Not even two months into their reign as the majority party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress, key Democrats have made clear that one of their top priorities is censorship of divergent voices. On Saturday, I detailed how their escalating official campaign to coerce and threaten social media companies into more aggressively censoring views that they dislike — including by summoning social media CEOs to appear before them for the third time in less than five months — is implicating, if not already violating, core First Amendment rights of free speech.
Now they are going further — much further. The same Democratic House Committee that is demanding greater online censorship from social media companies now has its sights set on the removal of conservative cable outlets, including Fox News, from the airwaves.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday announced a February 24 hearing, convened by one of its sub-committees, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Claiming that “the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,” the Committee argues: “Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”
Since when is it the role of the U.S. Government to arbitrate and enforce precepts of “journalistic integrity”? Unless you believe in the right of the government to regulate and control what the press says — a power which the First Amendment explicitly prohibits — how can anyone be comfortable with members of Congress arrogating unto themselves the power to dictate what media outlets are permitted to report and control how they discuss and analyze the news of the day?
But what House Democrats are doing here is far more insidious than what is revealed by that creepy official announcement. Two senior members of that Committee, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Silicon-Valley) and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) also sent their own letters to seven of the nation’s largest cable providers — Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice — as well as to digital distributors of cable news (Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu) demanding to know, among other things, what those cable distributors did to prevent conservative “disinformation” prior to the election and after — disinformation, they said, that just so happened to be spread by the only conservative cable outlets: Fox, Newsmax and OANN.
In case there was any doubt about their true goal — coercing these cable providers to remove all cable networks that feature conservative voices, including Fox (just as their counterparts on that Committee want to ban right-wing voices from social media) — the House Democrats in their letter said explicitly what they are after: namely, removal of those conservative outlets by these cable providers:
Congresswoman Eshoo boasted on her official site about these efforts, lauding herself and McNerney for “urging 12 cable, satellite, and streaming TV companies to combat the spread of misinformation and requesting more information about their actions to address misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies spread through channels they host.”
For the last four years, we were inundated with media messaging that Trump posed an unprecedented threat to press freedoms. The Washington Post even flamboyantly adopted a new motto to implicitly ratify that accusation (while claiming it was not Trump-specific). Other than the indictment of Julian Assange — which most Washington Democrats cheered — what did the Trump administration do in the way of attacking press freedoms that remotely compares to Democrats abusing their majoritarian power to force the removal of conservative cable outlets from the airwaves, just days after doing the same with dissident voices online?
There is not a peep of protest from any liberal journalists. Do any of the people who spent four years pretending to care so deeply about the vital role of press freedom have anything to say about this full frontal attack by the majority party in Washington on news outlets opposed to their political agenda and ideology?
Evidently not. While many conservative outlets are covering this story, it is difficult to find any liberal outlets writing about it at all. An article from The New York Times was one exception, though it largely attempted to justify these censorship efforts, with paragraph after paragraph purporting to demonstrate the dangerous misinformation spread by these channels. The only nods to the dangers of press freedoms in the article came from statements by Fox News and a GOP member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Revealingly, these same two members of Congress who sent this threatening letter to cable providers said during the Trump years that freedom of the press must be safeguarded at all costs. “The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws that abridge the freedom of the press, and we cherish our country’s culture of free expression,” they intoned when writing to the FCC in 2019 to complain that Russian news outlets were concealing their affiliation with the Kremlin. “We’re not requesting any press censorship,” they assured the FCC under Trump. Yet they are clearly doing exactly that now.
In a statement he emailed to me and publicly posted, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr denounced the Democrats’ actions as a “marked departure from First Amendment norms.” He said “it is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.” In response to my inquiries, Commissioner Carr added in a separate statement to me:
The greatest threat to free speech in America today is not any law passed by the government—the First Amendment stands as a strong bulwark against that form of censorship by state action. The threat comes in the form of legislating by letterhead. Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying. The letter sent by two senior Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cable companies and other regulated entities, and the Committee’s own hearing this week on “disinformation in the media,” are the latest examples. They are singling out selected newsrooms for their coverage of political events and sending a clear message that these media outlets will pay a price if they do not align their viewpoints with Democrat orthodoxy. That is a chilling transgression of free speech and journalistic freedom. No government official has any business inquiring about the ‘moral principles’ that guide a private entity’s decision about what news to carry.
