The Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020 were the largest and most successful shakedown in American history. These “mostly peaceful protests” — which burned more than 200 American cities and wreaked more than $2 billion in damages — achieved more than anyone could have predicted: changes in laws, private sector policies, and perhaps most importantly, a historic transfer of wealth to racial and leftwing causes. As a result, American corporations gave or pledged more than $83 billion to either BLM or BLM-related causes.
We created a database tracking contributions and pledges made to the BLM movement and related causes, which we define as organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLM’s agenda, and which were made in the wake of the BLM riots of 2020. To date, our data spans more than 400 companies and $83 billion in pledges and contributions.
The famed consulting firm McKinsey and Company thinks the number is far larger. They calculated that from May 2020 to October 2022 companies pledged about $340 billion “to racial equity, specifically for Black Americans after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.” Our number is conservative by comparison. But unlike McKinsey, we provide details about the pledges and contributions of specific companies.
We are surprised at some of the incredulity in our calculations. So too is BLM, which suggests that objections to wealth transfers of this scale are rooted in “white supremacy,” and “a pathology that Black organizations don’t deserve to be funded.”
BLM called for reparations. In a sense, they succeeded, as these reparations were paid out to BLM itself (approximately $122 million) and to its vast NGO archipelago and other racialized causes and schemes under various names.
While the money was given or pledged in different ways, it was unmistakable for so-called “racial justice.” Sometimes this meant cash transfers to partners of BLM, like the Color of Change, the NAACP, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the ACLU.
Sometimes it meant cash or pledges to other “reparative” initiatives including race-based, discriminatory hiring programs; race-based, sub-prime lending; race-based scholarships; and partisan voter initiatives. Sometimes it meant Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which are the polite versions of BLM calibrated to middle-class, middle-management tastes. The DEI ideology disagrees with BLM in few ways, if any.
DEI and BLM share one mission: to punish white America, through different means. The latter through riots and pressure campaigns, the former through preferential hiring and promotion of members of protected groups. Both aim to redistribute honor, privileges, and money to black Americans. Both are extorting special privileges and money by using white guilt.
Moreover, both are attempting to do so by cultural revolution, and both stand openly against meritocracy, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and individual rights. Correctly understood, DEI is an expression of BLM’s broader agenda.
We already know the exorbitant amount of money given or pledged by large banks like JPMorgan ($30 billion), Bank of America ($18 billion), and Silicon Valley Bank ($70 million) in the wake of the 2020 BLM riots to subsidized and sub-prime race-based lending, race-based investment targeting, supply chain diversity initiatives, and nonprofits advancing racial justice.
But BLM was so effective that even seemingly middle-America companies shelled out big. For example, Cargill, the Minnesota-based food producer, launched its “Black Farmer Equity Initiative,” a redistributive program that attributes declining numbers of black farmers to “the legacy of systemic racism” and seeks to “dismantle Anti-Black racism” and “operationalize equity across the food and agriculture system.” Cargill pledged $11 billion to the initiative through 2030.
Kroger, a ubiquitous neighborhood grocery chain, spent at least $13 million to advance racial division, including $5 million toward its “Framework for Action: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” initiative and a $500,000 contribution to LISC’s Black Economic Development Fund, a discriminatory investment fund that promotes BLM. Kroger also partnered with the discriminatory, race-based hiring platform OneTen, which aims to “hire, promote, and advance one million Black individuals who do not have a four-year degree into family-sustaining careers over the next ten years.”
Caterpillar, the producer of heavy equipment, donated $500,000 each to the NAACP and the Equal Justice Initiative. It too partnered with OneTen. John Deere donated $1 million to the NAACP, again, an official partner of BLM.
Defense contractors, traditionally neutral and dedicated to keeping America safe, also submitted to BLM’s demands. Northrop Grumman donated $1 million to the NAACP and an additional $1 million to organizations promoting social justice as part of an employee charitable gift matching program. It also partnered with OneTen.
Raytheon pledged $25 million over five years to “advance racial justice, empowerment, and career readiness in underserved communities.” The commitment includes donations to the NAACP, Equal Justice Initiative, and National Urban League; community outreach; public policy lobbying; and a supplier diversity initiative.
Boeing pledged a minimum of $25 million by 2023 toward racial “equity” and “social justice.” In 2020, it contributed $15.6 million to organizations addressing “racial inequity,” including $1 million to the Equal Justice Initiative.
The list goes on, and should be further explored by journalists in order to understand the full extent of the shakedown. By caving to BLM, American companies not only became the tools of radicals but also laid the groundwork for future violence and extortion.
The Center for the American Way of Life is a branch of The Claremont Institute. The mission of The Claremont Institute is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life.
Members of the Biden family received more than $1 million in payments from accounts related to Hunter Biden’s business associate Rob Walker and their Chinese business ventures in 2017, subpoenaed financial records obtained by the House Oversight Committee reveal.
Walker worked with Hunter Biden, President Biden’s brother Jim, their business associate James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinksi in a joint-venture called Sinohawk Holdings, which was meant to be a partnership with Chinese energy firm CEFC.
Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., obtained the records after subpoenaing Bank of America, which revealed that “at least three family members” received lucrative payments from a bank account belonging to Walker. That account is labeled as “Robinson Walker, LLC,” and one of the family members is Hallie Biden, the widow of President Biden’s son Beau.
The records revealed that on March 1, 2017, less than two months after then-Vice President Joe Biden left office, State Energy HK Limited, a separate Chinese company, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC.
President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, step off Air Force One, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023, at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in Syracuse, N.Y. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
“The next day, Robinson Walker, LLC wired $1,065,000 to European Energy and Infrastructure Group in Abu Dhabi, a company associated with James Gilliar,” a memo from the committee states.
Gilliar was a business partner of Hunter Biden involved in his foreign business ventures.
“After the Robinson Walker, LLC account received $3 million from State Energy HK Limited, Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months,” the memo states. “The recipients of the money included Hallie Biden, companies associated with Hunter Biden and James Biden, and an unknown bank account identified as ‘Biden.’”
According to the committee, President Biden’s daughter-in-law, Hallie Biden, the widow of President Biden’s son Beau who later was romantically involved with Hunter, received two separate payments from Walker’s account — Robinson Walker, LLC — in March 2017 totaling $35,000.
A bank account identified as an unknown “Biden” also received $70,000 from Robinson Walker, LLC between March and May of 2017.
An account labeled “Owasco P.C.,” which belonged to Hunter Biden, received $500,000 between March and May 2017.
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., says Biden family members received money linked to Hunter Biden’s business ventures in China. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
An account labeled “JBBSR INC,” which belonged to James Biden, received $360,000 between March and May 2017.
An account labeled “First Clearing, LLC” also received $100,000. It is unclear who owned that account, but committee sources told Fox News Digital that it is believed to belong to Hunter Biden.
In a statement Thursday, Comer said “it is unclear what services were provided to obtain this exorbitant amount of money.”
“The Oversight Committee is concerned about the national security implications resulting from President Biden’s family receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals,” Comer said. “We will continue to follow the money trail and facts to determine if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business schemes and if there is a national security threat.”
When asked for comment on the financial records revealing the more than $1 million to members of the Biden family, the White House did not deny the findings, but instead slammed Comer and the committee’s investigation into the Biden family.
“After a disgusting attack lamenting that the President’s deceased son Beau was never prosecuted while he was alive, Congressman Comer has now decided to go after Beau’s widow,” said White House spokesman Ian Sams said, referring to comments Comer made earlier this month about the late Beau Biden’s campaign contributions.
FILE: July 4, 2012: Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, right, takes a walk with his father, Vice President Joe Biden, to the Green Ridge Little Baseball Field in Scranton, Pa. (AP)
“Instead of bizarrely attacking the President’s family, perhaps House Republicans should focus on working with the President to deliver results for American families on important priorities like lowering costs and strengthening health care,” Sams said.
Hallie Biden did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
A House Oversight Committee spokesperson responded to the White House, though, telling Fox News Digital that the panel is “investigating how the Biden family benefited from influence peddling and if President Biden is compromised by his family’s business transactions with foreign adversaries.”
“Bank records reveal that James Biden, Hunter Biden, Hallie Biden, and an unknown ‘Biden’ received money from Rob Walker’s company after it received a $3 million wire from a Chinese energy company,” the spokesperson said. “The White House should answer questions about why the Biden family received an exorbitant amount of money from China rather than attempt to distract from the facts contained in these bank records.”
The records came after Comer subpoenaed Bank of America. The committee told Fox News Digital that the records have helped to open “new avenues of investigation about the Biden family’s business schemes.”
This week, the Treasury Department notified Comer that it will give the committee “in camera access” to suspicious activity reports (SARs) related to Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s foreign business deals.
Comer vowed to “continue to use bank documents and suspicious activity reports to follow the money trail to determine the extent of the Biden family’s business schemes, if Joe Biden is compromised by these deals, and if there is a national security threat.”
“If Treasury tries to stonewall our investigation again, we will continue to use tools at our disposal to compel compliance,” Comer warned.
In November 2020, the Media Research Center reported that 36% of Biden voters were unaware of the “evidence linking Joe Biden to corrupt financial dealings with China through his son Hunter.” (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Fox News first reported in 2020 that the federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s “tax affairs” began amid the discovery of SARs regarding funds from “China and other foreign nations.”
At the time, a Treasury Department official, who did not comment on the investigation, told Fox News that SARs are filed by financial institutions “if there is something out of the ordinary about a particular transaction.”
Fox News first reported the existence of some type of investigation involving Hunter Biden in October 2020, ahead of the last presidential election. It became known then that the FBI had subpoenaed the laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden in the course of an existing money laundering investigation.
A Canadian pastor was arrested for the second time in weeks after protesting drag queen storytime for children at public libraries. Pastor Derek Reimer, 36, was arrested and charged Wednesday with one count of breaching a release order that prohibited him from being within 200 meters of events involving the LGBTQ community, a spokesperson for Calgary Police Service told Fox News Digital.
Reimer had been previously arrested on March 2 following a Feb. 25 incident during which three men physically tossed him out of Seton Library for protesting a Reading with Royalty event that was put on by the Calgary Public Library and featured local drag performers reading to children.
Reimer was charged with one count of causing a disturbance and one count of mischief, and also faces six counts of harassment under the city’s bylaw governing public behavior. Each charge carries a penalty of up to $10,000 and up to six months imprisonment if payment cannot be made, according to Livewire Calgary.
Pastor Derek Reimer, 36, was arrested and charged Wednesday with one count of breaching a release order that prohibited him from being within 200 meters of events involving the LGBTQ community. (Courtesy Nathaniel Pawlowski)
Footage of Reimer’s most recent arrest in a parking lot outside the Signal Hill Library in Calgary shows police cuffing him and dragging him across the asphalt before hauling him away in a police vehicle. Bystanders protested his treatment and questioned whether he had gotten within 200 meters of the event. He remains in prison and awaits a court appearance Friday.
The Calgary City Council on Tuesday revised a bylaw and introduced a new one in response to increased protests at drag events, according to the CBC.
The Calgary City Council passed a bylaw Tuesday prohibiting protests within 100 meters of a recreation facility or library entrance. (miroslav_1 via Getty Images)
The modifications included adding the term “intimidation” to the current public behavior bylaw, and the new Safe and Inclusive Access Bylaw prohibits protests within 100 meters of a recreation facility or library entrance. Some councilors reportedly raised concerns about the speed with which the new bylaw was passed.
Earlier this week, Reimer was also issued a 30-day trespass notice following a silent prayer session in the Municipal Building in protest of the new bylaw.
“Mr. Reimer was warned on a previous occasion that he could not hold a religious event inside the Municipal Building unless he has a permit,” a city spokesperson told the CBC.
BREAKING: Pastor Derek Reimer has been issued a trespass notice for holding a silent prayer inside of Calgary's city hall.
Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who knows Reimer and made international headlines himself when he was repeatedly arrested for keeping his Calgary church open during the pandemic, told Fox News Digital that Reimer’s arrests indicate the government’s “open hatred toward Christianity.”
“Everyone who is visible, everyone in Canada who is boldly proclaiming Christianity, has become an open target,” he said.
“Calgary was immune for a little bit from the drag queen perversion — because that’s what it is: it’s a sick, twisted perversion, and you can quote me on that,” he said. “An adult man who dresses as a woman in a sexual manner and has the urge to do that in front of little children is a pervert, end of story.”
Pastor Artur Pawlowski, who is friends with Pastor Derek Reimer, faced multiple dramatic arrests for keeping his church open during the pandemic. (Artur Pawlowski)
Since drag events involving children have begun proliferating in Calgary, Pawlowski said that Reimer “decided he felt that God is calling him to expose that, to stand against that.” He noted that Reimer has communicated with him from prison, and that he is calling on Christians to rise up and vocally oppose what he described as perversion while they still can.
“I’ve warned Canadians for a very long time — and I’m warning Americans, as well — that you will be ruled by what you tolerate,” Pawlowski said, noting how the way authorities enforced COVID-19 protocols in Canada is now being used to enforce ideology.
Four Americans were kidnapped in Matamoros, Mexico having traveled to the country for medical treatment. Two of the four American citizens kidnapped in Mexico are dead while the other two remain alive, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing the governor of Tamaulipas.
Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said Tuesday that one of the surviving Americans was wounded and the other was not, while two of the four U.S. citizens who traveled to Mexico were found dead.
The FBI is still working to return the missing Americans, who were abducted after being caught in the crossfire of rival cartels shortly after crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a Tuesday news conference that he has been briefed by the FBI on the situation unfolding in Mexico and said the State Department was working with Mexican authorities on the investigation.
Garland offered sympathies to the families of the victims of the attacks, but did not confirm the reports that two of the Americans died in the attack.
The attorney general added that the Justice Department would be working to prosecute the cartel members behind the incident.
Dramatic video shows the moment four Americans were kidnapped shortly after crossing into Mexico, in what authorities have called a case of mistaken identity.
The video of the violent incident shows armed men in body armor dragging one person across the pavement and pushing a woman into the bed of a white truck, then dragging two more men who appear to be wounded across the pavement and loading them into the bed of the same truck.
Photos from the scene show a white minivan with North Carolina plates riddled with bullet holes shortly after the kidnappings, with a woman who reportedly witnessed the attack telling the Associated Press she saw the minivan collide with another vehicle before hearing gunfire and seeing armed men approach the van.
“All of a sudden they (the gunmen) were in front of us,” said the woman, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation. “I entered a state of shock, nobody honked their horn, nobody moved. Everybody must have been thinking the same thing, ‘If we move they will see us, or they might shoot us.’”
A member of the Mexican security forces stands next to a white minivan with North Carolina plates and several bullet holes, at the crime scene where gunmen kidnapped four U.S. citizens who crossed into Mexico from Texas, Friday, March 3, 2023. (AP Photo)
She added that she saw the men force one woman who was able to walk into the bed of their truck, while another victim who she said could move his head was loaded into the truck.
“The other two they dragged across the pavement, we don’t know if they were alive or dead,” she said.
According to law enforcement, the group of Americans were traveling to Mexico for health services last week when the minivan they were driving was attacked by a group of armed men, who shot at the vehicle before dragging the Americans out and loading them into a truck. The four Americans were not thought to be the intended target of the attack.
The group crossed from Brownsville, Texas, into the Mexican city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, an area that has been plagued by cartel violence and carries a travel advisory from the State Department warning Americans to avoid visiting.
Mexican Natioanla Guard prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen at Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo)
One of the four Americans in the group, Zindell Brown, was identified by his sister, Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, on Tuesday, saying she has been in contact with the FBI and Mexican authorities since the incident.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” Brown told the Associated Press. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
Brown said her younger brother is from Myrtle Beach and was visiting Mexico with three friends, one of whom was there to get a tummy tuck surgery.
She added that her brother was hesitant to make the trip, warning his friends about the dangers before they departed.
Mexican army soldiers prepare a search mission for four U.S. citizens kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico. (AP Photo)
“Zindell kept saying, ‘We shouldn’t go down,’” Brown said.
The victim’s father, O’dell William Brown, said the family is reeling from the news.
“I don’t know which way to go right now,” he said. “We don’t know what’s what.”
It is unclear if Brown is one of those who died in the incident.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the return of the victims and arrests of those responsible.
THE Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
Michael Lee is a writer at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter @UAMichaelLee
Four Americans who went missing in Mexico last week were taken in a possible kidnapping, according to the FBI. The agency is seeking public help in locating the four Americans who disappeared on March 3 after they crossed the border from Brownsville, Texas.
“Four Americans crossed into Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico driving a white minivan with North Carolina license plates,” read a statement from the FBI published by Fox News. “Shortly after crossing into Mexico, unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle. All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men.” The FBI did not name the four missing individuals.
The Americans “had traveled to the border city of Matamoros for medical procedures,” a U.S. official “citing receipts found in the vehicle” told CNN. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “offered a similar explanation.”
“The information we have is that they crossed the border to buy medicines in Mexico, there was a confrontation between groups and they were detained,” Obrador said, according to CNN. “The whole government is working on it.”
The region across the border from Brownsville is predominantly run by the Gulf drug cartel, a criminal syndicate and drug trafficking organization in constant conflict with warring factions.
Ken Salazar, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said Monday American officials are working with Mexican law enforcement to bring the four missing citizens home. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for the safe return of the missing Americans and the arrest of the captors. Tips can be submitted to https://tips.fbi.gov.
Kidnapping of Americans in Mexico is far from unprecedented. The State Department has warned Americans against trips to the Tamaulipas state since at least Oct. 22 with a level 4 travel advisory “due to crime and kidnapping.”
Last year, an American tourist had his foot hacked by a machete after being kidnapped by his taxi driver. In December 2021, six Mexican nationals from a trafficking group in Tijuana were indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury for kidnapping nine victims and murdering six. Three of those reportedly executed were American citizens. In 2013, an American named Shane Andersen was held for $20,000 ransom in Monterrey, Mexico.
Most kidnappings don’t pick up major press coverage. This week’s hostage situation, however, has already driven headlines across the major networks as the U.S. southern border with Mexico continues to spiral out of control.
CBS aired apparent footage of the kidnapping Monday morning.
Escalating violence across the international boundary has amplified pressure on Washington lawmakers to address the crisis.
In February, newly-elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his first visit to the border as the leading figure in the lower chamber. McCarthy blasted the Biden administration’s lethargic response to the crisis at the border where a lack of law enforcement has opened the door to unchecked migration and a flood of narcotics pouring into American communities.
“We don’t even have operational control of it anymore,” McCarthy said at a section of the border wall in southeast Arizona.
The Republican House speaker threatened to launch an impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the agency’s failure to secure the nation’s boundaries.
“You cannot tell us this border’s secure when now there is enough fentanyl in this country to kill every single American more than 20 times over,” McCarthy said.
In January, cartel violence reached the doorstep of McCarthy’s own California House district where six, including a baby, were murdered in a “cartel-style execution.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
“Outnumbered” panelists sound off after rioters launched an all-out assault against the Atlanta police training facility dubbed “Cop City”
Atlanta police identified 23 suspects charged with domestic terrorism after allegedly launching an attack against the construction site for a police and fire training facility dubbed “Cop City.”
The Atlanta Police Department revealed that all but two of the arrestees are from out of state. Another two are from out of the country. Dimitri LeNy is from France and Fredrique Robert-Paul is from Canada. Three suspects – Ayla King, Alexis Paplai and Timothy Bilodeau – are from Massachusetts.
There are two from Arizona: Samuel Ward and Max Biederman. From New York, there are Mattia Luini and Priscilla Grim.
Atlanta police released video of fires set to equipment at the construction site of a police and fire training facility dubbed “Cop City.” (Atlanta Police Department)
Another pair – Kayley Meissner and Grace Martin – are from Wisconsin.
Kamryn Pipes is from Louisiana. Maggie Gates is from Indiana. Ehret Nottingham is from Colorado. Victor Puertas is from Utah. Amin Chaoui is from Virginia. James Marsicano is from North Carolina. Emma Bogush is from Connecticut. Luke Harper is from Florida. Colin Dorsey is from Maine. And Zoe Larmey is from Tennessee.
The only suspects with Georgia addresses are Thomas Jurgens and Jack Beaman.
The group is accused of leaving a nearby music festival Sunday evening and heading to the construction site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center “to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.”
Authorities noted how the group changed into black clothing and allegedly threw commercial-grade fireworks, Molotov cocktails, large rocks and bricks at police officers.
“What happened last night was not peaceful protest – it was violence. Plain and simple,” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr said in a statement Monday. “We will not tolerate this destruction of property, and we will seek to ensure that those who have engaged in this criminal behavior are held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Police say at least 35 “agitators” were arrested in attack on “Cop City” in Atlanta. (Atlanta Police Department)
“This state-of-the-art Public Training Safety Center will benefit not only police officers, firefighters and EMTs, but the entire community,” Carr said. “We strongly support its construction and operation, and we will not back down from violent extremists from Georgia, Maine, Oregon or elsewhere who seek to stop us.”
Though Carr cited Oregon, it does not appear any of the 23 charged in Sunday’s incident are from that state. Police did initially say 35 “agitators” had been detained.
On an appearance on Fox News earlier Monday, Carr described those arrested as part of a “national network, an international group of people that are organized to come to our state to undermine a public safety training center.”
Atlanta police say demonstrators set fire to equipment and threw explosives at officers. (Atlanta Police Department)
“This wasn’t about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy, and this was about an attempt to destabilize,” Atlanta Chief of Police Darin Schierbaumsaid Sunday night, telling reporters at the scene that both the FBI and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation have joined the probe into the incident.
Though demonstrations at the 85-acre property in DeKalb County, which was secured for a $90 million police and fire training facility, have been ongoing, Schierbaum said Sunday’s incident marked a “significant escalation” both in the level of violence and the number of individuals involved in the attack.
Before Sunday, at least 19 people had been arrested and charged with domestic terrorism since December in connection to demonstrations at the “Cop City” site. Six of the 19 arrests came out of a violent riot in downtown Atlanta on Jan. 21 that was sparked by the deadly shooting of 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran by Georgia State Patrol.
State patrol had responded to the construction site to clear out demonstrators. Authorities said Teran, who reportedly went by the name Tortuguita and identified as non-binary, shot a trooper in the abdomen before law enforcement officials returned fire and killed Teran.
Danielle Wallace is a reporter for Fox News Digital covering politics, crime, police and more. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on Twitter: @danimwallace.
A teen who has been arrested and charged with murdering a Chicago police officer was also arrested last summer, but county prosecutors ultimately dropped the charge against him.
Around 4:45 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, Chicago PD received a call about an armed suspect chasing a woman down the 5200 block of South Spaulding Avenue near an elementary school in Gage Park. Two patrol units responded to the call. One unit went to the woman’s house, but the other pursued the suspect on foot.
One of the pursuing officers, 32-year-old Andres Vasquez-Lasso, soon exchanged fire with the suspect, identified as 18-year-old Steven Montano, “at close range,” Police Supt. David Brown said. According to reports, Montano struck Vasquez-Lasso in the head and leg several times. The officer died at Mount Sinai Hospital soon afterward.
“We are heartbroken,” Brown said in a press conference that night. “Policing is a big family. People know at some point they may be asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, but you never wish or hope that it actually happens. And tonight, this tragedy did.”
Before he died, Vasquez-Lasso shot and wounded the suspect in the head. Montano was transported to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, leaving his in-person appearance in court, scheduled for Friday, in doubt. Montano has been charged with first-degree murder, felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon with no FOID card, felony aggravated discharge of a firearm near a school building, misdemeanor assault, and misdemeanor interfering with the reporting of domestic violence.
Though Montano currently has no criminal record, Ald. Raymond Lopez of the 15th Ward of Chicago claimed that the suspect is a known gang member who was allegedly involved in an area shooting last summer.
On July 28, witnesses claimed that three men shot a 27-year-old man in the leg several times and then sped away in a white Honda Accord, which turned out to be stolen. When police attempted to pull the car over, the car stopped and three men fled the scene on foot in separate directions. Montano was later found hiding under a nearby porch, and two guns believed to be connected to the shooting were found elsewhere on the same street “in the direct flight path of the offenders from the vehicle,” the police report said.
Against police recommendations, Montano was never directly charged in connection to the shooting or the discovered weapons, but instead was assessed a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. “The defendant, who was a passenger in the vehicle, was not charged with a felony because the evidence does not support a charge of gun possession,” the office of Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, said in a statement on Thursday.
Prosecutors later offered Montano “an alternative to traditional prosecution,” and after he performed 25 hours of community service, the misdemeanor charge was dropped. Lopez claimed that the decision not to prosecute Montano led directly to Officer Vasquez-Lasso’s death.
“Officer Lasso would be alive today if we put that gangbanger away, the way we should have,” Lopez stated.
Vasquez-Lasso had just celebrated five years on the Chicago police force. He leaves behind a wife in Chicago and other family members in Colombia. Supt. Brown has called for the city to cover the cost of flying those Colombian family members, some of whom are local law enforcement officers, to Chicago for the funeral. “This is a family of public servants,” Brown said, “and as you can imagine, they are taking this tragedy very, very hard.”
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The head of a major railroad union confronted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday with allegations that some Norfolk Southern railroad workers have taken ill at the site of the railway’s catastrophic toxic spill in East Palestine, Ohio.
Jonathon Long, the general chairman of the American Rail System Federation, accused Norfolk Southern of putting workers’ health at risk at least in part due to its “cost-cutting business model.” He suggested further that the company “and other railroads alike must be held accountable in their operations, through rule-making and regulatory reform that establishes minimum safety standards in their operations.”
In his March 1 letter to Buttigieg, entitled “Norfolk Southern Is Dangerous to America,” Long, whose union represents workers on the Norfolk Southern Railroad, noted that while “the world was learning about the horrors occurring in East Palestine on television, NS officials assessed the damages and carried out their plans for rebuilding their track structure so that they could get trains moving again.”
According to Long, the railroad’s alleged prioritization of resuming business, as opposed to first adequately addressing safety and health concerns after the derailment, reflected the interests of shareholders and Wall Street, contra the well-being of those in the disaster area.
