limbaugh didn’t mention her, let’s not forget Michelle’s BFF, Beyoncé (Jay-Z’s wife). Here are some of her lyrical exploits.
“First both of my legs go back on your head, and whatever you want, yeah baby, I’m bad” (from “No Angel“)
“Can you lick my Skittles, it’s the sweetest in the middle / Pink is the flavor, solve the riddle” (from “Blow.”)
“I can’t wait till I get home so you can tear that cherry out / Turn that cherry out, turn that cherry out” (ibid)
“Now my mascara running, red lipstick smudged / Yeah, he’s so horny he wants to f*** / He popped all my buttons and he ripped my blouse/ He Monica Lewinsky-ed all on my gown / Oh there daddy, daddy, he didn’t bring the towel / Oh baby, baby, we better slow it down” (from “Partition”)
“Over there I swear I saw them cameras flash / Hand prints and footprints on my glass / Hand prints and good grips on my a**” (ibid)
This is evidence of a perverse taste in music Michelle Obama should be ashamed of. Instead, she calls Beyoncé a role model.
Five years after the Obamas left the White House, there’s a reminder here: What Democrats will countenance is entirely dependent on the political affiliation of the individual or individuals involved.
That’s true for violent demonstrations — countless Black Lives Matter and antifa riots went uncondemned by Democrats, while the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion is the subject of a House committee appointed by Nancy Pelosi.
It’s true for sex.
Consider Bill Clinton — the rape allegations, the fact he took advantage of a young intern while he was the president of the United States, the overall sleaziness.
There’s occasionally a move to distance the party from Bill — but it never really goes anywhere despite alleged victims who have been unwavering in their allegations of sexual assault against the former president. The only consistent evidence against Trump is the “Access Hollywood” tape. Look which one they care about.
As for the language, the verdict was out on that one the moment Michelle Obama tried to pretend she didn’t know anyone that talked like that.
But for liberals and their allies in the mainstream media, hypocrisy and double standards will never go out of style.
The final decision, after years of debate, was made Oct. 8 to remove from the New York City Council chambers the statue of the man we all know to have been a dreaded slaveholder—to the tune of 600 over his lifetime—Thomas Jefferson.
Despite that, writing at Bari Weiss’ substack, political science professor Samuel Goldman, with whom I concur, is less than happy
“The removal is disgraceful. Unlike monuments to Confederate leaders that display them in full military glory, Jefferson is depicted as a writer. Holding a quill pen in one hand and the Declaration of Independence in the other, he is clearly being honored for composing an immortal argument for liberty and equality.”
Ah, life, isn’t it complicated? Just ask Sally Hemings. But you can’t, obviously. Who knows—perhaps Jefferson went to his grave wishing he could have married Sally, his slave with whom he apparently had children. Sally may well have felt the same way. Nothing is simple.
Like it or not we are all creatures of our times. Thomas Jefferson was clearly a hypocrite, often tortured by his own hypocrisy, but he was also a genius whose writings offered great hope for humanity, all of humanity, despite NY City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian caucuses calling, as Goldman reminds us, the Declaration he authored “the disgusting and racist basis on which America was founded.”
Having been a professional writer all my life and having had the good fortune to know many fine authors, playwrights, and essayists, some “of color” even, I know not one who has written anything nearly as powerful and evocative as “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Those words bring tears to my eyes, now more than ever, given the current state of our presidential rhetoric which runs to “Build back… y’know… the thing.”
What Jefferson’s critics are unable to do, likely don’t want to do, is practice what is known in psychoanalysis as “containment” and is defined in Webster’s as “the act, process, or means of keeping something within limits.”
Someone with a relatively healthy mind is able to put historical revelations in a context. Nothing appalls the “woke” more than that. They are always accusing the rest us of “contextualizing.” But that is what adults do. We look at the past, evaluate it, try to take the best from it and avoid the worst, and move on.
That is the way to observe George Santayana’s dictum “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The left don’t aim to remember the past. They aim to obliterate it.
And thus they are condemned to repeat it. As they are now—in the United States of America—to everybody else’s dismay and horror.
Who will be the next to go? Benjamin Franklin—America’s own DaVinci. No doubt he’s in their crosshairs. (What about that poor little mouse from “Ben and Me” so many of us grew up with?)
Fortunately, in the case of the Jefferson statue, it will not be destroyed, but removed to another location. (Wise move because these things often are walked back when people come to their senses.) And it’s not the original anyway, but a copy. The original is in the Capitol Rotunda, waiting for The Squad to complain about its presence and/or existence, if they haven’t already.
I learned something I had not known about that original from Goldman’s article. It was “commissioned by the French sculptor David d’Angers in 1833 by Uriah P. Levy, a Jewish naval officer who suffered from antisemitism in his military career.” That included six courts-martial, some apparently stemming from duels fought over religious slurs.
Levy was devoted to Jefferson’s memory, particularly because of the third president’s strong belief in religious freedom. But Levy—who had commanded a vessel to suppress the slave trade—had some blemishes of his own. After Jefferson’s death, he purchased more than a dozen slaves to work on the restoration of Monticello.
Which, ironically, leads us to the present when the crusade against Jefferson at the City Council has been led by pro-despot (Mugabe and Qaddafi), pro-Hamas, ally of the New Black Panther Party Assemblyman Charles Barron, who has claimed “real” Semites are black and accused Israel of—you guessed it—“genocide.”
How to explain, then, that the Arab population of Israel has grown considerably faster than the Jewish? Problem, no? You’d think after Auschwitz the Jews would know how to do genocide. Slow learners, I guess.
But no matter. Such things don’t concern folks like Barron. (He also called Jefferson a “pedophile” who “raped children.”)
Give me Thomas Jefferson, warts and all, over the Charles Barrons of the world any time.
As for where the Jews fit in all this, I will have more to say when reporting from the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference in Las Vegas Nov 5. It’s safe to say their kinsman Merrick Garland will not be popular with this group. He sure isn’t with me.
So, to paraphrase Sun Tzu, keep your Jefferson statues close and your Franklin statues closer. (And maybe keep a few Madisons in the closet.)
Campaign work for congressional candidates is usually arduous, thankless and a difficult way to earn a living.
If you need evidence, consider the staff on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. Despite the fact the Vermont independent has been one of the most ardent champions of raising the minimum wage, many of his campaign staffers were paid significantly less than what he was promising Americans. It wasn’t until September of 2019 that he finally struck a deal with the union representing his field organizers to pay them at least $15 an hour, CNBC reported.
All of which is to say that if you want to strike it rich, campaign-level, retail politics probably isn’t the start. Then again, when you’re campaigning for mom, and mom happens to be a star of progressive Democratic politics, things can be a lot more lucrative.