Carr’s GOP colleague on the FCC, Commissioner Nathan Simington, similarly accused House Democrats of seeking to “intimidate into silence those who would distribute on their platforms disfavored points of view.”
The way Democrats justify this to themselves is important to consider. They do not, of course, explicitly acknowledge that they are engaged in authoritarian assaults on free speech and a free press. Not even the most despotic tyrants like to think of themselves in that way. All tyrants concoct theories and excuses to justify their censorship as noble and necessary.
Indeed, the justifying script Democrats are using here is the one most commonly employed by autocrats around the world to silence their critics. Those they seek to silence are not merely expressing a different view, but are dangerous. They are not merely advocating alternative ideologies but are destabilizing society with lies, fake news, and speech that deliberately incites violence, subversion and domestic terrorism.
In her boastful posting, Rep. Eshoo says her efforts targeting these cable outlets are necessary because “misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices, among other issues in our public discourse.” This is the rationale invoked by virtually every repressive state to imprison journalists and ban media outlets.
The Democrats sound a great deal like the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel el-Sisi. Just two weeks ago, Sisi’s regime finally released an Al Jazeera journalist who had been imprisoned for four years based on accusations that he had “spread false news” and was guilty of “incitement against state institutions and broadcasting false news with the aim of spreading chaos.” Sound familiar? It should, since that is precisely what House Democrats are saying to ennoble their multi-pronged assault on free expression.
Accusing one’s domestic opponents of being subversives and domestic terrorists is by far the most common way that despots on every continent justify their censorship and silencing campaigns of oppositional media outlets. In 2014, the French journalist Valeria Costa-Kostritsky warned in the Index on Censorship that anti-terrorism laws and accusations of promoting subversion were becoming the primary means which authoritarian states from Turkey and Jordan to Russia and the UAE use to justify the silencing of journalists:
Anti-terror legislation seems to be the perfect tool for a state seeking to crack down on opposition. “It’s so elusive. You can [see] anything as terrorist propaganda. There needn’t be any evidence of violence, any praise of violence. Plus, if you blame someone for having a connection with the [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] the public buys that argument easily, especially in a country that is suffering from terrorism, as Turkey is,” said Sevgi Akarçeşme, former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Today’s Zaman (the English-language edition of daily Zaman), who had her newspaper taken over by the government in March 2016.
A similar means used by repressive governments to silence disfavored media outlets is to claim they are promoting “extremism.” As Costa-Kostritsky detailed:
There’s another word one can use to browse through reports published on the [Mapping Media Freedom] map: “extremism”. Anti-extremism legislation is used to intimidate journalists in post-Soviet countries, particularly in Russia. On the map, of the 35 incidents flagged with “extremism”, 11 took place in Russia, and seven in Crimea, others include Belgium, Italy, Hungary, France and Spain. Five reports connecting the media to “extremism” took place during the first half of 2016. They include website closures and journalists being put on a list of extremists. In Russia, most cases using anti-extremism legislations against journalists happen via Roskomnadzor, the national media regulator.
When China arrests journalists it typically justifies its actions by accusing them of fomenting extremism that jeopardizes national security.
And accusing journalists of spreading “fake news” — always a dangerously vague term from its inception — is equally commonplace when government authorities want to silence media outlets. The Washington Post reported that “as 2019 draws to a close, there are 30 journalists in jail worldwide on charges of ‘false news’ — or, as it’s also called these days, ‘fake news.’” In sum:
It has now become commonplace to throw around fake-news accusations in the United States. But in other countries around the world — like Egypt, Turkey, Somalia and Cameroon — such charges can have very chilling and stifling impacts on the press, according to an annual report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
In Egypt — where General-turned-President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has been overseeing a crackdown that human rights groups say is harsher than any before — there are 21 journalists in jail for allegedly publishing “false news,” according to the CPJ’s data. In practice, press freedom advocates say, these charges stem from a simple fact: The journalists published news that Sisi didn’t like.