While East Palestine residents were ordered to evacuate amid the release of trench warfare gas — the result of the railroad’s combustion of its toxic cargo — Long noted that the approximately 40 Norfolk Southern maintenance-of-way employees tasked with cleaning up the wreckage were neither offered nor provided with “appropriate personal protective equipment.”
Among the items of PPE the workers had allegedly done without but needed were: “respirators that are designed to permit safely working around vinyl chloride, eye protection and protective clothing such as chemical restraint suits, rubber overboots and rubber gloves rated for safely working around the spilled chemicals that prevent direct contact with such substances.”
Workers allegedly replaced cabin filters on the derailment site and conducted deep cleanings of machinery used by outside contractors in cleanup, efforts all without appropriate protective equipment.
One worker reportedly told Long that the chemicals released in the derailment caused him to suffer nausea and migraines. Upon expressing this and other health concerns to his supervisor, he was allegedly ghosted.
“Many other Employees reported that they continue to experience migraines and nausea, days after the derailment,” wrote Long. “They all suspect that they were willingly exposed to these chemicals at the direction of NS. This lack of concern for the Workers’ safety and well-being is, again, a basic tenet of NS’ cost-cutting business model.”
TheBlaze previously reported that independent analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data concerning the fallout of the derailment has revealed that, contrary to previous claims made by EPA officials, there continue to be abnormally high levels of airborne toxins that could jeopardize the long-term health of residents in the area.
In a nearly identical letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), Long emphasized that action needs to be taken “before more trains go off the rails in communities like East Palestine and endure the sorrows that follow such senseless, preventable disasters.”
“[Norfolk Southern] has pierced itself, but it has somehow left communities like East Palestine and the NS Workers with the many sorrows,” said the letter. “This is immoral, and it is all because of the railroad’s cost-cutting business model that disregards the sanctity of human life for the sake of more record profits.”
Norfolk Southern, which reportedly has greased politicians’ hands to the tune of nearly $100 million since 1990, told Axios that the company was “on-scene immediately after the derailment and coordinated our response with hazardous material professionals who were on site continuously to ensure the work area was safe to enter and the required PPE was utilized, all in addition to air monitoring that was established within an hour.”
Buttigieg, who didn’t make a public statement about the disaster until 10 days after the derailment and didn’t make it to East Palestine for another 10 days, met with railroad union heads and Amit Bose, the top official at the Federal Railroad Administration, on Wednesday to discuss the disaster and potential safety improvements.
Having ostensibly dropped the ball on East Palestine, the FRA and Buttigieg announced a national initiative “for focused inspections on routes that carry high-hazard flammable trains (HHFTs) and other trains carrying large volumes of hazmat commodities.”
“Safety is always our number one priority, and the Norfolk Southern derailment reminds us of the importance of ensuring no industry can put its profits over the safety of its workers and the communities it serve,” said Buttigieg.
Bose said, “FRA is vigorously responding to the concerns expressed by residents of East Palestine and the surrounding areas, and as a result of the recent derailment, we are ramping up our safety efforts across the country.”
The DOT will also purportedly seek to implement a rule requiring two-person train crews as well as target legacy tank cars, particularly those carrying hazmat, for inspections and safety reviews.
WEWS-TV reported that Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw is expected to testify before the Republican-controlled Congress next week over the derailment and the company’s hand in recovery efforts.
In a plot line that seems ripped right out of the hit Paramount series “Yellowstone,” some 65 Wisconsin families are currently being held hostage by the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The tribe has erected illegal barricades on the only roads that lead to their homes, preventing residents from entering and leaving. The only way out of the reservation is over frozen lakes that are quickly melting with the coming spring.
The yellow barricades and chained-together concrete blocks were set up 31 days ago over a bitter land dispute among two non-tribal title companies, the town of Lac du Flambeau, and the tribe. Meanwhile, racial tensions are rising, and many fear violence in a standoff that’s also shining a long-needed spotlight on the dysfunctional arrangement between Indian tribes and the U.S. federal government.
To open the roads for only 15 years, Tribal President John Johnson is demanding $20 million. It’s an amount Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany describes as tantamount to “extortion.” Tiffany also says it’s unlawful since all four roads in question receive federal funding through the Tribal Transportation Program. According to Tiffany, the tribe has received a total of $218 million in federal funds since 2013.
“I’m paying taxes to be illegally blockaded on my private land,” said Marsha Panfil. Panfil and her partner Mike Hornbostel own and run Hornwinkels Bear Stube, a historic bar and restaurant in the area. The pair has been considering closing their doors ever since they were blockaded because the only way in and out of their home is by crossing a frozen lake.
“I have to rent another house now so that I can continue to run my business,” said Hornbostel. “Crossing a [frozen] lake with the hours that we keep just isn’t conducive to sanity,” added Panfil.
Many of the blockaded homes are over 20 miles from the nearest grocery store and their residents’ jobs. Denny Pearson, another blockaded resident, crosses Ross Allen Lake every day to get to work, but he won’t be able to for much longer. “When the ice goes out, there’ll be no way to get to and from work,” Pearson told The Federalist. According to Pearson, it will likely only be safe to cross the lake for another two weeks before the ice becomes too thin. That’s when locals fear tensions will reach a breaking point.
The Dispute
When developers built homes for non-members of the tribe, they obtained right-of-way easements for parts of the roads that pass tribal land, but the easements expired more than a decade ago.
No one is denying that the tribe owns portions of the roads it’s barricading. “I think that the tribe has a legitimate position. They want to be compensated,” said Jeff Lang, a blockaded resident.
The question is whether the easements are worth $20 million. Interestingly, the tribe has barred anyone from viewing the roads’ rights-of-way appraisals. Tribal President Johnson claims the title companies could have paid much less had they “negotiate[d] in good faith” years ago. The attorney representing the non-tribal residents, however, says the tribe and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) were slow in responding and negotiating for years.
According to the residents’ attorney, “the Landowners have made two good faith settlement offers and two good faith requests to meet to resolve these road issues,” but have received no “substantive response from the Tribe.” The Federalist reached out to Johnson but did not hear back.
Law Enforcement Refuses to Act
Some of the residents knew that the easement to their property was expiring, while others had no idea there even was an easement. All the residents, however, were guaranteed by the town and the title companies that they would have access to and from their homes.
Hornbostel told The Federalist it’s the duty of the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Police Chief TJ Bill to remove the unlawful barricades. Bill has refused, though, and Hornbostel believes the chief is taking orders from Johnson. The Federalist reached out to Bill and asked why he hasn’t removed the illegal barriers but did not hear back.
“I’ve worked my entire life to buy a beautiful home on a lake, and now it’s worth zero,” said Hornbostel. “I can’t live there. I can’t sell it. It’s worth nothing. And that’s because the government won’t do anything, law enforcement will not enforce the laws, and our town is inept.”
Pawns on a Chessboard
The residents behind the barricades are, as Lang says, “pawns on a chessboard,” and they’re suffering. Don Pollard and his wife, who are both 88 years old, along with the other residents were given less than 24-hour notice that the roads were closing. The couple’s son had fallen through the ice a couple of years ago, and though he survived, they did not want to rely on crossing the frozen lake. The Pollards have consequently had to move in with their daughter in southern Wisconsin. Other elderly residents do not have anywhere else to go and remain behind the barricades.
Residents can’t work, buy groceries, receive mail, or vote unless they cross the lake. The tribe agreed to remove the barricades for doctor appointments and ambulances only. Residents say it can sometimes take the police department almost an hour to open the roads, which has become a major safety concern.
“There are people up here that are living with high degrees of stress and emotional stress,” said blockaded resident Dave Kievet. “I talked to one gentleman yesterday who’s a Vietnam veteran, [and] he said, ‘Dave, my stress level in Vietnam was at a 10. I’m at a 9.9 right now.’”
Nicole Beer, a trapped resident, says that once the ice melts, she and her husband will have no choice but to remove the barricades themselves. “We have lives and businesses,” she said. “I should have the freedom and the liberty to drive and get my own groceries and to have the garbage service that I pay for come in and pick up my garbage.”
Racial tensions are also growing. “It’s escalating very, very quickly to violence,” said Panhil. “Somebody threatened to burn all the [blockaded] houses down yesterday,” she revealed. “I sleep with a 95-pound lab and a 12 gauge shotgun now,” stated Hornbostel. “They threaten to burn our houses. They threatened our business. What am I supposed to do? I’m going to protect what’s mine.”
The situation is so combustible that The New York Times covered the story, but its reporting has only made things worse. The Times said the tribe is “on solid legal ground” but failed to mention that the barricades were illegally erected on publicly funded roads. The Times also reported that the tribe has “promised to allow ambulances and other emergency services to pass through if needed” but did not report how slow the process has been for law enforcement to remove the barricades when needed.
“With all due respect to The New York Times, I’m not sure they really understand the situation,” said Lang. “It’s a local problem,” he continued, warning against “extreme voices” inhibiting resolution.
Is It Stolen Land?
Non-tribal residents live on the reservation thanks to the 1887 Dawes Act, which broke up communally run reservations, allotting plots of land to each head of an Indian family. Since then, parts of the reservation have fallen into non-tribal ownership via sale, foreclosure, or enforcement of tax liens.
Many residents said they believe the tribe’s barricades are part of the native “#LandBack Movement,” in which natives try to recapture reservation land owned by whites to reassert their sovereignty.
Tribal member Melissa Christensen told The Federalist that while she sympathizes with the residents behind the barricades, they “shouldn’t have been able to buy [reservation] property to begin with.” But is the Lac du Flambeau reservation really the tribe’s land? After all, the Sioux Indians occupied the area until the Chippewa Indian ancestors of the Lac du Flambeau tribe fought a bloody war against the Sioux and forced them off their land.
“If they don’t want us on their roads, are they entitled to our roads?” asked Pollard. “They’re supposed to be another country, but doggonit, are they really another country? And if they are, do they want us to treat them like another country?” asked Pollard, referencing the millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that flow into the tribe each year.
The System Is Broken
Blame for everything can ultimately be placed on the U.S. federal government and the defective, paternalistic tribal system it created. In the 1831 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia ruling, Chief Justice John Marshall stated that Native “relations to the United States resemble that of a ward to his guardian.” As a result, the U.S. government holds tribal lands in trust, managing them allegedly for the well-being of American Indians.
In reality, the regulations and bureaucracy inflicted on the reservations stifle American Indian innovation and prosperity. According to Tribal President Johnson, part of why the negotiations have taken so long is that the BIA ignored tribal leader questions and showed an “utter lack of recognition” of the tribe’s sovereignty.
But as Pollard suggested, the tribe isn’t really sovereign. Natives born on the reservations are born with American citizenship (and are eligible for Social Security, Medicare, welfare, and other benefits) because they are born on United States soil.
If the tribe were truly independent, tribal members would not be U.S. citizens, the reservations would receive no federal funding, the BIA wouldn’t exist, and the Lac du Flambeau tribe’s blockades would not be illegal. Since the tribe does receive federal funds and is demanding more and more every year, it is not sovereign and its decision to blockade its non-tribal neighbors is unlawful.
For the residents behind the barricades, their predicament is deeply complicated because the trust system is broken. The problems they face are not unique. More easements are set to expire in the area. As racial tensions and talk of reparations in America heat up, this combustible land-rights issue will also affect other reservations and non-Native Americans who live on tribal lands.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
YUMA, Ariz. — GOP members on the House Judiciary Committee met with the leadership of the Yuma Regional Medical Center on Thursday to hear how medical services have been impacted over the significant influx of illegal immigrants into the region.
Dr. Robert Trenschel, president and CEO of the medical center, told the delegation that his hospital has around $26 million in unpaid bills for services rendered to illegal immigrants. Trenschel said the priority of who gets seen depends on how severe their illness or injuries are, no matter what their legal status is. This has caused medical services to be prioritized towards the illegal immigrants, as their illnesses and injuries are significant following their journey across the border.
Yuma’s population is just under 100,000, with several nearby towns adding roughly 38,000 people. The medical center was built up to accommodate that population size. Since the surge of illegal immigration that started in their area in December of 2021, over 300,000 people have illegally crossed into the region.
“We have to see them. Any one of those that needs a hospital visit and we’ve done that. We do it with pride…But what we need is a payer source for those individuals because we have nobody to bill. They have no resources and they’ve just continued to come in,” Trenschel explained.
“We’ve had people in our ICUs for over 60 days…They’ve needed dialysis, heart surgery, cardiac catheterization, I mean, they’re sick when they come over. Not all of them but many and some come in with minor bumps and bruises, things like that…and we have no payer source for that care and that’s our biggest issue. For a hospital like us, it prevents us from doing other things we normally do for our community,” he continued.
Though it is not on the brink of collapse, Trenschel said the hospital system losing out on $26 million in a such a short amount of time has made a severe impact on its operations.
“Really, the community is the one that suffers,” he added.
One of the biggest examples of their services being strained is the hospital’s maternity ward having to care for the mothers and newborn babies for much longer than U.S. citizens because the staff has to ensure they are healthy enough to be discharged since most of the time it was unknown when the next time they would see a doctor.