According to a report from the U.K. Daily Mail, financial disclosure records from California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters reveal the far-left fixture paid her daughter over $80,000 in taxpayer money during the last fiscal year.
Between Oct. 23, 2020 and June 17, 2021, Karen Waters was paid $81,650 in campaign funds, according to the Tuesday report. Fox News had previously reported the number was over $74,000.
This isn’t a one-off thing, either. Since 2003, Karen Waters has received over $1.1 million for working for her mother’s campaigns — including $250,000 during the 2020 election cycle.
“The daughter of the California Democrat organized slate-mailing operations to bolster her mother’s reelection,” Fox News reported.
“Slate-mailing is an uncommon practice in federal elections, where a consulting firm is hired to create a pamphlet of sorts that contains a list of candidates or policy measures, and advises voters how to cast their ballots.”
In fact, the practice is so uncommon only one federal candidate used it at the federal level in 2020: Maxine Waters.
Should nepotism like this be illegal?
Furthermore, this isn’t the first time Waters’ family has made money off of the representative. In 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported that her family had made more than $1 million through Waters or causes and concerns she supported.
At the time, she told The Washington Post there was nothing amiss with the relationship.
“They do their business and I do mine,” Waters said at the time. “We are not bad people.”
However, keep in mind that what Karen Waters made from sending out slate mailers for her mother is more than twice the real median personal income of an American — $35,977, according to PolicyAdvice.
Foul-smelling though this may be, it’s legal. If family member are “providing bona fide services to the campaign,” payments to them aren’t prohibited unless they’re “in excess of the fair market value of the services provided.”
This issue had previously arisen when it turned out that the campaign of Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar had funneled almost $3 million to a firm owned by a man who would eventually become her husband.
However, while Omar’s relationship with Tim Mynett’s E Street Group came under scrutiny, it began before the two were sharing conjugal bonds.
However, this to-do is a bit of a different fish, inasmuch as — to state the obvious — Karen Waters has always been Maxine Waters’ daughter, from the congresswoman’s first marriage, which ended in 1972.
Omar also had the good sense to cut ties with her husband’s firm after the 2020 election. Karen Waters remains very gainfully employed by her mother to do a job almost no other federal candidate feels the need to fill.
Working-class Americans are struggling to get by in President Joe Biden’s inflationary economy. Meanwhile, Karen Waters is taking over $80,000 a year of campaign money for an unnecessary job in her mom’s office.
If only Bernie Sanders’ campaign workers had been so lucky.
The Supreme Court has dealt two devastating blows to the aspirations of Black Lives Matter and its ilk on the left who leverage the false narrative that the thin blue line is a tool of systemic white supremacy for political gain.
Two rulings issued on Monday took the side of police officers in cases involving qualified immunity, both of which involved incidents of excessive force.
Qualified immunity is the legal doctrine that shields government officials, such as police officers, from lawsuits except in cases when they have clearly broken established law.
Eliminating these legal protections has become a prime policy target of the vehemently anti-law enforcement progressive hard left and the rhetoric surrounding last summer’s violent, destructive and divisive George Floyd riots and subsequent “defund the police” insanity.
The high court issued unsigned orders with no dissents on Monday, stating that in neither case had the officer broken the law as established by previous rulings.
Interestingly, both cases involved suspects who were reportedly in the process of victimizing women when police showed up, according to NPR.
In the first case, officer Daniel Rivas-Villegas from Union City, California, responded to a call from a terrified 12-year-old girl who said she and her mother and sister had barricaded themselves in a room because one Ramon Cortesluna was in the process of destroying stuff in the house with a chainsaw (emphasis mine).
After another officer shot Cortesluna with bean bag rounds, Rivas-Villegas knelt on his back to retrieve him of the knife he was wielding.
Cortesluna sued — what is this world coming to, after all, when you can’t terrorize women and children without fear of getting roughed up when the cops show up to intervene?
Do you support qualified immunity?
In the second case, a woman in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, called police saying that her drunken ex-husband, Dominic Rollice, refused to leave her home. When police showed up, they confronted Rollice in the garage, where he picked up a hammer which he refused to drop when ordered by police, whom he approached with the tool raised over his head. He was shot and killed.
The Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling that had found the officers broke the law, stating that “not one” case “comes close to establishing that the officers’ conduct was unlawful.”
Democrats pounced on the opportunity to advocate for legislation that would end qualified immunity, as they are indeed wont to favor policies that will likely lead to the further victimization of women, children and minorities.
By shielding police officers from accountability, qualified immunity encourages more police violence against Black and Brown people. The Supreme Court remains unwilling to correct this injustice. Congress needs to pass my legislation to finally abolish qualified immunity. https://t.co/a0ePZrewjo
The Democrats, under the influence of Black Lives Matter, love to canonize men like Jacob Blake, for example, who was shot by police officers sparking days of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.
He has been lionized by the left to the point that he’s personally met with now-Vice President Kamala Harris — and he was armed and allegedly in the process of harassing a woman he had sexually assaulted in front of their child when police initiated contact with him.
Harris said she was “proud of” him.
The notorious “Squad” voiced their support for such legislation last year, writing in support of a sweeping justice reform bill that it was necessary to eliminate qualified immunity granted that “police violence, as a weapon of structural racism, continues to have devastating and deadly consequences for Black and brown lives across our country.”
What about the lives of those who are victimized by criminals? Do their lives not matter? What about the women victimized by these reportedly belligerent men?
When it comes to living in a civil, lawful society, you simply can’t have your cake and eat it too. You cannot expect to live on streets where law and order are enforced by officers who are exhaustively trained on how to physically restrain violent criminals and not expect them to use force when they show up.
As police officers, they should absolutely be held to a high standard when they violate the law that they certainly have more understanding of than the people they’re often showing up to confront.
Yet police officers use violence to fight violence — and to put them at risk of civil suit every time they ever lay hands on a criminal with anything other than kid gloves is not only ludicrous, it’s downright dangerous.
As a woman, I don’t want to live in a society where officers can’t defend themselves or members of the public over fear of an arbitrary or frivolous lawsuit.
It’s heartening to see this lawsuit in today’s political climate, especially when you consider that “defund the police” has already proven to be politically toxic for the left.
Just like the Black Lives Matter organization itself, the movement as a whole is panning out to be far more toxic and destructive for our society than their pie-in-the-sky vision of a world in which no more prisons or police somehow can produce a perfect justice system.
Justice can’t exist unless all lives matter — and society works together with the same common goal to protect the vulnerable against those who seek to threaten and destroy life, not empower them in the name of a twisted and perverted form of “justice” like the one that’s been peddled to us for too long.