In a passage that the Post would only publish about foreign countries but never about House Democrats, even though it now applies equally, they observed: “There is a serious global problem of disinformation spreading online and sowing distrust and sectarianism. The problem, say press advocates, is that the laws regulating fake news all too often are a means of stifling the media rather than fostering a more transparent environment online.”
This framework is hardly rare in the west either. When the Obama administration collaborated with the UK Government in 2013 to detain my husband David Miranda at Heathrow Airport in connection with the work he was doing in the Snowden reporting, they cited an anti-terrorism law to justify his detention, and repeatedly threatened to prosecute him for terrorism if he did not cooperate by providing all of his passwords to them. He ultimately prevailed in his lawsuit against the U.K. Government on the ground that it constitutes an illegal assault on press freedoms and human rights to abuse anti-terrorism frameworks to intimidate or silence journalists.
Justifying the silencing of journalists by accusing them of inciting domestic terrorism and extremism is now the most common means used globally for censorsing the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists in 2013 said they had “tracked a significant rise in journalist imprisonments.” The culprit, said the group, was “the expansion of anti-terrorism and national security laws worldwide” after the 9/11 attack, which had been repeatedly abused to criminalize media outlets. “The number of journalists jailed worldwide hit 232 in 2012, 132 of whom were held on anti-terror or other national security charges.” In sum: “CPJ’s analysis has found that governments have exploited these laws to silence critical journalists.”
Are there conspiracy theories and disinformation sometimes found on the conservative cable outlets which House Democrats want taken off the air? Of course there are: all media outlets disseminate conspiracy theories and fake news at times. MSNBC and CNN spent four years endorsing the most deranged conspiracy theory imaginable, one with very toxic roots in the Cold War: namely, the McCarthyite script that the Kremlin had taken over control of key U.S. institutions through sexual blackmail over the President, invasions into the nation’s heating system and electric grid, and criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign to hack into Democrats’ emails.
All of that was false, just as the one-month tale told over and over by the media about a pro-Trump mob murdering Brian Sicknick by bludgeoning him to death with a fire extinguisher was false — a story which remains unretracted or corrected by most who spread it.
Just imagine if, during the Trump years, the GOP Senate had abused its power to bully cable outlets into removing MSNBC from their platforms, or banning liberal journalists and activists from using social media platforms, on the grounds that they were spreading conspiracy theories and fake news. It is hard to overstate how extreme the rhetoric would have been that Trump and the Republicans were engaged in authoritarian measures to destroy free speech and a free press.
And I would have joined in those denunciations (as I did with the Assange prosecution): as much as I loathe so much of what those outlets do, it is not the role of the government to regulate let alone silence them. The corrective is for journalists to rebuild trust and faith with the public by exposing their misinformation and proving to the public that they will do accurate and reliable reporting regardless of which faction is aggrandized or angered.
But corporate media outlets and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) who spent the last four years posturing as virulent defenders of press freedoms never meant it. Like so much of what they claimed to believe, it was fraudulent. The proof is that they are now mute, if not supportive, as Democrats use their status as majority party to launch an assault against press freedoms far more egregious than anything Trump got close to doing.
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More Democrats Express Alarm Over House Leadership’s Bid to Overturn Iowa Election Results
Several Democratic lawmakers have expressed alarm at House Democrats’ bid to overturn the results of Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District election in favor of Democrat Rita Hart. “I’m sorry, I cannot support overturning an election, especially given everything that’s gone on,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a swing district Democrat, told the “Skullduggery” podcast. “I can’t turn […]
The post More Democrats Express Alarm Over House Leadership’s Bid to Overturn Iowa Election Results appeared first on NTD.