Trenschel said the hospital has had to postpone planned inductions for mothers who were U.S. citizens “and we had to say, ‘Sorry, we’re just full in our maternity unit.'”
Dorie Rush, the director of women and children services, told GOP lawmakers that the hospital staff has plenty of Spanish speakers. But, many of the illegal immigrants coming in for treatment do not speak Spanish, as they came from other countries, like Haiti. Due to this, the hospital system has purchased multiple translation tablets in order to communicate with the patients.
“We had our walls lined with Border Patrol and Customs agents because when they first were bringing the patients in, they would stay with the patients…There was one day when we had five agents from five different locations bring five different patients at the same time into our triage area, and it’s only seven beds,” Rush recalled.
“So as you can imagine, our general population of patients that were here sitting in the waiting room, lined up, backed up, not being able to get everybody, obviously at the same time, caused a lot of
frustration with our communities,” she added.
Rush said even after people were technically discharged, they still had to keep them there because the hospital is required to ensure they have access to follow up care, which many of the patients had no such guarantee, and to ensure they are able to get to their next location.
“We became a hotel. We did. Up on our pediatric unit, we have a set amount of rooms that we set aside for these patients when they are discharged so that we could keep them here until they could get to the appropriate location,” she said, noting staff still had to check up on the patients in the “hotel” since they were still in the hospital’s care. Rush also had to go out into town to buy every single carseat for babies in order to give to the migrant mothers once they were discharged since they are required by law to not allow babies to leave their care unless there is a carseat.
“Weird question, did they seem grateful? Did they seem overwhelmed from where the world they came from?” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) asked.
“I would say a lot of them were grateful. Some of them expected us, I had one tell me, ‘You will help me get to Florida. You will pay for this.’ I explained nicely that we will work with your family, but that will come from your family, not from us,” a hospital staff answered.
Rush revealed actual hotels in the area stopped accepting the illegal immigrants because of “issues” pertaining to their behavior while staying at their locations.
Google reviews left on Yuma Regional Medical Center’s page within the past few months frequently say the long wait times are a major factor for giving the low ratings.
None of the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were in Yuma to take part of the tours or the hearing that later took place at city hall. Border Patrol agents in the Yuma Sector voiced their displeasure to Townhall over Democrats not bothering to show up to an official hearing.
A massive student brutalized a teacher’s aide Tuesday in an unprovoked attack at Matanzas High School in Palm Coast, Florida, leaving the woman unconscious and severely injured. His apparent reason for jeopardizing the woman’s life: She had prevented him from playing video games in class.
The student told deputies that he was upset that the victim had taken his Nintendo Switch away from him during class. WTLV-TV reported that the student also told officials that he would “beat her up” any time she tried to take his game.
The paraprofessional’s attempt to spare the 17-year-old from the mindless distraction and to help facilitate his education evidently proved unbearable for the student, who can be seen in surveillance footage barreling toward the victim and knocking her from her feet.
Motionless and unconscious after the initial unprovoked attack, the defenseless victim can be seen in the video suffering stomps, kicks, and a flurry of punches to the back of her head from the heavyset suspect.
The 270-pound student can be seen straddling the victim during the attack, delivering blows to her sides and back before others finally intervened:
Video shows Flagler County school employee attacked by student over Nintendo Switchyoutu.be
The FCSO indicated that the victim, hit at least 15 times, was taken to AdventHealth Palm Coast for treatment of her wounds, but not before her aggressor reportedly managed to spit on her body and threaten to come back and kill her.
Restrained by multiple school staff members, the student was taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility. While deputies processed him after the grievous attack, the student reportedly kicked the deputy’s desk and computer. He was later handed off to the Department of Juvenile Justice.
He has been charged with felony aggravated battery with bodily harm.
“The actions of this student are absolutely horrendous and completely uncalled for,” Sheriff Rick Staly said in a statement. “We hope the victim will be able to recover, both mentally and physically, from this incident. Thankfully, students and staff members came to the victim’s aid before the SRDs could arrive. Our schools should be a safe place – for both employees and students.”
Flagler Schools Superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt said, “Creating a safe learning and working environment on our campuses is critical. Violence is never an appropriate reaction.”
A California city council member was arrested for allegedly committing election fraud.
Lodi City Council member Shakir Khan, a Democrat, was arrested on Thursday for multiple election fraud charges, including allegedly stashing 41 mail-in ballots at his home, falsifying voter registration documents, and pressuring residents to vote for him. Investigators claim, based partially on body cam footage of police interviews, that Khan registered 23 people to vote at his home address and used his phone number to register 47 people to vote.
And another Democrat,
Lodi City Council member Democrat Shakir Khan arrested on voter fraud charges related to 2020 Crime of the Century – stash of ballots found at his residence with fake voter registrations. pic.twitter.com/xWeWpUJy2K
These charges stem from the 2020 election, when Khan was elected to the District 4 seat for the Lodi City Council.
Khan also faces charges in a separate criminal case with his brother that include illegal gambling, money laundering, tax evasion, and unemployment fraud. He’s due in court for another arraignment on that case on Feb. 21. Related to the election fraud charges, Khan was released from jail on Friday but must wear a tracking device and stay within California.
Local news reports it’s unclear whether Khan has resigned from the city council over the allegations. Still, the charges he faces related to election fraud are serious. That investigators allegedly found 41 sealed and completed mail-in ballots when searching Khan’s home proves how easy it is for nefarious actors to fix elections when unsupervised mail-in balloting is legal.
As previously reported, mail-in ballots pose a huge risk for election fraud. According to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission, 28.3 million mail-in ballots are still missing across the country from elections conducted between 2012 and 2018. Because there is no way to track these ballots, there is no way of knowing whether they were used fraudulently.
Third-party partisan organizers can also take advantage of such a lax system by harvesting ballots (coaxing voters to fill out ballots on behalf of Democratic candidates, taking their ballots, and dropping them off at election offices), and they do. In fact, Khan allegedly engaged in ballot harvesting by pressuring District 4 residents to vote for him and filling out their ballots.
Requiring all voters who are able to cast their ballots in person would remedy many of the security weaknesses of mail-in balloting. If that were law in Khan’s case, he wouldn’t have been allegedly able to fill out 41 fraudulent mail-in ballots using fake names and addresses and deliver them to be counted. There would have to be actual people showing up at the polls, identifying themselves, and filling out each of their ballots.
Despite the obvious liabilities of switching to all-mail elections, California just became the eighth state to approve all-mail voting for its elections moving forward. As a result of such a disastrous change, expect more cases like Khan’s to spring up.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
Ancient primitives — or as we now call them, “Indigenous people whose land we stole” — believed in talismans, voodoo, rain dances and other versions of “A preceded B, so A caused B.” Today, we consider such reasoning classic fallacy. Except at The New York Times.
First, you need to understand that the Times is no longer a newspaper, but more of a shaman. The paper used to report news. Anyone reading it for information these days might as well pull into a gas station and expect the nice man in a crisp white shirt to dash out and pump his gas.
Much like a Starfish tuna factory, the news comes in, then has to be cleaned, chopped up, soaked in oil and tightly packed into a tin can. If you peered into the Times’ back room, you’d find hundreds of woke scriveners repacking the news to fit the narrative.
Second, an urgent cleanup operation was needed to explain the paroxysm of violence that followed 2020’s anti-cop mania pushed at places like the Times. It simply could not stand to have people imagine that revering criminals while anathematizing the police would have any effect on the crime rate.
No, that wouldn’t do. The facts had to be retrofitted into an alternative narrative. What was the best backup explanation? The pandemic!
Attributing the massive crime wave to the pandemic solved two problems that would have arisen had the Times simply reported the facts: the upsurge in black crime, and the Times’ active encouragement of such.
Unfortunately, doing a rain dance to bring rain is quantum mechanics compared to the Times’ cause-and-effect theory about “The Pandemic” inciting the post-George Floyd violence.
Here are the facts.
During the first few months of the pandemic, violent crime plummeted everywhere. You couldn’t have missed it. The Washington Post, Politico, Voice of America, Cambridge University, and on and on and on — even the Times itself! — reported that violent crime had virtually disappeared in cities around the world due to the COVID shutdowns.
And then on May 25, a fentanyl addict with a bad ticker died in police custody in Minneapolis, whereupon the de-policing demands of Black Lives Matter swept the nation with the active encouragement of all organs of elite liberal opinion, especially the Times.
Cops, the only people who seem to really believe “black lives matter,” risking their lives to bring safety to dangerous neighborhoods, were viciously slandered and kneecapped at every turn. Again, especially by the Times.
You’ll never guess what happened next.
After going into free fall during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, homicides and aggravated assaults in the U.S. rose by about 35% from Floyd’s death to the end of June. Burglaries, mostly commercial, shot up by an eye-popping 190% the last week of May — the height of looting during the “mostly peaceful protests.”
Other countries, also affected by the pandemic, saw no such rise in violent crime.
During the Summer of Floyd, murders increased by 42% in the 21 largest U.S. cities. By the end of 2020, the national murder rate had increased by 30%. That’s double the next largest hike on record, in 1968, the heyday of the country’s last experiment with liberal crime policies, when the murder rate rose by a comparatively paltry 12.7%.
Rarely has data on any change in human behavior been so clearly demarcated as it is in the crime rate pre- and post-George Floyd’s death.
Blacks — you know, the people whose lives allegedly “matter” — bore the brunt of this orgy of violence. The CDC reports, for example, that firearm murders of black people surged by nearly 40% in 2020, the greatest increase of any demographic group.
It’s understandable that the very same news outlets fanning the flames of anti-police hysteria in the wake of Floyd’s martyrdom —directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of black people — would want to shift blame to “The Pandemic.” But witch doctors have more empirical evidence for their diagnoses than the Times does for its repeated pronouncements that thepandemic caused violent crime.
At least voodoo practitioners probably believed their magical thinking. The Times’ Tourette-like hectoring about the pandemic proves the paper is lying and knows it’s lying. Nothing true needs to be endlessly repeated with such tenacity. (See also: “Climate Change.”)
In an article this week on the skyrocketing crime on New York City subways, Times reporter Ana Ley blamed the pandemic nearly a dozen times for the explosion of violence — violence that inexplicably began 10 weeks into the pandemic, but immediately after May 25, 2020.
E.g.:
“… an uptick in subway crime during the pandemic …”
“… safety concerns, which climbed among passengers during the pandemic …”
“… safety on public transit had gotten worse since the pandemic began …”
“… she has stopped riding the subway past 6 p.m. during the pandemic.”
It’s as if the Times has a typewriter key “during the pandemic” that must be inserted into any sentence mentioning “crime.”
It’s hard to make yourself stupid enough to come up with a similar post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, but how about right-wingers start attributing mass shootings to “the Clinton presidency”?
… an uptick in mass shootings that began during the Clinton presidency …
… mass shootings, which climbed during the Clinton presidency …
… mass shootings have become more common since the Clinton presidency…
… dance studio says it will reopen after 67th Clinton-era mass shooting …
… as mass shootings continue, Hillary Clinton struggles to talk about other issues …
At the Times, the pandemic is a sorcerer’s hex, the cause of violent crime. For unfathomable reasons, it just takes a few months to kick in. The COVID god works in mysterious ways.
EXCLUSIVE: Texas law enforcement arrested an Iranian illegal immigrant at the southern border last week whose name and date of birth were initially flagged as a match on the FBI’s terror watchlist, but who a DHS official tells Fox News was ultimately determined not to be a match on the database after further vetting.
Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) arrested 29-year-old Alireza Heidari last week after a traffic stop involving a human smuggler at the border in Val Verde County, Texas as part of Operation Lone Star. Heidari was being smuggled in the vehicle along with four other illegal immigrants. He was located in the trunk. Fox is told that Heidari was handed over to Border Patrol custody and later determined to be a match of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
Fox reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Thursday and multiple times since. Only on Tuesday did DHS refer Fox to the FBI, which declined to comment. The FBI’s website says it does not confirm anyone’s status on the watchlist.
However, on Wednesday, a DHS official told Fox News that after further vetting, Homeland Security officials determined that Heidari was not a match on the TSDB.
Jan 23, 2022: Authorities stop a human smuggler in Val Verde County, Texas.
The FBI’s TSDB contains information about the identities of those who are “reasonably suspected” of being involved in terrorism or related activities. There were 17 people stopped by Border Patrol in December alone whose names matched on the list. That brings the total of individuals arrested at the southern border between ports of entry to 38 since October.
There were 98 terror watchlist arrests in FY22, 15 in FY21 and just three in FY 20 at the southern border caught between ports of entry. At the ports of entry at the northern and southern borders, meanwhile, CBP’s Office of Field Operations has encountered 125 people on the TSDB so far this fiscal year. In FY 2022 there were 380 apprehensions, 157 in FY21 and 196 in FY20.
The increase in apprehensions between ports of entry has raised concerns that, amid a historic spike in illegal immigration across the southern border, illegal criminals and terrorists could be slipping by overwhelmed Border Patrol agents.
So far this fiscal year, nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants have evaded Border Patrol, with an average of 2,450 a day in the last 120 days, sources told Fox News last week.