An underreported result of the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin is upending American ideals of justice
The sanctity of American justice is predicated on the right to a fair trial. Trial by jury was one of the most important American principles at its founding, guaranteed in the body of the Constitution in Article III, Section 2, and in the Sixth Amendment. It was instituted as a protection of individuals against abuses by the government.
Earlier this year, police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd. Chauvin’s attorneys had hired highly experienced and respected retired forensic pathologist Dr. David Fowler as an expert witness. Fowler testified that Floyd died of “a sudden cardiac arrhythmia due to his [underlying] heart disease … during his restraint and subdual by the police” and not because of lack of oxygen. Despite Fowler’s testimony, the jury convicted Chauvin of murder.
Many trials end in decisions that seem wrong, and you may or may not agree with the conviction of Chauvin. But whether we agree with any particular decision or not, the American system of justice requires us to abide by it. Otherwise, the system falls apart.
The whittling away of the American justice system in this instance is not the government’s attempt to change a jury’s verdict; the government got the conviction that it wanted. In a dangerous precedent, the government is now attempting to ensure that future cases are more likely to result in the verdict it wants by making it clear that witnesses with whom it disagrees will be punished, ostracized, and have their careers destroyed.
Fowler, Chauvin’s expert witness, was Maryland’s chief medical examiner from 2002 to 2019. According to his resume on the website of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (pdf), Fowler was trained in forensic pathology at the University of Cape Town. He was an adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland in the departments of pediatrics and pathology, and on the faculty at the National Study Center for Trauma and Emergency Medical Systems. Fowler is a past president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. He has authored numerous book chapters, scientific journal articles, and formal presentations. He currently serves as the National Association of Medical Examiners representative to the Forensic Science Standards Board.
Shortly after the trial, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh “received a letter from D.C.’s former chief medical examiner Roger Mitchell, and signed by 431 doctors from around the country, saying Fowler’s conclusions were so far outside the bounds of accepted forensic practice that all his previous work could come into question,” according to the Associated Press. Within 24 hours, Frosch, in consultation with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s chief legal counsel, announced an investigation into Fowler’s prior in-custody death examinations (pdf). In September, Frosch announced the members of the audit design team (pdf). This development is very troubling.
I work as an expert witness in technology cases. I’ve participated in over 240 cases over 25 years. I’ve seen unethical behavior by expert witnesses, a small number of whom can be paid to say almost anything to support their client’s position. I’ve written about this unethical behavior and about the need to set stricter standards for expert testimony and more significant consequences for those who purposely misrepresent facts, use unaccepted processes, change testimony, or participate in other unscrupulous behavior. The key, though, is that I challenge expert results in court after I’ve seen all the evidence, produced my own rigorous analysis, and come to my own conclusions. Many times, another expert will examine the same evidence, produce an analysis, and come to different conclusions. There’s no crime in being wrong. The jury listens to the experts, guided by the lawyers, weighs the evidence, and comes to a decision. Our justice system is far from perfect, but for the system to work and be as fair as possible, we all must abide by the judicial outcomes.
If any of the armchair medical “experts” in the world are allowed to bring down the career of Fowler, then few people will ever have the courage to testify contrary to the government’s case or the public’s desires. There may be no stronger or more serious undermining of the American justice system than this one. For the American justice system to survive, people must be free to testify honestly and without outside pressure.
For the sake of basic American principles of justice, honest expert opinions must be given openly, without coercion, and without the belief that the government could destroy your reputation and career if you testify the “wrong” way. This is one more move by those on the left who are working against American principles and attempting to destroy the very basis of our society. We must all work to stop it, especially in its most subtle forms.
Violence against law enforcement officials increased dramatically in 2020, according to a Monday FBI news release.
Over 60,000 assaults on law enforcement officers while in the line of duty occurred in 2020, an increase of more than 4,000 from just over 56,000 on-the-job assaults in 2019, according to the news release.
Of all the officers assaulted in 2020, more than 18,500 (30.9 percent) sustained injuries.
Just under 44,500 assaults employed “personal weapons,” including “hands, fists, or feet,” and 25.8 percent of officers attacked in this manner suffered injuries.
Nearly 30 percent of on-the-job assaults of law enforcement officers resulted from responses to “disturbance calls such as family quarrels or bar fights,” meanwhile more than 16 percent followed attempted arrests by officers.
During an interview last week, Director Christopher Wray reflected on the dangers that law enforcement officers face: “Law enforcement officers these days are dealing with a whole range of threats at a time when, in many ways, the job is more dangerous than ever.” pic.twitter.com/U7PTULzGxG
As of Tuesday, 61 law enforcement officers were fatally feloniously wounded in 2021, according to the FBI’s Law Enforcement Data Explorer.
Of those killed this year, 24 were the victims of unprovoked attacks.
Will violent acts against officers continue to increase?
In 2020, 40 officers were killed while performing their duties.
“Lingering animosity toward law enforcement officers, overheated political rhetoric, and a decline in respect for law and order results in increased violence against law enforcement officers,” National Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Of greatest concern should be violence that specifically targets officers. As of October 13th, 100 law enforcement officers were shot in 81 separate ambush-style attacks in just this year — a 153% increase from this time in 2020.”
“Despite all the adversity, our nation’s law enforcement officers continue to put themselves in harm’s way to protect and serve the communities that we love, but they need our help,” Yoes added.
“I am renewing our calls to enact the ‘Protect and Serve Act,’ which addresses the troubling increases in violence targeting officers and which will better protect the men and women who wear the badge.”
Content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of the DCNF’s original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
President Joe Biden’s support in the black community is one of the most inexplicable phenomena of modern politics.
Despite several racial gaffes during the 2020 primaries — like talking about his work with Dixiecrat segregationists on racial busing as evidence of “civility” in Washington or telling a crowd in Iowa that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” — it was black support in the South Carolina primary that saved his campaign after a series of botched debates and poor showings in the first three primaries and caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
While it could be argued that the only other viable Democrat candidate after the first three contests, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, never gelled with black voters (or anyone outside of his white progressive base, for that matter), black support propelled Biden to the nomination. Many pundits felt black turnout for Biden — particularly in Georgia — helped Biden take the presidency.
What fueled the loyalty? Was it the fact Biden is seen as being close to former President Barack Obama, having served as his vice president? Was it the connections he’s made with black leaders during nearly a half-century in Washington politics?
Was it the time he went on the New York City-based radio program “The Breakfast Club” and told listeners that “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black?”
Or is it the fact he keeps lying to black America about what he’s done for racial justice?
Case in point: On Monday, Biden addressed the 2021 State and National Teachers of the Year event at the White House. These are the kinds of national TV speeches that should easily pass without incident. As far as the White House and Biden supporters are concerned, the best news that can come out of these affairs is if no news comes out of them. We’re talking about it, however, so guess how that went?