New Election Lawsuits
Pelosi Congress Assault on Election Integrity Raises Constitutional Questions
Lawsuit: 2,400 Illegal Alien Criminals Released under San Francisco Sheriff’s Office Sanctuary Policy
Judicial Watch Sues Georgia Secretary of State for Records about Changes to Processing of Absentee Ballots in 2020 Election, and 2021 Trump/Raffensperger Call
Fauci Update: Judicial Watch Sues for NIH Funding and Other Records Tied to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology
Judicial Watch Sues OPM for Records on Agency Personnel Classes, Seminars in China; Breach of OPM Data
Pelosi Congress Assault on Election Integrity Raises Constitutional Questions
Robert Popper is a Judicial Watch senior attorney who served as the deputy chief of the voting section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2008 to 2013. In the following op-ed for The Hill he reveals the massive power grab the Left plans on elections across the land:
Ever since House Resolution 1, the Democrats’ 886-page partisan wish list of a voting bill, passed the House on a party-line vote earlier this month, its critics have had a lot to say. They correctly point out that the bill federalizes election law on a historically unprecedented scale, systematically impairs existing federal and state laws concerning election integrity, and imposes new burdens and restrictions on political speech and activity. All of this is apparent from the text of the bill.
Less obvious — indeed, almost hidden from anyone who does not specialize in voting law — is a provision of H.R. 1 requiring states to draw federal congressional districts in a way that favors Democrats: “Districts shall comply with the Voting Rights Act … including by creating any districts where two or more politically cohesive groups protected by such Act are able to elect representatives of choice in coalition with one another.” The bill adds that districts must “ensure the practical ability” of such groups to “elect representatives of choice … regardless of whether or not such protected group constitutes a majority” of a district.
“In coalition with one another” — these innocent-seeming words are, in fact, an attempt to reverse particular rulings of the Supreme Court and compel the drawing of what are known as “coalition” districts specially constructed to ensure Democratic majorities.
The checkered history of coalition districts is bound up with cases interpreting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which forbids any practice that causes members of a racial group to “have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” This clause has long been interpreted to forbid at-large elections where these allow a racial majority to dominate a racial minority.
Here is how this might happen: In an at-large election for, say, a city council of seven members, every member is elected by the entire population of the city; if voting is racially polarized, a racial majority of only 55 percent of the city’s voters has the power to elect all seven council members, effectively denying the large minority any representation whatsoever. The remedy for this kind of violation of Section 2 is the imposition of electoral districts. These allow the city-wide minority a chance to prevail locally in at least a few of those districts. But before compelling such a remedy — that is, before throwing out a jurisdiction’s chosen electoral system and imposing a district plan — the Supreme Court logically requires that a racial minority at least have a chance of forming a majority in one of the new districts.
In the intervening years, the plaintiffs suing to enforce Section 2 have most often been Black or Hispanic voters. In any particular jurisdiction, they may not have sufficient numbers to make up a majority in a new district. Further, many of these voters tend to vote for Democrats, and the requirement that they be placed in districts where they can form a majority often conflicts with the desire of Democratic operatives that they be placed strategically to maximize the party’s electoral chances.
Enter the concept of coalition districts. Suppose there are too few black voters to form a majority in a new district. The idea is that, if enough white voters join them, or if enough Hispanic or other minority voters join them, and if this “coalition” is large enough to constitute a voting majority in that district, then drawing it becomes legally necessary to ensure minority voters’ opportunity “to elect representatives of their choice.”
This is a transparent partisan trick. What special interest do minority voters in such a district share with other minority or majority voters who may join them to form a majority? The only answer is that they all intend to vote the same way. . . .
Trump Lauds Georgia Republicans for Enacting Election Reforms
Former President Donald Trump on March 26 praised the Republicans in Georgia for passing and enacting a package of election reforms. “Congratulations to Georgia and the Georgia State Legislature on changing their voter Rules and Regulations. They learned from the travesty of the 2020 Presidential Election, which can never be allowed to happen again. Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!” Trump said in a statement released via his Save America political action committee. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on March 25 signed a package of election reform bills into law. The newly-enacted measure will require absentee voters to provide a copy of their photo ID and enhance security measures for ballot drop boxes, among other changes. Kemp wrote on Twitter that the omnibus bill will ensure that Georgia’s elections are “secure, fair, and accessible.” The 95-page bill passed the state House by a 100-75 vote and the …
Michigan GOP claims they can sidestep Gov Whitmer and ensure ‘fair, safe, and open’ elections in 2022 (Video)
Michigan Republicans have introduced a whole slew of proposed election reforms and they believe they have a veto-proof way to sidestep Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to ensure a chance at a fair election in 2022. […]
Continue reading Michigan GOP claims they can sidestep Gov Whitmer and ensure ‘fair, safe, and open’ elections in 2022 …
Zuckerberg’s Election Rigging Group Sends VP to Be Biden’s Tech Director.