In fiscal 2022, there were nearly 600,000 gotaways. There were 389,155 gotaways at the border in fiscal 2021, and fiscal 2023 is on track to easily outpace those numbers. Last week, agents told Fox News there have been more than 1.2 million gotaways during the Biden administration.
Jan 23, 2022: Illegal immigrants are caught in the back of a vehicle at the border.
Tom Homan, a former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director, told Fox News on Saturday that the number should “scare the hell out of every American” and said there was a reason these migrants are not turning themselves in to Border Patrol to be processed and released into the U.S.
“Why would they not take advantage of the program? Because they don’t want to be fingerprinted, and there’s a reason for that.”
Fox News’ Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.
Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital, primarily covering immigration and border security.
Planned Parenthood in Peoria, Illinois. | Screenshot: Google Maps
The U.S. Department of Justice has announced the arrest of an Illinois man a little over a week after he allegedly set fire to a Planned Parenthood facility, as pro-life groups maintain that federal law enforcement is not acting quick enough to bring justice to those responsible for the arson of pro-life pregnancy centers and churches.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of Illinois announced Wednesday the arrest of Tyler Massengill, 32, for the malicious use of fire and an explosive and attempt to damage a Planned Parenthood facility in Peoria, Illinois. The clinic reported on its website that the building is closed indefinitely following the “substantial fire and damage.” The fire occurred in the late evening on Jan. 15, 2023, 10 days before news broke about Massengill’s arrest.
“A review of area surveillance from the fire scene revealed that at approximately 11:20 PM, an older white pickup truck with red doors parked in an area adjacent to Planned Parenthood,” the statement reads. “Video footage depicts a man walking up to the building with a laundry detergent-sized bottle. The man lit a rag on fire on one end of the bottle, smashed a window with an object, then placed the container inside of the Planned Parenthood building. He then quickly left the area on foot.”
The rest of the announcement details the collaboration between “multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Springfield Field Office; the Peoria Police Department; and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.” If convicted on a malicious use of fire charge, Massengill faces a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years and faces up to 40 years in prison.
Massengill could also face up to three years of supervised release and a possible fine of up to $250,000.
According to a complaint filed Wednesday, authorities received a tip about an Illinois license plate number for the pickup truck. Peoria police “conducted an inquiry of the subject plate number in a license plate reader database system which returned a photo of an older white pickup truck, with red doors,” The Journal Star quotes the complaint as reading. The complaint further stated that Massengill told investigators that he was upset after a girl he was in a relationship with three years ago got an abortion.
The arson comes as the abortion issue has become a source of contention following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision last June, finding that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion.
Since Politico published a leaked draft decision in the Dobbs case on May 2, pro-life pregnancy centers and churches have found themselves subject to acts of vandalism and arson. While pro-abortion groups and individuals have experienced incidents of violence, a report compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that their pro-life counterparts have experienced 22 times as much violence in the 4.5 months following the publication of the leaked Dobbs draft.
Rev. Jim Harden, the CEO of CompassCare, a network of pro-life pregnancy centers whose Buffalo, New York, office was firebombed last June, praised the Peoria police for their “top-notch investigative work” in a statement released Wednesday. He also denounced the attack on Planned Parenthood, asserting that “Attacking an abortionist does not make someone pro-life, it makes them crazy.”
At the same time, CompassCare noted that after a Planned Parenthood in Kalamazoo, Michigan, was targeted in an attempted arson attack, an arrest was made after four days. CompassCare believes that partisan considerations explain why federal law enforcement has handed down only two indictments of perpetrators of violence against pro-life organizations and churches.
As no arrests have yet been made in the CompassCare firebombing case, the organization partnered with the Thomas More Society legal group earlier this month to hire independent investigators to search for the perpetrators of the June 2022 attack. Vandals broke the windows of CompassCare’s Buffalo office, lit fires at the facility and spray-painted graffiti outside the building.
“What the situation in Peoria and Kalamazoo show is that the FBI has the tools, skill, and manpower to bring these criminals to justice when it is politically favorable,” Harden said. “They threw pro-life people a bone with the indictment of two pro-abortion extremists on January 18.”
A grand jury in Florida indicted two pro-abortion activists last week for vandalizing multiple pro-life pregnancy centers throughout the state. CompassCare is not the only pro-life organization to raise questions about the lack of action taken against those who have committed pro-abortion violence.
Brian Burch, the CEO of the advocacy group CatholicVote, has repeatedly raised concerns about the DOJ’s lack of action to address violence against Catholic churches dating back to May 2020, when the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, led to national unrest. He wrote a letter to the DOJ in December 2021 calling on the federal law enforcement agency to investigate the attacks on Catholic churches and symbols.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan published Tuesday, Burch wrote that Associate Attorney General Venita Gupta responded to the request in January 2022, telling the advocacy group that Attorney General Merrick Garland had ordered a “15-day review to ensure that all appropriate resources are being deployed to protect houses of worship.”
Additionally, Gupta informed Burch that the “Department is taking numerous steps to address such violence, consistent with our commitment to combat unlawful acts of hate in all their forms.”
“Disappointingly, it now appears that the promises made in Associate AG Gupta’s January 2022 letter were mere platitudes,” Burch concluded in his letter to Jordan. “To date, the federal government has only found evidence to charge two individuals involved in only a handful of cases, despite hundreds of actual incidences of violence. These charges only recently came to light, indicating the more sunshine that Congress shines on the indifference of the DOJ the more likely they will do their job.”
While the FBI has offered rewards for information that could lead to arrests for the vandalism of 10 pro-life pregnancy centers, Harden contends that the law enforcement agency’s efforts are “a day late and a dollar short.” He attributed the FBI’s embrace of reward money for information about pro-abortion vandals to “the House Judiciary Committee’s demands for cooperation in their inquiry into the ‘allegations of politicization and bias [against pro-life people] at the FBI.”
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights raised questions about a potential political bias against pro-life individuals and groups at the FBI in a Sept. 26 letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“There seems to be much interest in pursuing alleged wrongdoing by pro-life activists, yet little interest in pursuing alleged wrongdoing by abortion-rights activists,” Donohue wrote.
Donohue cited the arrest of pro-life activist Mark Houck for purportedly pushing a patient escort at a Philadelphia Planned Parenthood clinic as an example of an “overreaction for a minor infraction of the law.” Houck faces the possibility of up to 11 years in prison. Donohue contrasts Houck’s case with the “underreaction by the Department of Justice when the pro-life side is targeted.”
A GiveSendGo fundraiser set up for Houck’s family maintains that the escort was harassing Houck and his son as they prayed outside the abortion clinic, prompting them to walk away from the building.
“The escort followed them, and when he continued yelling at Mark’s son, Mark pushed him away,” the fundraiser stated.
Houck’s case was heard this week at a federal court in Philadelphia. Judge Gerald Pappert rejected Houck’s defense attorney’s request for the case to be dismissed. The jury remained deadlocked Friday and will resume deliberations on Monday.
Sorry, I refuse to follow the script. The script for black influencers demanded that the Tyre Nichols tragedy be laid at the feet of so-called white supremacy.
Five black cops beat a 150-pound black man to death, and the script called for more mass shaming of white people and insinuations that policing should be outlawed.
Had I followed the script, I wouldn’t be embroiled in controversy, public enemy number one of black Twitter, Ciara, and all the other blue-check virtue-signalers.
In fact, had I dishonestly blamed systemic, institutionalized racism for Nichols’ death, I would be the toast of Twitter, drowning in retweets, likes, and applause. I would be high as a kite on dopamine and swimming in interview requests.
But that’s not what I did when I appeared on Tucker Carlson’s cable news show Friday night. I didn’t lie. I didn’t concoct some fantasy narrative where five black cops shouted, “This is MAGA country!” before attacking Tyre Nichols.
I blamed the five cops for their criminal behavior and predicted that a predominantly black jury will find them guilty of second-degree murder. I then criticized CNN and other media outlets for hyping the release of the bodycam footage like it was Al Capone’s secret vault and using the video to distract from America’s escalating involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
And, when surprisingly given an opportunity to provide an additional thought, I argued that the five police officers mimicked gang behavior and that the whole sad event is a byproduct of communities overrun with matriarchal values and controlled by single black mothers. I said that the conversation we should be having in reaction to Tyre Nichols centers on the cost of destroying the black family.
That’s my written paraphrase of what I tried to convey in the final 60 seconds of an unscripted, four-minute TV segment. Watch my comments in full here. YouTube has somehow classified my remarks as “inappropriate and offensive.”
It’s impossible to analyze a situation as complex as the Tyre Nichols tragedy in four minutes. What you try to do is spark a deeper conversation by saying something that will cut through all the garbage being spewed on social media and/or promoted on ratings-hungry television networks.
My first comment was said to establish that a black police chief, black police officers, and black citizens would be in charge of providing justice for Tyre Nichols’ family. What happened to Nichols isn’t about white supremacy. And what will happen to his alleged killers won’t have anything to do with white supremacy either.
My second comment was stated to point out that the media is intentionally overemphasizing the importance of the Nichols tragedy. Our politicians are pushing us toward nuclear conflict with Russia. Millions of lives are at stake. I’m not trying to diminish the value of Tyre’s life. But in comparison to nuclear conflict, his life pales in comparison.
Tyre Nichols is a local story, not a national one. It’s being used to provide cover for more important international tragedies, such as Big Pharma’s COVID malfeasance. The TV networks dependent on the advertising dollars of pharmaceutical companies prefer Don Lemon talking about lawless cops rather than lawless and exploitative international corporations.
Finally, my third comment, the one my critics have seized upon, is an attempt to spark a conversation about the real ramifications of America’s growing preference for female authority and alternative family structures. The matriarchy doesn’t work.
We need to talk about that.
Black urban areas are dominated by matriarchal rulership. It’s an utter failure and disaster. These areas all operate similar to Memphis. Crime is astronomical. Young men settle their differences with deadly violence. Academic performance hovers at record lows. Illegitimacy rates skyrocket.
Tyre Nichols was 29. The five police officers who participated in beating him to death range in age from 24 to 32. The behavior we witnessed from the officers resembles what happens when a group of Vice Lords catch a Gangster Disciple on their turf. The Disciple will flee. The Vice Lords will chase. Violence ensues.
My point is what we saw Friday night does not appear to be an outgrowth of bad policing. I’ve yet to see video evidence that depicts what caused the traffic stop and why Nichols had to be snatched from his car. It doesn’t feel like we’ve been shown the complete story. Something about the encounter feels far more personal than anything born of the frustration created by a resistant suspect. The use of pepper spray makes zero sense.
It feels like the outgrowth of a rotten culture, a culture where black men are canonized and celebrated for handling petty beefs and disrespect with lethal violence. That type of emotional violence is commonplace within zip codes dominated by the matriarchy.
Tyre Nichols cried out for his mama for a reason. I’m not saying that to belittle Nichols. I’m saying it’s a reflection of modern black culture, a culture that inappropriately places women at the top of the food chain. Mama is the ultimate authority and savior.
That’s not what God intended. He is our Savior. He authorized man to exercise dominion over the earth. He prescribed family (man, woman, and child) as the foundation of order, obedience, and His will. No racial group in America is more out of line with God’s natural order than black people. Seventy percent of our kids are born to unwed mothers. We don’t view family as a necessity for success. It’s just one of many options. It’s prioritized well below allegiance to racial idolatry, the Democrat political party, and hip-hop culture.
Those allegiances have made us hostile to a biblical worldview, indifferent toward marriage, and convinced there’s little value in male leadership. Scripture is the kryptonite that weakens us rather than the cape we wrap ourselves in to unleash superpowers.
We’re out of order.
Ephesians 5:22-24: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.”
So what happens in communities without a culture of marriage and nuclear family?
In his book, Kingdom Politics, the great Christian minister Tony Evans says: “The saga of a nation is the saga of its families written large. Whoever owns the family owns the future. When family structure breaks down, all manner of calamity and chaos enter into society. When family breaks down, crime goes up, poverty goes up, abuse goes up. When the family breaks down, gender confusion and role confusion go up.”
Calamity. Chaos. Confusion.
You don’t need to be a Christian minister to recognize what’s going on in black communities with no consistent family structure. Here’s a video of the rapper Jay Z in 2019 explaining the connection between police brutality and single motherhood. And here’s a link to a story capturing the criticism Jay Z received for publicly discussing the obvious connection.
The social media matrix and corporate media are rigged to stop people from discussing the negative outcomes from the annihilation of the black family. The matrix blames “white supremacy” for everything bad that happens to black people, even when white people are uninvolved.
The culture we’ve adopted is designed to produce bad outcomes. The matriarchy doesn’t work.
My critics say my criticism is off base because Tyre Nichols has a mother and stepfather and the city’s female police chief, Cerelyn Davis, is married and a mother. My critics ignore the obvious. No one survives a rotten culture unscathed. A nutritionist will lose his way or suffer collateral damage if he’s forced to set up business inside a fast-food restaurant.
The pervasiveness of baby-mama culture harms everyone, including the non-participants forced to operate within it. The chaos and dysfunction negatively impact everyone.
Why did Cerelyn Davis and the Memphis Police Department implement a SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit, the special task force the five officers worked in? They started it in November 2021 to combat the violent behavior of largely unparented young black men terrorizing Memphis. These types of units are common in high-crime, single-parent neighborhoods across America.