According to a White House transcript, the president began getting himself in trouble when he told the long-winded tale of how he first got elected to the Senate in Delaware even though the seat was considered “to be a lead-pipe cinch” for the Republicans.
If you’re familiar with Biden’s backstory, that part’s actually kind of true. We have an improbable Democratic upset during a 1972 Republican landslide to thank, in part, for the fact we now have a president who, if his handlers weren’t there to direct him to Air Force One, would spend the afternoon wandering around Joint Base Andrews looking for the Braniff International check-in counter.
Is Joe Biden basically dishonest?
The rest of the rambling story would probably be marked on Wikipedia as [citation needed]. It involves attending an off-year state party convention and having a bunch of Democrat bigwigs bust into his room while he was “in a towel with shaving cream on my face,” saying he should run for the seat that was supposed to be a GOP lock.
After leaving the convention, Biden said, he went and saw an old professor at the University of Delaware, a Dr. Ingersoll, who paraphrased Plato to him: “The penalty good people pay for not being involved in politics is being governed by people worse than themselves.”
There are so many jokes one could make about that statement, particularly when we look at who’s governing us from the White House. The important part, however, was the lie Biden was about to tell:
“And he looked at me, and he said, ‘Joe, you should run.’ I said, ‘But I — I feel strongly about all of these issues, but I…’ I had gotten involved in the civil rights movement and the wa- — but I —
“He said, ‘Joe, you should do it,’” Biden continued. “He had enough confidence in me that he gave me confidence in myself. With a kid with no money, coming from a middle-class family, who grew up in grade school stuttering, literally — for me, I’m confident I would have never done it were it not for Dr. Ingersoll.”
Joe Biden was never involved in the civil rights movement in any meaningful sense. He’s admitted as much in his own words, when he wasn’t trying to exaggerate his own importance. He was “concerned,” he said, but was not an “activist.”
By that standard, football fans who watch every Sunday from their couch or a stool at the local bar are more “involved” in the NFL than Biden was in the civil rights movement. (They’re not just “concerned.” They’re screaming.)
And we know this would get a “pants on fire” fact-check rating because he’s been caught lying about his involvement in the civil rights movement before and had to walk it back.
And then he started spouting the same lies again:
In 1987, Joe Biden claimed he marched in the civil rights movement. A few months later, Biden disavowed the claim. Decades later, during the Obama era, and more recently on the campaign trail, he started making the same claims again. https://t.co/NAlMJ6ZTq7pic.twitter.com/tpmE6VXmG6
The first spurious claims came during his abortive 1988 presidential run, which eventually died after he was caught plagiarizing a speech. However, claims he made about his involvement in marching and protesting for civil rights also came under scrutiny.
As The Intercept pointed out, his rhetoric changed considerably over the course of 1987.
In February: “When I was 17 years old, like many of you, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate the restaurants and movie houses of Wilmington, Delaware.”
In April: “I came out of the civil rights movement … I was one of those guys that sat in and marched and all that stuff.”
In September: “During the 1960s, I was in fact very concerned about the civil rights movement,” Biden said. “I was not an activist. I worked at an all-black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, Delaware. I was involved in what they were thinking, what they were feeling. I was involved, but I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma, I was not anywhere else. I was a suburbanite kid who got a dose of exposure to what was happening to black Americans in my own city.”
What’s more, this pattern continued during the Obama years. As The Intercept reported, Biden would frequently spend his time as vice president citing his attempts to desegregate Delaware movie theaters despite inconsistencies in his stories and almost no evidence he was seriously involved.
And this isn’t even counting his biggest race-related whopper — technically not related to the American civil rights movement but still worth noting.
In February of 2020, Biden claimed apartheid-era South African police arrested him as he was trying to visit Nelson Mandela, saying “I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robbens Island.”
Soweto is a township in Johannesburg, hundreds of miles away from Robben Island, the prison off of Cape Town where Mandela was being held. Biden would later try to explain this away by saying he was “stopped” and could not “move where I wanted to go,” not that he was actually arrested. As for being hundreds of miles away from Mandela, he didn’t explain that part — nor was he asked to.
In short, Biden has lied and continues to lie about what he’s done for civil rights and racial justice. He gets called on it occasionally — but is rarely taken to task in any serious manner for inflating his civil rights resumé.
And yet, in 2020, a man who blatantly and repeatedly lied to the black community about his commitment to their cause got their overwhelming support.
Sure, Bernie Sanders was and is no great shakes. At least he never claimed he got arrested in Toronto trying to bail Martin Luther King Jr. out of a Birmingham, Alabama jail.
High-paid Atlanta officials simultaneously collected taxpayer-funded salaries, consulting fees
A pair of highly paid Atlanta government employees took hundreds of hours of paid time off to consult for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D., Ga.) political campaign, a double dip that saw them rake in nearly $100,000.
According to campaign finance records, Phillana Williams and Erica Pines received a combined $97,500 from Warnock during the Georgia Senate runoff elections. Williams and Pines held six-figure salary jobs with the city of Atlanta throughout the election period, during which the operatives took a combined 297 hours in paid vacation time, payroll records provided by the city of Atlanta show.
The move allowed Williams and Pines to minimize their public service responsibilities as they raked in lucrative payments from taxpayers and the Warnock campaign. A veteran Georgia political operative told the Washington Free Beacon that while congressional staffers often take time off “to lend a hand in the closing weeks of their boss’s campaign,” that time is unpaid.
“The employee of an unrelated and nonpartisan public office taking paid leave to make a buck on Warnock’s campaign is a bad look for everyone involved,” the operative said.
Williams, Pines, and Warnock did not return requests for comment.
Williams, who still serves as director of marketing and strategy in Atlanta’s Office of Entertainment, took 24 vacation leave days from Nov. 23, 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021—a total of 192 hours, City Records show. She went on to receive $62,500 from Warnock’s campaign on Jan. 26 through her consulting company, the Phillana Factor. In addition to her work with Warnock, Williams took $65,000 in combined payments for consulting work on President Joe Biden and Sen. Jon Ossoff’s (D., Ga.) campaigns.
From Oct. 24, 2020, to Jan. 15, 2021, meanwhile, Pines took 105 hours of “scheduled” paid time off from her role as Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) senior director. During that time, she received $35,000 from the Warnock campaign through Sweet Tea Consulting, an LLC that Pines did not establish with the state of Georgia until late June, according to Business Records.
The paid time off proved fruitful for Pines—she submitted her Letter Of Resignation to MARTA’s chief of staff in April, writing “it is time for me to leap full time into political consulting.”
At the state government level, Georgia’s State Personnel Board prohibits employees from “directing, managing, controlling, or participating in a political campaign for state office.” As city officials working on federal campaigns, however, Williams and Pines are not bound by that law.