A former Vice President of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – which funneled $350,000,000 to the Center for Tech and Civic Life – now serves as Special Assistant to the President and Director of Technology in the Biden White House…
The post Zuckerberg’s Election Rigging Group Sends VP to Be Biden’s Tech Director. appeared first on The National Pulse.
Ontario Superior Court Strikes Down Election Law Restricting Free Speech
An Ontario judge has declared as unconstitutional a section of Canada’s election law designed to prohibit certain kinds of “false statements” during the period of a federal election. Ontario Superior Court Justice Breese Davies released a decision on Feb. 19 declaring Section 91(1) of the Canada Elections Act (CEA) as an unjustifiable infringement on the free-speech rights of Canadians. The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), which had launched the court challenge in September 2019, called Davies’ ruling “a major free-speech victory.” “This legislation had the potential to fine and even imprison people for honest mistakes. This would create a chilling effect on the free exchange of political ideas and opinions, and the law acts as a form of unjustified censorship,” CCP executive director Joanna Baron said in a statement on Feb. 19. “This result will improve the electoral process and also protects the fundamental right to freedom of expression,” she said, adding that the decision “is a …
Sullivan Vows Murkowski Election Support Despite Trump Challenge
Alaskan GOP Senator Dan Sullivan said he’ll support colleague Lisa Murkowski’s re-election bid despite a vow by former President Donald Trump to campaign against her in 2022.
Murkowski, 63, was one of seven Republicans to join Democrats in a vote in February to convict Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors for his role in inciting a mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. A majority voted to convict but was short of the two-thirds threshold needed to uphold the impeachment. . .
Leftists Target Georgia for Boycotts After Election Integrity Law Passed
Left-wing activists groups are targeting the state of Georgia after Gov. Brian Kemp (R) signed an election integrity bill into law last week.
One of the most high-profile targets of the boycotts is the Augusta National Golf Course, home to the Professional Golf Association’s (PGA) Masters Tournament, the most storied professional golf tournament in the United States.
“The PGA Tour and Masters Tournament have both made commitments to help diversify golf and address racial inequities in this country – and we expect them to not only speak out against Georgia’s new racist voter suppression law – but to also take action,” David J. Johns, Executive Director of the The National Black Justice Coalition said in a statement (pictured above).
Many critics of the bill call it “racist.”
Other potential victims of a boycott of the Peach State include Coca Cola, which is headquartered in Georgia, along with Major League Baseball, which intends to host its All-Star game in Georgia this year.
Savannah Mayor Van Johnson said on Twitter that he will not be purchasing Coca Cola products for the foreseeable future.
I am not feeling like purchasing or consuming @CocaCola or any of its products for quite some time… Looking at a few other GA companies. How about you?
— Van R. Johnson, II (@VanRJohnson) March 26, 2021
Aflac, Delta Air Lines, Home Depot and UPS, all based in Georgia, are also being urged to speak out against the law, and could face boycotts if they do not comply.
This boycott is different than most.
None of the companies or entities in question actively supported the election integrity bill, which requires voter identification for absentee ballots, and limits the use of ballot drop-boxes, which caused headaches during the 2020 election cycle, as hundreds of thousands of legally-required chain of custody documents for absentee ballots left in drop boxes were never provided.
In fact, the companies and entities facing boycott took no stance on the bill.
But their silence is being construed as support by some of the state’s leading radical leftists.
“We will speak with our wallets,” well known African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Reginald Jackson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “This past summer, Coke and other corporations said they needed to speak out against racism. But they’ve been mighty quiet about this.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to dabroscareports@gmail.com.
Photo “David Johns” by National Urban League.