Police start gangs to combat gang violence. Young men without fathers in the home are attracted to gangs.
Baby-mama culture celebrates gang involvement. That’s why Snoop Dogg, a proud Crip, is such a beloved cultural figure. That’s why so many black boys and girls from two-parent households and good neighborhoods think their racial identity is tied to behaving in a ghetto or criminal fashion.
Baby-mama culture rules black America in the ‘hood and the ‘burbs. So does matriarchal culture. Black men see black women as our leaders, our saviors.
I don’t. I never will. And I was raised primarily by my divorced mother. My mother was awesome. Spectacular. She took me and my brother to church every Sunday. She took a second job and moved us out of the ghetto and into a working-class neighborhood.
But I am who I am – good and bad – because of my father. I feared and revered him. He taught me the importance of self-sufficiency and never accepting a handout. He had no tolerance for excuses. And luckily I grew up in an era when there was far less pressure to conform to a criminal black stereotype. Rappers weren’t portrayed as heroes and role models. It wasn’t cool to have a baby mama. I was raised to see myself as a leader, a protector, and a provider.
The left frames men like me, regardless of color, as misogynist oppressors. Popular culture promotes the “Woman King,” especially to black people. They ignore the failing results of matriarchal rulership and send women like Cerelyn Davis to fix problems only strong, bold male leadership can solve.
It’s going to take male leadership in the home, in the church, and in law enforcement to fix the rotting culture that took Tyre Nichols’ life. That same leadership is required throughout American society. Baby-mama, matriarchal culture is being pushed within all facets of American society. Illegitimacy rates are rising among all racial demographics.
Christian male leadership has been demonized to placate the feelings and promote the values of the BLM-LGBTQ Alphabet Mafia. Your children’s neighborhoods will have more in common with Memphis than Mayberry.
Two of the five police officers charged in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols were hired by the Memphis Police Department after it relaxed its hiring requirements, a new report by The New York Post shows. Tadarrius Bean and Demetrius Haley both joined the MPD in August 2020 after education qualifications to become an officer were dramatically lowered two years prior. The department nixed the required associate’s degree or 54 college credit hours for recruits in 2018 due to a lack of applicants.
“They’re desperate. They want police officers,” retired NYPD detective Mike Alcazar told the Post. “They’re going through it, they check off some boxes, saying, ‘Ok, they’re good enough, get them on.”
In fact, the department was so desperate for recruits it offered $15,000 signing bonuses in both 2021 and 2022, and waivers for applicants who had been convicted of felonies. Even this did not prevent the force from being down 500 officers in January 2022.
Back in September 2020, a month after Bean and Haley were hired, former Deputy Director of MPD Mike Ryall told the Memphis Commercial Appeal that the rise of violent crime in the city could be attributed to the police department’s understaffing and lack of manpower. Bean and Haley were also hired during the summer of the George Floyd riots, a global protest movement organized by Black Lives Matter in response to the death of Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. The protests spread to more than 2,000 cities across America, causing more than $1 billion in property damage and killing at least 25 people. Such a movement, whose main mantra was “defund the police,” significantly damaged police morale.
According to a June 2021 survey by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the rate of retirement at police departments rose 45% in 2020 compared to the previous year, with a 20% increase in resignations. The hiring rate also dropped by 5%. Simply put: police officers were quitting at unprecedented rates across the country to escape such a hostile environment, and departments were struggling to meet minimum staffing requirements. This coincided with a massive crime wave across America’s major cities.
“So at that very moment you’re hoping you can put police out there to try to deal with crime, you’re seeing the workforce shrinking with an unprecedented number of retirements and resignations,” PERF’s Executive Director Chuck Wexler told NPR.
While a shortage of recruits is no excuse for relaxing hiring standards for cops, it is a product of disastrous dynamics the Black Lives Matter movement and leftist elites have cultivated. There is a lot of power and money in stoking fears of racism and hatred. And it is all done at the cost of the safety of the American public, most especially black Americans like Nichols.
For sure, let the cops implicated in Nichols’ death be charged to the fullest extent of the law, but it is important to remember why officers of that quality were hired to those positions in the first place.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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An Oregon man who viewed pornographic videos of young girls being tortured has been sentenced to probation and 90 days in jail to be served “at his convenience,” a police report stated.
On Wednesday, Scott Johnson, 27, of St. Helens, Oregon, about 30 miles north of Portland, pled guilty to three counts of encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree. The guilty plea represented the culmination of a two-year investigation which began when the state department of justice alerted local authorities that child pornography had been uploaded on a messaging app in the St. Helens area.
Investigators then zeroed in on Johnson as a suspect and seized his phone. A forensic investigation of the phone revealed that it contained child pornography, a police statement said. The nature of the evidence on the phone was particularly heinous. Fox News reported that it involved the “graphic sexual abuse and torture of young girls.”
“graphic sexual abuse and torture of young girls.”
When questioned, Johnson told authorities that “sometimes people will send him a message asking him if he wants to see something” and that they then sent him that material. Investigators determined that Johnson received a series of links and continued to click on all of them, even after he knew that they would direct him to child porn.
In an effort to reach a plea deal, Columbia County prosecutors offered Johnson a 60-month sentence. However, Johnson rejected that offer and decided to take his chances with the judge.
“He just rejected our offer, pleaded guilty, and asked the judge for probation over our objection,” the district attorney’s office said.
That decision worked out in his favor. According to a statement from St. Helens Police Department, “Johnson was ultimately sentenced to five years of probation and 90 days in jail to be served on weekends at his convenience.”
In Oregon, encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree is a Class B felony, a crime which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Johnson’s light sentence seems to follow a pattern of soft-on-crime policies in the state in recent years. In April 2022, when she was still governor, Kate Brown (D) granted clemency to a murderer who had previously been sentenced to life without parole, putting a violent criminal back on the streets, and Portland had more murders in 2021 than at any other time in history. Travellers Worldwide recently warned prospective visitors that theft and larceny, vandalism, auto theft, and assault are among “the city’s most prevalent crimes.”
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The video from last year’s hammer attack on Paul Pelosi was released to the public on Friday. The police bodycam video shows the husband of Nancy Pelosi in his San Francisco home being brutally attacked by a man with a hammer.
Paul Pelosi, 82, was attacked with a hammer in the early hours of Oct. 28. Suspect David DePape reportedly broke into the Pelosi home in the affluent neighborhood of Pacific Heights. He allegedly asked, “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” At the time, the former speaker of the House was in Washington, D.C. DePape purportedly detained Paul Pelosi. However, Pelosi was reportedly able to go to the bathroom, where his phone was charging, and he called 911.
Police dispatcher Heather Grives allegedly informed police officers that the reporting person of the incident at the Pelosi residence told her, “There is a male in the home and that he is going to wait for his wife. However, he stated that he doesn’t know who the male is but that his name is ‘David ‘and that he is a friend.” At 2:27 a.m., police reportedly arrived at the Pelosi home for a “priority well-being check.”
The newly-released police bodycam footage shows two officers approach the Pelosi residence. An officer knocks on the front door. A few seconds later, the door opens. DePape and Pelosi are holding a hammer.
Pelosi, dressed in a button-down shirt and underwear, warmly greeted the officers, “Hey guys. How are ya?”
A police officer asked, “What’s going on man?”
DePape responded, “Everything’s good.”
Pelosi was seemingly smiling. He appeared to be holding a beverage in his left hand.
The officer instructed DePape to “drop the hammer,” but he replied, “Nope.”
Pelosi and DePape can be seen struggling over the hammer, then the suspect wrestled it away. Pelosi attempted to flee to another room, but the suspect lunged and violently swung the hammer at Pelosi.
Police officers jumped into action and a struggle ensued. The shaky video shows all of the men on the floor of the home.
Police attempted to detain the suspect while Pelosi was motionless on the ground.
As an officer was attempting to handcuff DePape, the cop shouted, “Give me your f***ing hand!”
Pelosi can be heard moaning in pain in the background.
WARNING: Graphic video
#EXCLUSIVE Just released police body camera video shows moments David DePape attacked Paul Pelosi at his# San Francisco home
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Stephen M. Murphy ordered the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to release police body camera video, audio from police interviews with alleged attacker David DePape, 911 calls, home surveillance video, and other investigative material. A coalition of news organizations requested the materials be released in the name of transparency. DePape’s lawyers argued that the release of the materials would “irreparably damage” his right to a fair trial.
DePape, 42, lived in a school bus in Berkeley, according to the New York Post. The bus sits in the yard of the home of his ex-lover – San Francisco pro-nudist activist Gypsy Taub. DePape was allegedly a hemp jewelry maker who grew up in British Columbia, Canada.
DePape was hit with state charges of attempted murder, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, and threats against a public official and their family. Federal prosecutors charged DePape with attempted kidnapping and assault with intent to retaliate against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member.
Zachary and William Zulock in a November 2021 photo | Screenshot/Facebook
A now-defunct Christian adoption agency was reportedly used by a same-sex couple in Georgia who were arrested last August on charges of allegedly sexually abusing their two adopted sons and filming the abuse to upload and share on the internet. William Dale Zulock, 32, and Zachary Jacoby Zulock, 35, were charged with child molestation and sexual exploitation following their arrest on July 27 in Loganville, Georgia, after officials with the Walton County’s Division of Family and Child Services joined deputies in a raid at the men’s home. During the raid, authorities said investigators found evidence the Zulocks were “engaging in sexually abusive acts and video documenting this abuse.”
Now an investigation by Townhall has uncovered new details about the Zulocks, including that Zachary was the focus of a pedophilia investigation in 2011 in which he was accused of engaging in sexual acts with a 14-year-old boy in Walton County. That investigation was ultimately shut down and no charges were filed. Since the Townhall report was published, however, authorities have reportedly reopened the 2011 investigation.
It’s unclear whether the earlier allegation was considered when the Zulocks used All God’s Children, a special needs adoption agency located in Watkinsville, Georgia, to adopt their sons in 2018. According to Townhall, All God’s Children, Inc. worked specifically with special needs children who were “considered more difficult to place because they are older, need to be placed with their siblings or have physical, mental or emotional/behavioral challenges.”
While the agency is no longer active, a listing for All God’s Children remained on the Georgia Association of Licensed Adoption Agencies (GALAA) website as of Jan. 23.
Screenshot of the Georgia Association of Licensed Adoption Agencies website. All God’s Children is listed third. | Screenshot
All God’s Children “worked in partnership with the Georgia Department of Human Services to find families for Georgia’s waiting children,” according to a description on AdoptionCenter.us. The Department of Human Services oversees the state’s Division of Family & Children Services (DFCS), Townhall reported.
A family member told Townhall the brothers — now ages 9 and 11 — were raised by struggling heroin addicts. Another relative of the boys said they believe the Zulocks had full knowledge of that information and targeted the boys for that very reason.
“I do think they had every intention, and this is why they adopted them for this purpose,” another family member who was not identified told Townhall.
According to the Georgia Corporations Division, All God’s Children, Inc., was dissolved on Oct. 28, 2022, just weeks after the Zulocks were arrested. Private messages uncovered by Townhall between Zachary Zulock and All God’s Children former executive director Emily Bailey in October 2021 indicate Bailey said the agency was forced to close due to a “combination of factors.”
When Zulock asked Bailey for a recommendation on agencies to possibly help them adopt a girl, Bailey recommended two agencies that are “open to same-sex families,” including Bethany Christian Services, which the New York Times profiled in March 2021 as one of the country’s “largest adoption and foster care agencies.”
The couple frequently criticized the adoption process, taking to social media to rant about a range of related topics, including arguing in favor of reforming America’s foster-care system. Zachary wrote in one February 2021 post, “All kids deserve a loving and safe home.” Another post read, “How many may be tempted by…prostitution?”
In August 2020, he took to Facebook to rant about a speech by Billy Graham’s granddaughter, Cissie Graham Lynch, at the 2020 Republican National Convention in which she defended the rights of Christian adoption agencies to hold “deeply held beliefs.”
Zachary wrote: “And if you have an issue with my family because of who we are and who we love, maybe you shouldn’t be reading this and keep it moving. If we had not been allowed to adopt them, that’s taking ‘our rights away.’”
“What about all the [LGBT] couples out there that have been stopped from adopting?! What about their rights?” he added.
After the 14-year-old was found being sexually assaulted in another state, a judge kept her from loving parents because they questioned her transgender identity. Then she was trafficked again.
In August 2021, by concealing a teen’s newly asserted transgender identity from her parents, Virginia’s Appomattox County High School participated in a chain of events that led to that girl falling into the hands of sexual predators not once, but twice.
When the FBI found Sage (last name of the family withheld for privacy) in Maryland, where she was victimized by a sexual predator, a judge refused to return her to her parents on the grounds they were abusing her in not affirming her as male. Housed in the boys’ quarters of a children’s home away from her parents, she told her mother, she was assaulted again. The girl soon fled, then was brutally sex-trafficked again until her rescue in Texas by law enforcement.