Williams and Pines were not the only local government employees Warnock hired as political consultants. The Democrat also paid more than $75,000 to DeKalb County director of external affairs Meredith Lilly through her LLC, Love Strategies. The payments came after Lilly requested an unpaid leave of absence for “personal reasons” from Nov. 23, 2020, to Jan. 5, 2021, County Records obtained by the Free Beacon show.
Warnock has a long history with Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D.). Warnock served on the Democrat’s transition team in 2018—Bottoms later faced criticism when she used taxpayer funds to pay campaign aides for transition work before she took office, a move that “circumvented normal city hiring processes and broke with longstanding political practice,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Just months into her tenure, Bottoms appointed Warnock’s then-wife as the city’s “senior human trafficking fellow,” which also drew a six-figure salary.
Warnock defeated former Republican senator Kelly Loeffler by roughly 2 points in January. He is expected to face Republican challenger Herschel Walker in 2022.
It isn’t the best time to be living in a large American city.
Throughout the country, it has become trendy to blame law enforcement for everyone’s problems, and community safety has suffered as a result.
Look no further than St. Paul, Minnesota, for an example of this phenomenon.
Alpha News reported last month that Ramsey County, which encapsulates the city, no longer will prosecute felonies stemming from “low-level” traffic stops. The county claims these procedures have a history of harming minorities.
George Floyd, a black man, was killed in St. Paul’s twin city, Minneapolis, by white police officer Derek Chauvin while under Chauvin’s knee for several minutes on May 25 of last year in a killing that set off nationwide protests and calls for police reform.
This past April, Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
“As leaders in the justice system, we must step forward and fundamentally change a longstanding systemic injustice that has impacted generations of people in our community and across this country,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said in a statement on Sept. 8 of this year.
“Recognizing the role we play as prosecutors in perpetuating racial inequities that often result from these types of stops is an important first step in charting a new, less harmful course.”
These statements were corroborated by a collection of county officials and left-wing activists.
Has your community considered defunding the police?
“We have a vision of a vibrant community where all are safe and healthy and valued and thrive,” added Toni Carter, the Ramsey County board chair, according to Alpha News.
“And we know we can’t get there with an us-them mentality. We are working to listen to those who have been involved in these traffic stops, who have experienced the building of records, based upon one incident after the other, to determine what really works for all of us.”
Choi said the policy would apply only for traffic stops based solely on consent. If there is a “dangerous condition” involved, authorities may continue to make arrests, according to the statement.
Nevertheless, the clarification didn’t win the county many friends beyond the police chief. After all, lawlessness is lawlessness.
State Sen. Warren Limmer, who represents portions of nearby Hennepin County, was particularly furious.
“It’s (Choi’s) job to put criminals away, not leave them on the streets,” Limmer told Alpha News. “Violent crime is still on the rise, and this is absolutely the wrong direction prosecutors should be going.”
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, one of the most powerful police unions in the state, sided with Limmer.
“Basically, the county attorney just announced his office won’t uphold the law and won’t prosecute those who break it,” the union said in a statement.
“Ramsey County residents be warned: those that break the law won’t even get a slap on the wrist — they’ll get a high-five from the county attorney and be left to commit more, and more serious, offenses. Reduction of crime and public safety for all should be our focus as the crime rate escalates — and this isn’t it.”
It remains to be seen how Ramsey County’s crime rates and general welfare will evolve. One thing is for sure, though: St. Paul residents are less safe now than before this mess started.
Portland, Oregon, businesses and residents may be at the mercy of rioters and looters, but it’s not because their police don’t want to do anything.
It’s that they can’t.
According to KOIN-TV, the Portland Police Bureau told residents of the city’s downtown Pearl District that their hands were tied during a riot this past week that caused a half-million dollars worth of damage. The culprit? Democrats in the state legislature who limited their ability to use crowd dispersal tactics.
In a media release, the PPB said “around 100 anarchists caused substantial damage to businesses and government buildings in downtown Portland Tuesday night.
“Investigations into the criminal behavior are underway. No arrests have been made yet. At this point the damage is believed to be in excess of $500,000, and reports are still being compiled,” the media release read.
While dispersal orders were given, there was no way to actually effect a dispersal. Why? It comes back to House Bill 2928, a piece of state legislation that prohibits police from using pepper spray, rubber bullets and other similar tools unless the use of deadly physical force would otherwise be justified, according to The Post Millennial.
That’s why KOIN saw police officers in their cars on Tuesday as the riot raged on.
“The reason that we did not intervene goes back to what we talked about last month with HB 2928 and the restrictions placed on us in a crowd control environment,” Lt. Jake Jensen told the Pearl District Neighborhood Association during a meeting on Thursday night, two nights after the destruction.
“That’s the way our legislature has said we need to operate in a crowd control environment. So that’s the way we are going to operate in a crowd control environment.
“The fact of the matter is without being able to use pepper spray, without being able to use our 40mm less-lethal devices in that kind of environment, it really prevents us from having access to the tools we need in large part to keep ourselves safe,” he added.
And that doesn’t matter how many police officers the department has, either.
“This issue, if I’m understanding, will not be solved no matter how many officers you bring back — yes or no?” said Bill Bagnall, secretary and director of communications of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, during the meeting.
“Yes, that is correct,” Jensen said.
Another resident asked if the law meant “we are now like a lawless city, anyone can come in and just bash around and do all the damage they want without any repercussions whatsoever?”
Jensen said that arrests could be made and charges could be filed later.
“In these cases, the consequences are going to come not on the night of, but in the follow-up investigation,” he said.
That’ll convince the mob to stay away.
Keep in mind this is the second time in the past week a neighborhood group in Portland has asked the city for help dealing with lawlessness.
According to KATU-TV, a group of businesses in the Old Town neighborhood sent a letter to Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland’s city commissioners with concerns about both their staff and visitors.
In the letter, the businesses said they were “writing to put on the record our profound concerns regarding the rapidly deteriorating conditions in our neighborhood and to demand immediate action to safeguard our visitors, staff and volunteers.”
“Old Town and the New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District was once home to the largest population of Cantonese-Chinese outside of San Francisco and one of the two Japantowns in Portland. Jewish merchants managed and owned businesses in the neighborhood. Our four organizations were founded to preserve an important part of Portland’s history and to celebrate the diversities of our city. Local government’s inability to protect this neighborhood disrespects this history.”
At one restaurant, the letter said, three staff members “experienced a combination of physical and verbal assaults” in a single day.
“It makes all of us want to cry. That’s what we were trying to communicate to our leaders of this city and this county. Our hearts are broken,” said Elizabeth Nye, executive director of the Lan Su Chinese Garden, one of the businesses that signed the letter.