The post Leftists Target Georgia for Boycotts After Election Integrity Law Passed appeared first on The Georgia Star News.
Graham Accuses Biden of Playing ‘Race Card’ Over Georgia Election Reform Law
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday accused President Joe Biden of playing “the race card” on a newly enacted law that seeks to improve the integrity of elections in Georgia. “You know what’s sick is [to] have the president of the United States play the race card continuously in such a hypocritical way,” Graham told Fox News Sunday. “He said the filibuster was a relic of the Jim Crow era. Well, he made an hour speech when he was a senator suggesting the filibuster was the best thing for the Senate to make it different [to] the House.” Graham made the remarks in response to a question from host Chris Wallace on the 95-page Georgia law (pdf) passed on March 25 by the Republican majority House and Senate. The bill passed the state House by a 100-75 vote and the state Senate by a 34-20 vote, with no Democrats backing the reform measures. …
Amazon Union Election Set to Conclude: What We Know
The ballot-counting process for a high-profile union election by Amazon.com Inc. workers in Alabama started Tuesday, after the mail-in voting period ended Monday. The count is expected to last days. Thousands of workers from the facility in Bessemer, Ala., cast votes.
The election will determine whether the warehouse employees will become the first group to unionize among Amazon ’s roughly 950,000 U.S. workers. Pro-union employees have sought help from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, or RWDSU, a frequent Amazon opponent that would represent the workers if they vote in favor of unionizing. . .
California’s election rules could make a Newsom recall a wild ride
SACRAMENTO, CA — There is very little set in stone for a recall election in which voters could remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office beyond the ballot’s basic question of whether the governor should keep his job.
Recall elections have been the electoral equivalent of a comet making its way through the solar system. Of the 55 attempts in California history to qualify a gubernatorial recall, only one, the dismissal of then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2003, has made it to the ballot. That is likely to change by year’s end, as backers of the effort to oust Newsom are on the verge of triggering a special statewide election this fall.
Though the tally of signatures on recall petitions won’t be complete until next month, there are significant issues to be sorted out. With flexible timelines and unusual rules, the coming months could be some of the most raucous political times in recent memory. . .
Wisconsin to investigate 2020 election
BY STAFF The Wisconsin Assembly has voted to launch an investigation into the 2020 presidential election. The vote for an investigation in the swing state’s election ran along party lines, with all 58 Republicans supporting the investigation and all 35 Democrats voting against it. The resolution will allow a committee to issue subpoenas to compel […]
Group Sues Congress, Seeks New Presidential Election (Video)
A group in Texas is filing a lawsuit against all members of Congress, among others. They are asking for a new presidential election and an injunction on the current administration.
The post Group Sues Congress, Seeks New Presidential Election appeared first on NTD.
Georgia passes election integrity law
BY STAFF Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia recently signed an election integrity bill that will require voter identification for absentee ballots, among other measures. The bill easily passed through Georgia’s Republican-majority House and Senate. The new state law requires absentee voters to provide identification rather than election officials verifying signatures through the controversial processes they […]
Manchin says Democrat-led election-reform bills will go nowhere without bipartisan support
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says the House’s sweeping voting reform bill known as the “For the People Act” will go “nowhere” in the Senate without bipartisan support.
The bill, also know as H.R. 1, was recently passed in the Democratic-controlled House and sent to the Senate with such provisions as increased access to absentee balloting and changes on campaign donations and the mapping of congressional districts. . .
Judicial Watch at the Supreme Court: Fighting for Clean Elections
Battles for clean elections are heating up around the country and Judicial Watch has long been a national leader in the fight. Recently we weighed in on a critical case now being considered by the Supreme Court. Its outcome could reshape elections in America for decades to come.
The case unfolds in the midst of a political battle that could render any decision by the Supreme Court largely moot. As Judicial Watch senior attorney Robert Popper recently wrote, House Resolution 1, rammed through the House of Representatives earlier this month by Democrats on a party line vote, “federalizes election law on a historically unprecedented scale, systematically impairs existing federal and state laws concerning election integrity, and imposes new burdens and restrictions on political speech and activity.”