Sage’s Law, or the Child Protection Act, is being introduced this week in the Virginia House of Delegates by Delegate Dave LaRock in honor of this young teen from Appomattox County, Virginia. Sage hopes sharing her story will help protect others from the abuse she suffered at the hands of predators, precipitated in part by the very institutions that should have protected her.
School policies and state laws that encourage concealing information from parents’ purport to protect vulnerable minors. In practice, as tragically demonstrated by Sage’s case, such policies open the door to predators by removing children’s greatest protection from their lives.
Sage’s Law aims to shut that door in three ways. It would require schools to notify parents if their child asserts a gender different from his or her sex; it prevents school counselors from withholding or encouraging minors to withhold information about a child’s gender identity; and it clarifies that raising a child according to his or her biological sex, including decisions about a child’s mental and physical health, may not be construed as abuse.
Sage’s story, compiled from months of interviews, reports, and records, has been lived by countless other families torn apart in the name of gender ideology by activist schools, judges, anddoctors. This is a story of the unbearable cost of parent-exclusion policies, but also of a mother’s love and relentless determination to save her child.
Institutions that Should Protect Endanger Instead
Sage is a slight, pretty, 15-year-old girl with elfin features and an edgy style. Recently, reflecting back on her transgender identification, she told her mom: “I don’t know who I was. I’m a totally different person now. I never was a boy. Everybody was doing it, I just wanted to have friends.”
That self-reflection is consistent with the research showing that upwards of 80 percent of gender dysphoric childrenembrace their sex as they emerge from puberty. Children who are “affirmed” as the opposite sex, however, particularly if puberty blockers are used, consistently go on to further medicalization. Sage’s comment also reflects the reality of social contagion, fueled by social media and increasingly recognized internationally as a factor in the exponential rise in the number of children identifying as transgender.
Yet states such as California allow children as young as 12 to make their own health-care decisions, without their parents but under the authority of the state. In January, Virginia delegates Candi Mundon King, Nadarius Clark, Michelle Maldonado, Sam Rasoul, and Marcus Simon filed a similar bill authorizing courts, social workers, and medical professionals to withhold information from parents and consent to medical procedures for “mature” minors.
The consequences for children and families in states such as California that construe not “affirming” as abuse are particularly dire. In October, progressive Virginia Delegate Elizabeth Guzman announced she would reintroduce her 2020 bill to criminalize parents who do not affirm their child’s transgender identity as guilty of abuse, potentially resulting in the loss of custody.
School Policies Endangering Students
Michele adopted Sage, her biological granddaughter, after the death of her son. Like many gender-dysphoric children, Sage has a history of trauma from that early childhood loss. Related health problems became severe at times, requiring therapy and medical treatment. Her daughter’s previous schools notified Michele when concerns arose, she said, enabling her to have Sage’s treatment adjusted. But when her daughter entered Appomattox County High School in early August 2021, Michele says she was cut out of the loop.
Unbeknownst to Michele, her then-14-year-old’s taste at the time for boys’ clothing, which she described to her mother as simply “dressing emo,” was accompanied by her assertion at school that she was a transgender boy. School records, shared by the family, indicate school staff were calling Sage by her chosen male name and pronouns and at her request concealing this from her parents. Sage recalls her school counselor telling her during the first week of school that since she identified as male she could use the boys’ bathroom.
School records also indicate bullying, although they do not capture the severity of what Sage eventually told her mom: boys were following behind her in a group, touching her, threatening her with knife violence and rape, and even shoving her up against the hallway wall. On Aug. 23, according to school notes, reports were received from students and teachers that Sage had used a boys’ bathroom and encountered hostile boys there. The school counselor met with Sage the next day to direct her to use the nurses’ bathroom for safety reasons.
Sage’s statement that “all the boys at this school are rapists” prompted the school to review hallway footage outside the bathroom, showing that several boys had entered while she was inside. On Wednesday, Aug. 25, the counselor and school resource officer called Sage into a meeting, where she became so emotional that the counselor recorded concern Sage might be “a risk to herself due to being so upset when leaving school.”
Only at this point — after meeting alone with her daughter, after two days had passed and knowledge of the incident had reached all the way to the superintendent, according to the school records — did the school finally contact Michele, she said, still without revealing the male identity her daughter was asserting.
Michele recalls finding a school hall pass labeled with a new name that August evening and Sage telling her for the first time that she was identifying as a boy at school. As Michele sat with her on the floor, Sage tried to stop the tears as she told her mother a group of male students had “jacked” her up against the wall of the boys’ bathroom and threatened her with violence, and that she was terrified of what they would do. Michele tried to comfort her, assuring her she could stay home while they figured out how to handle the bullying.
That night, Sage disappeared. She was found nine days later in Maryland, a victim of sexual assault. That was just the beginning of her family’s ordeal.
Excluding Parents Invites Predators
As Michele’s case illustrates, school policies that exclude parents from critical knowledge of their child’s mental health remove a child’s greatest safeguard from his or her life. While this author could find no such policy posted on the Appomattox High School or school board websites, the school’s actions to “affirm” Sage’s stated gender, name, and pronouns and to permit access to bathrooms of the opposite sex are all consistent with the directives of former Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s 2021 model policies. So is the choice to deceive parents.
In fact, the Northam policies direct that an entire gender transition team and plan be set up for such a child, all in secret from the parents if the child so wishes. This guidance was revoked in 2022 by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, but Virginia Democrats and LGBT groups are fiercely contesting the transparency and parental consent required by the new proposed guidance.
Yet school counselors, unlike parents, have at best an extremely limited knowledge of a child’s mental, emotional, and physical needs. They also have neither the constitutional authority nor the expertise to determine a child’s best interests.
Children who identify as transgender have well-documented mental health co-morbidities and rates of adverse psychiatric events. Even Dr. Erica Anderson, former head of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), has raised alarm at the “pitched battle” engendered by professionals who “triangulate” or set children in opposition to their parents.
In Sage’s case, by withholding information about her daughter’s gender identity and related issues, including the severe bullying related to Sage’s transgender exploration, the school destroyed vital opportunities for Michele to discern warning signs in time to assess and respond before tragedy struck.
Predators know transgender kids are vulnerable prey. Sage told Michele months later that some of the transgender websites to which a school counselor referred her linked to “creepy” older men and pornography.
One mother told this author that as soon as her daughter identified online as “female to male,” multiple suspicious “sugar daddy” accounts reached out to her on social media. Roblox, the wildly popular children’s gaming site, has transgender chat rooms with a panic button to “hide your screen from your parents.” Sage, her mother says, was lured to meet sex traffickers by online predators posing as friends.
A Court-Enabled Tragedy
The first call from the FBI came late at night on Sept. 2, her mother recounts: Sage had been found. Michele says investigators told her Sage had been trafficked into Washington, D.C. and then Maryland for nine days of horrific, brutal sexual abuse.
Driving through the night, their backseat full of stuffed animals and cozy blankets, Michele and her husband Roger arrived early the next morning at the Baltimore Courthouse. They were stunned to hear that their child, who had just survived unspeakable trauma, was being held in a juvenile detention cell and that they were being summoned to a hearing late that afternoon before Judge Robert Kershaw. When they entered the courtroom, Sage appeared from the penitentiary remotely, on screen, with only court-appointed attorney Aneesa Khan, an assistant public defender, present in person. “I love you, baby!” Michele cried to her daughter, who responded “I love you too, Nana.” To their shock, Khan spoke up and alleged on Sage’s behalf that she did not wish to return home and had been “both emotionally and physically abused by his parents in connection with [his] expressed male gender identity and desire to live as a trans male.”
Michele had only found out about this claimed male identity the night her daughter disappeared. Yet Michele was willing to use any name or pronoun to bring her home. Sage later told her, Michele says, that Khan “told me to tell the judge my parents hit me, starved me.” Sage also told Michele that Khan “didn’t care how much [Sage] had to lie…but they were going to win this case” to remove Sage from her parents’ custody and place her in a Maryland foster home that would affirm her as male.
Michele is a Virginia Court-Appointed Child Advocate (CASA) with years of experience supporting troubled teens, and she and Roger were quickly cleared of abuse charges. But the allegations were used to take custody of their daughter and bar them from seeing her.
The Cruelty of Ideology
Rather than treat Sage as a victim of horrific sex trafficking and return her to her family, the court dealt with her as a runaway, providing grounds for temporary custody in Maryland. Significantly, under the Interstate Juvenile Compact, even if allegations of abuse are made, juveniles are to be returned to their home state, which is presumed to better be able to assess the child’s needs. Judge Kershaw delayed this return for two months, which led to Sage’s next trafficking episode.
Instead of receiving treatment for her profound physical and emotional trauma, Sage was kept for days in solitary detention as a runaway, then transferred to the Catonsville Children’s Home. Per Judge Kershaw’s order, she was housed according to her “expressed male gender.” Michele says she eventually learned from Sage that she was the only girl in male quarters and that she had been repeatedly assaulted there.
Kershaw held multiple hearings focusing on Sage’s claimed male identity and Khan’s efforts to demonstrate gender identity abuse, including calling two Appomattox school counselors to testify against Sage’s parents. While his final ruling on Nov. 10, 2021, reluctantly conceded lawful custody to the parents, Kershaw opined at length that “more likely than not” Sage had “endured emotional abuse and neglect by his parents,” including “misgendering” and “misnaming.” Astonishingly, Kershaw cited as evidence of parental abuse “running away from Virginia to Maryland,” when in fact Sage was abducted, raped, and trafficked across state lines.
While Sage was in The Children’s Home, Michele says she sent letters and cards multiple times a week and tried countless times to reach her by phone, especially on Sage’s 15th birthday. Months later, Sage commented: “I missed you so much, but I tried not to because you didn’t want me back.” Horrified, her mother asked what she meant. She learned from Sage that Khan had told her that, because she was transgender, Michele didn’t want her anymore — and that not one of her cards or messages had ever reached her daughter.
Sage also eventually told her mother that, while living at the foster home, she skipped classes every day and would “smoke weed and do drugs” with kids she had met. Sage also relayed later that Khan had told her “I don’t give a sh-t if you do drugs, I just want to win this case.” Sage also said Khan had visited the home of one of Sage’s Maryland school friends to enlist her support in contacting Sage, claiming Khan had won the case and resulting in knowledge of Sage’s case spreading around the school.
In a text to a friend at the time, Sage referenced Khan’s intent: “going to the court of appeals, and the supreme court.” It is difficult to avoid Michele’s conclusion that “[t]he only best interest [Sage’s] attorney had was for herself. To put my traumatized child on center stage to push her political or gender agenda!”
Michele begged the court to provide treatment for the trauma Sage had endured and had found placement for her by mid-October, approved by Virginia social services, in Youth for Tomorrow’s program for young victims of sexual exploitation. The judge rejected it because they would treat Sage as a girl.
Not until Nov. 10 did Judge Kershaw approve placement in North Spring, a residential treatment facility that would affirm her claimed male identity. Frightened of being locked in the facility and believing her mother no longer wanted her, Sage texted a friend, “im gonna dip” (leave). On Nov. 12, 2021, Sage says, she cut off her court-required GPS monitor and ran away to meet an online “friend” in Texas she thought was 16.
Once more, the unspeakable happened. Sage fell into the hands of a predator who, police told Michele, raped, starved, drugged, and brutalized her. This time she disappeared for months. For the second time in less than four months, Michele had no way of knowing if her daughter was even alive. But Michele never stopped searching. Finally, a tip she discovered on social media led Texas marshals to her daughter’s rescue in Dallas on Jan. 24, 2022.
For the first time since that conversation on the floor of Sage’s bedroom on Aug. 25 the year before, mother and daughter were able to talk. On the plane ride home, Michele listened as Sage began to unburden her heart, grieving over what she learned but overcome with gratitude that her daughter was alive and restored to her.
Affirmation by Intimidation
Upon her return to Virginia, Sage entered North Spring, the lock-down facility negotiated by the court, with Michele driving four hours each way for her weekly allotted visit. Sage was heavily medicated, suffering from constant nightmares, and fearful of both residents and doctors. Sage told her mother that her counselor also pressured Sage to tell Michele she wanted a “gender-affirming” mastectomy.
Yet, during one of Michele’s visits, Sage asked if her mother could secretly take her to buy girls’ clothes, stating she didn’t want to be a boy anymore, but she was scared to tell the doctors. Pressured by North Spring to let them treat her daughter, Michele reached out to Josh Hetzler, an attorney with Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center, who secured her daughter’s return. After nearly a year of horror, she was finally home safely.
The road ahead is a long one of healing both physically and emotionally. There are confusing lapses in concentration and persistent, terrifying nightmares. In a safe, loving home, surrounded by her pets and easing into at-home learning and therapy sessions, the painful recollections emerge unpredictably, as do the panic attacks. Michele doesn’t press, letting Sage open up at her pace, whether to her or to her beloved uncle Cory, who has moved home to support her.
As she begins to process her ordeal, Sage now desires to protect others from the horrors she experienced. Michele’s heroic, unrelenting determination to save her daughter has turned not only to helping her heal but to preserving other families from what hers endured. Advocates have rallied to help fund legal action through The Gavel Project, and to craft policies that will help protect others.