Of all the cities in the United States that were consumed with antifa-related violence and defund-mania last summer, Portland stood head and shoulders above the rest. The chickens have long since come home to roost, however — and the state legislature has handcuffed the police with HB 2928.
Lt. Jensen claimed Portland isn’t a de facto lawless city, at least when it comes to rioters. Its residents might beg to differ.
Jussie Smollett will finally face a trial for his 2019 stunt in which he claimed he was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack in Chicago.
On Friday, Judge James Linn rejected arguments from the actor’s lawyer that the charges against him should be dismissed, according to Fox News.
The claim being made was that under a deal with Cook County prosecutors in which charges were dropped without a trial taking place, Smollett performed community service and forfeited a $10,000 bond.
However, amid a firestorm of controversy over the deal, a special prosecutor was appointed who levied additional charges of lying to police against Smollett. On Friday, Smollett’s attorney sought to wriggle out form under those.
To have Smollett “hauled back into court again” would violate Smollett’s due process rights, attorney Nenye Uche said, according to USA Today.
“There was no trial in this case, there was no jury empaneled, no witnesses were sworn, no evidence was heard, no guilty pleas were ever entered … nothing like that [ever] happened,” Linn said of the case, according to WGN-TV.
“There was no adjudication of this case,” he said then.
After saying there should be no trial, Uche later said that Smollett wants “nothing more than to go to a jury and clear his name.”
Smollett claimed two masked men approached him as he was walking home on Jan. 29, 2019, and “made racist and homophobic insults, beat him and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing,” Fox News reported. However, the account has since been discredited by the two men Smollett reportedly paid to conduct the “racist and homophobic” assault — Abel and Ola Osundario.
The two men alleged that Smollett transferred the sum of $3,500 to them in exchange for the jumping, hoping to “raise his profile,” according to Fox News.
The actor called the charges brought against him a “dog and pony show,” the outlet reported.
LOS ANGELES—In his first public statement following his indictment on federal corruption charges, Los Angeles City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas said he has “no intention of resigning” his seat and is focused on fighting the allegations.
“When I ran for City Council, I made it clear that my highest priority would be addressing the city’s homeless and housing crises, and that remains the case. There is no issue that matters more to Angelenos and to me,” Ridley-Thomas said in a prepared statement.
“That said, I have no intention of resigning my seat on the City Council or neglecting my duties. Doing so would be to the detriment of the people I serve, and I have no intention of leaving my constituents without a voice on matters that directly affect their well-being.
“Going forward, I intend to do two things: disprove the allegations leveled at me and continue the work I was elected to do most importantly, addressing the homeless and housing crisis.”
The 66-year-old Ridley-Thomas is a giant figure in local politics, previously serving on the Los Angeles City Council from 1991-2002, then serving in the state Assembly and state Senate before he was elected to the powerful county Board of Supervisors in 2008, serving until 2020 when he returned to the city council.
The 20-count indictment filed in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday alleges that Ridley-Thomas conspired with Marilyn Louise Flynn, 83, former dean of USC’s School of Social Work, who prosecutors claim agreed to provide Ridley-Thomas’s son with graduate school admission, a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship at the university.
She also allegedly arranged to funnel a $100,000 donation from Ridley-Thomas’s campaign funds through the university to a nonprofit to be operated by his son.
In exchange, the indictment alleges, Ridley-Thomas, who was at the time a Los Angeles County Supervisor, supported contracts involving the School of Social Work, including contracts to provide services to the county Department of Children and Family Services and Probation Department, as well as an amendment to a contract with the Department of Mental Health that would bring the school millions of dollars in new revenue.
Ridley-Thomas is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles. Flynn’s arraignment was set for Oct. 25. Attorneys for both have denied any wrongdoing.
Ridley-Thomas’s attorney, Michael J. Proctor, said Thursday the councilman “was shocked by the federal allegations leveled against him, and with good reason. They are wrong, and we look forward to disproving them.”
Proctor said that at no point in Ridley-Thomas’s political career, “not as a member of the city council, the state Legislature, or the Board of Supervisors has he abused his position for personal gain. Mark Ridley-Thomas has been in public service for 30 years, and his actions have been open to public scrutiny for a full three decades. Over those 30 years, he has demonstrated the quality of his character.”
“We ask you to allow due process to take its course,” the attorney said.
Flynn’s attorney, Vicki I. Podberesky, said, “Marilyn Flynn has devoted her entire professional life to the field of social work. She has spent over 45 years in academia and has worked tirelessly for the improvement and betterment of the social welfare network in Los Angeles and around the country. Ms. Flynn has not committed any crime and we believe that the evidence in this case will ultimately support this conclusion.”
Ridley-Thomas is the third LA city councilman to be indicted in the past couple of years.
Jose Huizar pleaded not guilty in December to bribery and other federal charges in a racketeering indictment, and Mitchell Englander was sentenced in January to 14 months behind bars for lying to federal authorities about his dealings with a businessman who provided him $15,000 in secret cash payments and a night in Las Vegas.
On Friday, Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson raised concerns about the overall issue of corruption within municipal government.
“I’ve been on the council six years, there’s not been one year I’ve been on the council where one of my colleagues or more have not been either under investigation, indicted, or in the case of one member last year actually incarcerated and sits in jail at this moment,” Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson told KCRW. “I think there needs to be greater transparency about what all of us are doing.”
Harris-Dawson noted the shock of the allegations against Ridley-Thomas, someone who has been a leader in LA politics for nearly Harris-Dawson’s entire adult life.
“To see these charges come forward against someone who holds a Ph.D. in social ethics is quite jarring,” Harris-Dawson added.
Civil rights activists who have long lauded Ridley-Thomas’s service to the community have urged against a rush to judgment in the case. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, said the handling of the case could have long-term consequences for Ridley-Thomas’s 10th Council District, which includes areas such as Arlington Heights, Koreatown, Leimert Park, Gramercy Park, Mid-City, Wilshire Center, and Baldwin Village.
“The federal charges against Thomas are serious,” Hutchinson said.
“However, Thomas’s constituents must be the ones to decide his fate. There must be no rush to judgment on his future on the council and in the district he represents. This would be a gross disservice to his constituents.”
Hutchinson’s comments followed Councilman Joe Buscaino’s call for Ridley-Thomas to surrender his council seat.
City Council President Nury Martinez, meanwhile, said the council “will need to take appropriate action” against Ridley-Thomas, although she did not provide specifics.
When Huizar was arrested last year in connection with his corruption case, the council voted to suspend him, leaving his staff to serve as caretakers for the district.
Such a move against Ridley-Thomas could have longer-range consequences, leaving the 10th District without an elected representative at a time when the city is in the midst of redrawing council district lines.
Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who sits on the Homelessness and Poverty Committee, called on Ridley-Thomas to at least step down as chairman of the committee and be stripped of other committee assignments “in the short term.”
“I have great respect for council member Ridley-Thomas both as a person and as a warrior against homelessness, and I’ve treasured the time we’ve spent working together on the Homelessness and Poverty Committee,” Raman said.
“But this committee’s work is of extraordinary importance and involves massive city investments, which require the public’s trust. It cannot be conducted under the shadow of a federal indictment. In the short term, council member Ridley-Thomas should step down from his committee assignments,” Raman said.
The indictment outlines an alleged scheme in 2017 and 2018 in which then-Supervisor Ridley-Thomas sought benefits from Flynn and university officials to benefit an unnamed relative, who was the subject of an internal sexual harassment investigation in the Assembly, likely to resign from elected office and significantly in debt.
While the indictment did not name the relative, Ridley-Thomas’s son, Sebastian, resigned from the Assembly in 2017 amid investigations into sexual harassment complaints. He insisted at the time that his resignation was due to health reasons, not a sexual harassment probe.
Sebastian Ridley-Thomas later became a professor of social work and public policy at the University of Southern California, despite lacking a graduate degree.
He was later terminated over questions about his original appointment and university concerns about the $100,000 that was donated from his father’s campaign funds to the School of Social Work, then directed to a nonprofit run by Sebastian Ridley-Thomas.
New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams met with a Chinese Communist Party-run foreign influence flagged by the U.S. government for seeking to “directly and malignly influence” officials to push pro-Beijing policies.
Adams, the Democratic Party nominee in the upcoming New York City mayoral election, met with leaders from the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) during a 2017 trip to China.
The CPAFFC has been dubbed the “public face” of the United Front – a billion-dollar effort executed by the Chinese Communist Party seeking “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission.
Also referred to as “avowedly an arm of the party-state,” CPAFFC has been flagged by the U.S. State Department for its campaigns to “directly and malignly influence” American officials.
CPAFFC PRESS RELEASE.
Despite the CPAFFC’s track record of conducting foreign influence operations, Adams met with the group in October 2017 during his ongoing tenure as the Borough President of Brooklyn, New York. A CPAFFC press release – “Director Zhang Heqiang Meets with the Mayor of Brooklyn, New York City” – describes the meeting, which took place in Beijing.
The Director “introduced to him the work functions of [CPAFFC] and its work in the United States.”
“In the future, he hopes to further promote Brooklyn’s exchanges with China and enhance bilateral cooperation in the fields of youth exchanges, culture, and commerce,” CPAFFC summarized regarding Adam’s takeaway from the meeting.
A House panel investigating the Jan. 6 incursion of the U.S. Capitol will get tough with anyone who dares to cross it, one committee member said Thursday.
Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy of Florida took a severe stance when she was interviewed on MSNBC.
“We intend to enforce our subpoenas,” she said. “And the first step will be for us to pursue criminal contempt.
“What that means is that the committee will put together a report and then refer it to the House floor. There will be a vote, and then it goes to the Department of Justice.”
The Justice Department could then decide whether to pursue the case or not, although Murphy said she was confident that the Biden administration would support taking as tough a line as possible with any Trump administration officials or supporters of former President Donald Trump that it has targeted.
“I fully expect this Department of Justice to uphold and enforce that subpoena,” she said.
Murphy called the Capitol incursion “an attempt to use political violence to change the outcome of an election.”
She said she wants those who defy the committee to face “the full extent of consequences that is available by the law.”
“I would recommend the full extent of consequences — jail time, fines. We need to make sure that these people understand that this is not acceptable,” Murphy said.
When asked how the panel plans to haul those it wants to hear from before it, Murphy said the effort to do so will be intense.
“I know that we have engaged with a wide variety of law enforcement offices, including the U.S. Marshals, in order to issue the subpoenas, and we will use everything — as you said, with all due respect — we will use all of the agencies and all of the tools at our disposal to issue the subpoenas and then enforce them,” she said.
The committee has subpoenaed Mark Meadows, former chief of staff for Trump; Steve Bannon, a former White House strategist who had left the administration by the time of the incursion; Trump aides Dan Scavino and Kashyap Patel; and various organizers of the rally that took place that day. Bannon has said he will not appear.
Murphy said she wants to know how those in Trump’s orbit were involved in the election protest that eventually devolved into rioting.
“Of Mark Meadows and anyone else in front of us, I want to know how much planning was involved,” she said. “Who was involved in that planning. Who funded it. How they — what their intent was when they came into that day.
“And then what they knew as that day unfolded and the safety and security of people like the vice president and members of Congress were at risk, what they did to either respond or not respond on that occasion.
“What we have to do is lay out the full set of facts and let the American people understand how perilous we were in that moment, how close our Democracy was to going over the cliff. And to ensure that we can lay out the facts and figure out how to fix the situation so that we don’t have anybody who tries to take the opportunity to try to undo a fair and free election.”
“Why isn’t the January 6th Unselect Committee of partisan hacks studying the massive Presidential Election Fraud, which took place on November 3rd and was the reason that hundreds of thousands of people went to Washington to protest on January 6th?” the former president said in a statement issued Wednesday.
“Look at the numbers now being reported on the fraud, which we now call the ‘Really Big Lie.’ You cannot study January 6th without studying the reason it happened, November 3rd,” Trump said.
“But the Democrats don’t want to do that because they know what took place on Election Day in the Swing States, and beyond. If we had an honest media this Election would have been overturned many months ago, but our media is almost as corrupt as our political system!”
NEW!
“Look at the numbers now being reported on the fraud, which we now call the “Really Big Lie.” You cannot study January 6th without studying the reason it happened, November 3rd.” – President Donald J. Trump
In a statement on Monday, the former president said, “The highly partisan Unselect Committee is just a sideshow to distract America from MASSIVE failures by Biden and the Democrats.
“What happened to the Capitol would have never happened if the people in charge did their job and looked at the intelligence. They abandoned the officers on the ground, just like Biden abandoned Americans in Afghanistan.
“Instead of holding bad leaders accountable, the Democrats are going after innocent staffers and attacking the Constitution.”
It’s showdown time in Chicago, as the leader of the union representing its police officers squares off with Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot over her demand that all city workers report their vaccination status to the city by Friday or be put on unpaid leave.
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said that the union will resist and take the city to court if it tries to enforce its mandate on vaccine reporting.
“Whatever happens because of that manpower issue, that falls at the mayor’s doorstep,” Catanzara said in a Youtube video message to Chicago police officers.
He made it clear that he expects to win a war of wills.