At the High Court, the immediate issues in Arizona Republican Party et al v. Democratic National Committee et al revolve around out-of-precinct voting and ballot harvesting. Should the Arizona practices be banned?
But both sides are hunting bigger game in the high-stakes case: Section Two of the Voting Rights Act. Both sides see the case as an opening for the court to reshape Section Two. The standard set in the case will impact a wide array of hot-button state election issues around the nation, including redistricting, voter ID, mail-in ballots, same-day registration, proof required for registration, how much early voting is required, third-party collection of ballots, and when polls can close on election day.
The landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act was a frontal assault on racial discrimination in elections. Section Two bans any law that “results in a denial or abridgment” of the right to vote “on account of race.”
What results in a denial or abridgment of voting rights? It happens, Section Two says, when “the totality of circumstances” show that a racial minority has “less opportunities than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
Lower courts have disagreed on Section Two, issuing complex and often contradictory rulings. In the Arizona case, lower courts considered whether state laws banning out-of-precinct voting and ballot harvesting were discriminatory and thus illegal under Section Two.
The Arizona out-of-precinct law banned people from casting votes in precincts other than where they were registered to vote. The ballot harvesting regulation banned third parties such as paid political operatives and labor unions from going door-to-door to collect ballots.
A federal district court said the Arizona statutes are not discriminatory, upholding the laws.
On appeal, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the district court: the Arizona laws were proper and not discriminatory.
But the liberally inclined full bench of the Ninth Circuit then took up the case and parted ways with their colleagues. They reversed the earlier rulings, saying that Arizona’s prohibitions on out-of-precinct voting and ballot harvesting were enacted with a discriminatory purpose and had discriminatory results—violations of Section Two.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Judicial Watch and our friends at the Allied Education Foundation, we asked the High Court to reject the ruling of the full Ninth Circuit.
We noted that in the matter of out-of-precinct voting, the Democratic National Committee lawyers on the winning side in the Ninth Circuit case “utterly failed” to provide “any evidence” that the challenged voting procedures “caused minorities to have less opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.”
“Causation”—cause—is the key first step in determining a Section Two violation. The Ninth Circuit found no cause, no evidence, and moved right on to the emotionally charged second step in finding a violation: past racial discrimination and current socio-economic disparities.
But to move on to the second step of finding a Section Two violation, we note, the courts must “first find causation”—an entirely reasonable standard. “The Ninth Circuit erred,” we note, “when it proceeded to the next step of the Section Two analysis” [social and historical conditions] “…without first finding causation.”
In other words, there must be evidence that, in the Arizona case, the bans on out-of-precinct voting and ballot harvesting actually resulted in a minority having less opportunity to vote and elect representatives of its choice. But there was no evidence, we argue. Absent evidence of actual harm, it is unjust and improper to invoke social and historical comparisons.
The fundamental flaw in the Ninth Circuit ruling that out-of-precinct voting had a racially discriminatory impact, we note, is that the case provided “no statistical or non-statistical evidence showing (1) which candidates in local and state races in Arizona elections were preferred by minority voters; (2) the vote margins by which those minority preferred candidates were defeated; and (3) whether the number of minority-cast [out-of-precinct] votes, if cast, was sufficient to have caused the election to go in favor of the minority preferred candidate.”
Without this evidence, the case collapses.
Similarly, in the ballot harvesting issue, we note that evidence presented to the Ninth Circuit consisted almost entirely of anecdotal testimony that large amounts of ballots were collected from minority voters before the ban. The implication here being that after the ban, voting dropped. But we noted that “no evidence” was provided of “specific numbers of ballots cast with the type of assistance proscribed by” the Arizona bill. And, importantly, “no individual voter testified that these ballot-collection and delivery restrictions” made it more difficult to vote.
The Ninth Circuit ruling, we note, “pointed to no testimonial or documentary evidence comparing the numbers of early ballots delivered to election officials by third parties before and after the enactment” of the Arizona law. In addition, there was no showing in the case whether the ballot harvesting ban “caused minority-preferred candidates to lose elections.”