Sage’s Law
Many children never escape the clutches of sex traffickers. Had it not been for her mother’s relentless love and determination, Sage might never have been found. Michele calls it a miracle. In the starkest of contrasts, the actions of ideologues played a part — twice — in her daughter falling into the traffickers’ hands.
Sage’s public school could have been transparent to Michele about her daughter’s struggles. The court could have returned her to Virginia without furthering a quest to make legal history. The children’s home could have protected her from assault and access to drugs. And doctors could have treated trauma, not pressed living as the opposite sex and mutilative surgery on a victim of sexual abuse. All along, it was her mother who truly had Sage’s best interest at heart.
Sage was failed by adults who thought they were helping but were blinded to their own cruelty by their ideology. Michele tells of countless parents who have reached out to her with their own stories of families and bodies destroyed by school counselors, courts, and doctors who may spend minutes with a child, but assert they have the expertise and authority to usurp decisions from parents who have poured a lifetime into their care.
Sage has shown great courage in sharing her story, and it is time for lawmakers to take a stand for her and many other children by passing Sage’s Law. There is only one acceptable response to her story: never again.
Laura Bryant Hanford is a mother of five and is actively involved in school policy and religious freedom issues in Virginia, where she lives with her family. She served from 2015 to 2018 on Fairfax County Public Schools’ Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee. She was the lead congressional staff drafter of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. She also served at the U.S. Embassy in Romania as the officer in charge of human rights, focusing on ethnic minorities, women, and refugees. She is a graduate of Princeton University.
A first-grade teacher who managed to save her entire class after she was intentionally shot in the hand and chest by a 6-year-old student as she taught at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, has been hailed as a “hero” for her bravery in the face of danger. At a press conference Monday, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said the teacher, Abigail Zwerner, 25, is hospitalized in stable condition after the shooting last Friday, but the first thing she asked him about when they met was how her students were doing.
“When I met with Abigail’s family on Saturday, and they took me up to her [hospital] room, she asked me first question, ‘Do you know how my students are?’ She was worried about them,” Drew said.
“And then today … she again asked me, ‘Do you know how my students are?’ And that touched me, her family and her mother. Abigail wanted me to tell you all, but primarily her students and the parents of her students, she is in stable condition and she is thankful for the thoughts and prayers that have gone out to her. The people that have reached out not only here locally but across our state and across our nation. She is very, very appreciative of the support that she is getting. And continues to get,” he explained.
Drew said at about 1:59 p.m. last Friday, police received a call from the school that a teacher had been shot with no other information. Officers “from different areas” quickly converged on the school and at 2:04 p.m., two sheriff’s deputies entered the classroom where the shooting took place and found a 6-year-old male student being physically restrained by a school employee.
“The child was physically combative and struck the employee that was restraining him,” Drew said.
“Officers then took control of him and escorted him out of the building [and] placed him in a police car with an officer inside and outside of that building. Once that had occurred there was a systematic evacuation of rooms and hallways for safety as they didn’t know what they were dealing with,” he said.
Police later recovered one spent shell casing, a backpack, a cell phone, and a 9mm Taurus firearm from the scene.
“The firearm was recovered close to the student’s desk where the shooting occurred,” Drew said.
Zwerner was reportedly teaching when the 6-year-old boy brandished the firearm, pointed it at her and fired one round.
“There was no physical struggle or fight. She was providing instruction to her class,” Drew said.
The police chief said Zwerner took a defensive position where she raised her hand after the student fired the gun at her.
“The round went through her hand, exited the rear of her hand and into her upper chest,” he said.
He said when police reviewed security video from the scene, Zwerner’s bravery was on full display.
“She suffered a gunshot wound but she was still able to get all of her students out of that classroom. From the video surveillance we have of the hallway, you can see the students running out of that classroom across the hall into — about 17-20 students — of that classroom into other classrooms,” Drew said. “Ms. Zwerner was the last person to leave that class. She made a right turn and started down the hallway and then she stopped. She turned around. She turned around to make sure that every one of those students were safe.”
Drew said police later interviewed the boy and his mother and discovered that the gun was a legally purchased firearm that he hid in his backpack and brought to school.
“We determined that the firearm was in the residence where they lived and the child obtained that firearm, placed it in his backpack and brought it to school. He was brought to school that day by his mother later that morning,” he explained.
As the hero teacher continues to recover, Hannah Zwerner, her twin sister, launched a GoFundMe campaign on Monday to raise $250,000 to help with her with medical and living expenses. More than $60,000 had been raised as of Tuesday.
“Abby, my family, and I are humbled by the outpouring of support we’ve received in the days following the event. Thank you for all of the prayers, well wishes, and words of kindness,” Zwerner’s sister said in a statement on the campaign. “If you’re looking for ways to help, I am creating this fund to help aid in Abby’s healing. Its purpose is to cover future living expenses as Abby recovers from this tragedy.”
Drew said Zwerner’s shooter was taken into custody for evaluation at a local hospital. He was later ordered to be temporarily detained by a judge so he can receive treatment at a medical facility while an investigation into the shooting continues.
“I’d like to reiterate that this shooting was not accidental. It was intentional. I believe, I told her today, I believe Ms. Zwerner, Abigail. She saved lives on Friday,” Drew said. “She is a trooper. She is a hero”
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An illegal alien and so-called “Dreamer” who brutally murdered three American citizens in 2018 was sentenced Friday to five consecutive life sentences.
27-year-old Luis Perez, a Mexican national, shot and killed his former roommates Steven Marler and Aaron Hampton on Nov. 1, 2018, and injured two others in Springfield, Missouri. The next day, the criminal noncitizen murdered Sabrina Starr, the 21-year-old who provided him with the weapon he used in the first two slayings.
TheBlaze reported at the time of the murders that Perez had been locked up in the Middlesex County Jail just months before on suspicion of various felonies, including assault, aggravated assault, and child abuse. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials requested that the jail hold Perez while it started deportation proceedings against him, however, the jail elected instead to release the criminal noncitizen. Perez summarily went on to kill Marler, Hampton, and Starr.
John Tsoukaris, the ICE Newark field office director said, “This tragedy might have been avoided had it not been for the reckless policy required of the Middlesex County Jail by their county officials.”
County officials suggested that the blame instead lay with ICE, as the agency “has the legal authority and the resources to secure such orders from a federal judge with regard to any inmate in the county’s custody it seeks to detain or deport.”
While Greene County prosecutors initially sought to have Perez put to death for his crimes, they ultimately fought to ensure he would never again walk free, reported the Springfield News-Leader.
Assistant Greene County Prosecutor Phil Fuhrman said, “Mr. Perez is dangerous, he is violent, and he is deserving of the maximum sentence.”
Perez’s attorney pushed for leniency in terms of his client’s sentencing, suggesting that the murderous illegal alien should receive his life sentences at the same time rather than one after another, so that he might one day become eligible for parole. The thinking behind this leniency: Perez, in the U.S. unlawfully, allegedly had a tough time growing up in New Jersey.
A spokesman for ICE revealed that Perez was previously a recipient of the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” program in 2012 and 2014, enabling him to dodge deportation and to receive a work permit.
Judge Thomas Mountjoy, who found Perez guilty of the murders in October, was not swayed by this line of argumentation, noting he was “struck by the magnitude of the violence” and that the “magnitude speaks to requiring the most severe sentence that the law would structure.”
Mountjoy gave Perez consecutive life sentences, ensuring the murderer will die in prison.
The News-Leader reported that Deboray Elkins, the mother of victim Aaron Hampton, called Perez’s victims “fallen heroes” and said Perez’s conviction in October marked a “day of jubilation.”
According to ICE, 62 illegal aliens were convicted in fiscal year 2022 for murder or manslaughter; 1,142 were convicted with assault, battery, or domestic violence; 896 were convicted for burglary, robbery, or fraud; 1,614 were convicted for driving under the influence; 365 were convicted for sex offenses; and many more faced convictions for other crimes.
While Perez’s co-defendant Nyadia Burden previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, having bought the bullets Perez used in the murders, two others have pending charges.
Dalia Garcia stands accused of tampering with evidence, having allegedly burned clothing worn during the murders.
Aaron Anderson also remains on the hook, having been charged with being an accessory to murder.
Image source: Portland Fire & Rescue, photo by Dennis Weis
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A 27-year-old transsexual has reportedly admitted to burning down a historic Korean church in Portland, Oregon, underscoring how he wanted to “take credit” for this act of apparent anti-Christian hatred. The 118-year-old, 3,000-square-foot Portland Korean Church at Southwest 10th and Southwest Clay Street, formerly the First German Evangelical Church, was set ablaze around 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 3.
In response to multiple reports indicating that the structure was fast becoming an inferno, 12 fire engines, six ladder trucks, four battalion chiefs, and 75 Portland Fire and Rescue Personnel arrived on the scene. Portland Fire and Rescue indicated that the church was not occupied when the three-alarm fire broke out.
According to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, by 5:40 p.m., the south side of the church had partially collapsed along with the roof. The fire had also spread to a neighboring home, which was evacuated.
Video of the historic downtown #Portland, Ore. church that was destroyed allegedly by New England #trans woman Cameron “Nicolette” Storer: pic.twitter.com/6feMy6Nnst
The toppling of its 35-foot steeple, which reached a height of 70 feet, was captured on video:
A construction rig toppled the charred wooden steeple of the historic former Portland Korean Church shortly after noon on Friday – the first step in demolishing the building after it was ravaged by a fire Tuesday night.
Mike Schmidt, the leftist Multnomah County District Attorney who made a name for himself by refusing to prosecute BLM rioters and other violent suspects, announced that 25-year-old Cameron David Storer was arraigned on four charges, including two counts of arson in the first degree, one count of arson in the second degree, and two counts of burglary in the second degree.
Storer, a transsexual who prefers to be called by a woman’s name, reportedly walked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on Jan. 4 to confess to setting the fire, claiming that he wanted to “take credit” for the attack and detailing how he had gone about doing so with a Bic lighter. Court documents indicated that Storer lit papers on fire in the church, waited nearby to make sure it had spread, then walked over to Plaid Pantry to observe his handiwork.
The alleged arsonist claimed to have taken 10 oxycodone daily and to have been addled by schizophrenia. He also suggested that voices had told him to burn down the church.
Andy Ngô reported that the bearded suspect is currently being jailed in a co-ed medical dorm in a single cell.
In light of Schmidt’s recent admission that Multnomah County can’t bring all dangerous criminals to justice — letting alleged stranglers, domestic abusers, sex offenders, human traffickers, child abusers, and berserkers of various intensities off without any penalty for their misdeeds — it is presently unclear if Storer will ultimately be penalized for the alleged crimes for which he has taken credit.
The Portland Korean Church, which the Oregonian noted was owned by Hadi Nouredine, a Beaverton and Lake Oswego dentist, was also targeted in September 2020.
Christian churches have been routinely targeted in Portland, primarily by leftist marauders.
A transsexual Antifa militant was charged with a Nov. 3, 2020, attack on Saint André Bessette Catholic Church — a church known for housing, cleaning, and feeding the city’s poor.
Father Tom Gaughan said, “The actions of this one individual has forced us to cease our outreach and its hundreds of people we normally give food to.”
"The act of one person has prevented us from providing for hundreds of people."
In April 2021, the First Christian Church was targeted in an attack, having its windows shattered.
At least four Catholic churches were vandalized by radicals with threatening and vulgar remarks in summer 2021.
The century-old Portland Stake Tabernacle in southeast Portland was abandoned in summer 2022, after its Mormon congregants fled the state, citing the leftist violence plaguing the city.
The Democrat-run city scores a three on Neighborhood Scout’s crime index, where 100 is safest. The chances of becoming a victim of a violent crime are one in 187. In the Democrat-controlled state of Oregon, the odds are one in 342.
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Law enforcement now says that a 6-year-old student in Virginia intentionally shot his teacher last week.
On Friday, Richneck Elementary School first-grade teacher Abby Zwerner, 25, was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries after one of her students shot her. At the time, police said it was unknown whether the shooting was an accident or intentional.
But the shooting was intentional, according to police.
“This was not an accidental shooting,” Newport News police chief Steve Drew revealed at a press conference, explaining there was an “altercation” that preceded the shooting.
Officials, however, are not saying what led up to the altercation, and law enforcement has declined to say how the child obtained access to the firearm or who owns it. Police have also not said anything about the child’s parents. The child was taken into police custody, but officials are not saying where he is being held.
Newport News Mayor Phillip Jones confirmed the child is being cared for.
“It is almost impossible to wrap our minds around the fact that a 6-year-old first grader brought a loaded handgun to school and shot a teacher; however, this is exactly what our community is grappling with today,” Jones said in a statement. “This is still an active investigation, and the Newport News Police Department is working diligently to get an answer to the question we are all asking — how did this happen?”
Police officers have not revealed what criminal charges they will pursue, but the situation is incredibly complicated because of the child’s age.
Virginia law does not allow 6-year-olds to be tried as adults. In addition, a 6-year-old is too young to be committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if found guilty.
A juvenile judge would have authority, though, to revoke a parent’s custody and place a child under the purview of the Department of Social Services.
Fortunately, Zwerner’s situation has since improved, though she remains hospitalized.
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