“I can guarantee you that no-pay status will not last more than 30 days,” Catanzara said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “There’s no way they’re going to be able to sustain a police department workforce at 50 percent capacity or less for more than seven days without something budging.”
He said that the city has refused to work with the union.
“The reality is the city acknowledged from the beginning their obligation to bargain in good faith over this subject,” Catanzara said, according to WGN-TV. “They have refused.”
Catanzara has said that the union’s issue is not whether or not to be vaccinated. He said he opposes the mandate and the requirement to disclose an officer’s vaccination status.
He has urged union members to file requests for exemptions to the rule on Thursday, the day before the city’s deadline, and not tell the city their vaccination status.
Lightfoot has said the city is ready for whatever comes after Friday.
She said that Catanzara was “doing a patent disservice to his members every single day” by opposing her mandate, according to the Post.
“What we’re focused on is making sure that we maximize the opportunity to create a very safe workplace,” Lightfoot said, according to NBC.
“The data is very clear. It is unfortunate that the FOP leadership has chosen to put out a counter-narrative. But the fact of the matter is, if you are not vaccinated, you are playing with your life, the life of your family, the life of your colleagues and members of the public,” she continued.
But the union is not budging.
“I don’t know how the mayor in good conscience can force this to go forward, and risk sending half the police department home, and subjecting the citizens of this city to that,” Catanzara said, according to WLS-TV.
Aldermen Marty Quinn and Matt O’Shea issued a letter to the mayor that said, in part, “We are extremely concerned that our communities will be put in serious danger.”
Alderman Anthony Napolitano made his case clear.
“I think the mayor has done her due diligence, as well, but we’re asking that there be a repeal of this mandate,” he said.
The establishment media has neglected, yet again, to cover a story concerning voter fraud.
What a surprise. (Sarcasm intended.)
On Monday, it was announced that three Michigan women had been charged with crimes related to their alleged attempts to commit voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“These cases highlight the scrutiny applications and ballots undergo throughout the election process, as well as the thorough investigative process that ensues when instances of attempted fraud are suspected,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.
“We will not hesitate to prosecute anyone who attempts to undermine our elections.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson added that “our election system is secure, and today’s charges demonstrate that in the rare circumstances when fraud occurs we catch it and hold the perpetrators accountable.”
“These charges also send a clear message to those who promote deceitful claims about widespread fraud: the current protocols we have in place work to protect and ensure the integrity of our elections. It’s time to share that truth and stop spreading lies to the contrary,” Benson said.
But a look at what these women were charged with tells a different story and illuminates the many potential pathways to voter fraud.
It also raises an important question: Are the American people supposed to trust government officials to catch each and every instance of fraud when mail-in voting makes it so easy to cheat the system?
The first of the women, Trenae Myesha Rainey of Macomb County, was an employee at a nursing home.
Rainey stole a stack of “roughly two dozen absentee voter applications” meant for nursing home residents, filled them out, forged the residents’ signatures and had the applications turned in.
Again, under the universal mail-in voting system Democrats so desperately want, this sort of fraud couldn’t be any easier to commit.
The second woman, Carless Clark of Wayne County, returned her grandson’s absentee ballot by mail “despite her grandson deciding to vote in person.”
The third woman, Nancy Juanita Williams of both Wayne and Oakland counties, was a caretaker for legally incapacitated people.
Williams “implemented a plan to obtain and control absentee ballots” for those individuals under her care “by fraudulently submitting 26 absentee ballot applications to nine identified city and township clerks, seeking to have absentee ballots for those individuals mailed directly to her.”
A total of 50 charges were brought against the women, including 36 felonies.
Thankfully, these alleged culprits were caught and are being held to account. If Democrats get their way with their reckless election laws, however, there’s no guarantee the next fraudsters will be apprehended.
And when more fraud does occur, the American people likely won’t know until it’s too late.
Veteran journalist was involved in 2016 doc that misrepresented gun-rights activists
Katie Couric admits in her forthcoming memoir she intentionally cut out Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism of NFL anthem protests from a taped interview in order to protect the Supreme Court justice’s legacy, the latest instance of the veteran journalist selectively editing interviews.
Couric reveals in Going There that a 2016 interview with Ginsburg was edited to omit the liberal icon’s statement that NFL players who kneeled for the national anthem displayed a “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.” The former Today Show host, who is a member of the Aspen Institute’s commission on media disinformation, wrote that she wanted to protect Ginsburg from public backlash and that she did not believe the octogenarian justice fully understood her question, according to the Daily Mail.
Couric’s admission marks a pattern for the reporter. In 2016, the makers of a documentary featuring Couric admitted that they edited her interview with a gun-rights group in order to portray it in a negative light. The documentary, Under the Gun, showed members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League sitting in an extended, awkward silence in response to a question from Couric about gun purchases. But audio of the interview provided to the Washington Free Beacon revealed that the group members promptly responded to Couric’s question. Couric and the filmmakers defended their deception in statements to the Washington Post.
Couric’s handling of the Ginsburg interview could call into question her credentials for serving on the Aspen Institute Commission on Information Disorder. The commission, for which England’s Prince Harry serves as a vice chairman, says that disinformation has caused a “modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions.”
Tech billionaire Craig Newmark funds the Aspen commission. Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, funded a New York University study published earlier this year that said without evidence that emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop were “stolen material.” The study also said that Twitter and Facebook made “reasonable” decisions to block links to articles in the New York Post about Biden’s emails.
A D.C. City Council member who claimed Jewish bankers control the weather is running for mayor, according to a Wednesday announcement.
Trayon White Sr. (D.) is the second city councilman this week to throw his hat into the mayoral race. He announced his candidacy on Instagram, in response to a post about Councilman Robert White (D.) launching his mayoral bid on Wednesday.
White’s candidacy is likely to cause a stir due to his history of espousing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In 2018, he claimed that the Rothschilds—a historically wealthy Jewish family that is often the center of anti-Semitic assertions—manipulate the weather and control the levers of federal power.
“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” White said in a video he posted on Facebook. “And DC keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city,’ and that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.” During a city council breakfast meeting, White also argued that “the Rothschilds—control the World Bank, as we all know—infusing dollars into major cities.”
“They really pretty much control the federal government, and now they have this concept called resilient cities in which they are using their money and influence into local cities,” he said.
White’s comments drew condemnations from Jewish groups and anti-Semitism watchdogs at the time. He later agreed to visit the Holocaust museum with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington in an attempt to make amends but left without explanation halfway through the 90-minute tour.
An adviser to Trayon White on Wednesday confirmed the run in a statement to D.C. radio station WAMU, saying the councilman “has a tremendous amount of support coming his way because he is willing to speak out for and advocate for those who need the leadership the most.”
Incumbent mayor Muriel Bowser (D.) has yet to say if she will run for reelection.