Read the full Judicial Watch brief here. It is replete with fine detail and sophisticated legal argument.
My main takeaway? Evidence matters, and the Ninth Circuit failed to consider it.
The broader issue? With the case now before the Supreme Court, the expansive, evidence-free Ninth Circuit interpretation of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act threatens to become the law of the land. Judicial Watch strongly supports election law that is race neutral. We do not support, as Judicial Watch Tom Fitton recently said, “the misuse of civil rights laws by leftist partisans to undermine election integrity measures.”
A ruling is expected in summer.
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Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch. Follow him on Twitter @micah_morrison. Tips: mmorrison@judicialwatch.org
Investigative Bulletin is published by Judicial Watch. Reprints and media inquiries: jfarrell@judicialwatch.org
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Election Audit Reveals Irregularities for 1 in 14 Mail-In Votes Cast.
An audit of mail-in ballots cast in Montana for the 2020 presidential election reveals a host of irregularities including evidence that “one or several persons may have filled out and submitted multiple ballots” and the failure of a county elections office to provide video footage of vote-counting. …
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Georgia Legislator Pushes Back On CNN Host’s Criticisms And ‘False Narrative’ Surrounding Georgia Election Bill
Republican Georgia state Sen. Butch Miller pushed back on criticisms from CNN’s Alisyn Camerota Tuesday, as well as the “false narrative” surrounding the election bill recently signed into law in his state.
Miller appeared on CNN’s “New Day” on Tuesday and attempted to refute popular arguments that the law, S.B. 202, is making it harder for people to vote.
(NEW) Donald Trump website: 45office.com
Donald J Trump, 45th President of the United States
Donald Trump is a major news figure but many media outlets and platforms have conspired to censor him and to censor certain information about him for political reasons. We will publish some of that difficult-to-find information here. […]
Woody Allen on Dylan Farrow’s accusation: ‘I believe she believes that’
Continuing to deny he sexually abused his daughter, the filmmaker also says, ‘She was a good kid. I do not believe that she’s making it up.’
Woody Allen gave a rare interview addressing allegations of sexual abuse by Dylan Farrow, maintaining his innocence while noting he believes Farrow “believes” she’s telling the truth.
“I believe she thinks it,” Allen, 85, told “CBS Sunday Morning” of Farrow’s previous allegations that Allen sexually assaulted her when she was a child. “She was a good kid. I do not believe that she’s making it up. I don’t believe she’s lying. I believe she believes that.”
The interview, which CBS says was Allen’s first in-depth, on camera American interview in nearly 30 years, was conducted in July 2020 but aired Sunday on streaming service Paramount+ for the first time amid a renewed interest in allegations against the filmmaker, thanks in part to the recent damning HBO docuseries ”Allen vs. Farrow.”
Allen has never been charged with any crimes and has repeatedly denied being inappropriate with his adopted daughter over the years. He and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, whom his ex-girlfriend Mia Farrow adopted with her ex-husband, composer André Previn, have written off “Allen v. Farrow” as fiction, slamming it as “a hatchet job riddled with falsehoods.”
“It’s so preposterous, and yet the smear has remained,” Allen said in the July interview. ”And they still prefer to cling to if not the notion that I molested Dylan, the possibility that I molested her. Nothing that I ever did with Dylan in my life could be misconstrued as that.”
He added: “There was no logic to it, on the face of it. Why would a guy who’s 57 years old and never accused of anything in my life, I’m suddenly going to drive up in the middle of a contentious custody fight at Mia’s country home [with] a 7-year-old girl? It just — on the surface, I didn’t think it required any investigation, even.”
Allen told CBS he would like to reach out to Dylan Farrow but has not spoken to her since the allegations surfaced.
In the early ’90s, Mia Farrow, still Allen’s girlfriend at the time, learned that he had struck up a relationship with her 21-year-old adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, upon discovering he had nude photos of Previn. Allen, 56 at the time, and Mia Farrow ended their relationship soon after.
“The last thing in the world that anybody wanted was to hurt anybody’s feelings,” Allen said. ”What we wanted to do was to eventually make it known that we had a relationship.”
He added he was “totally surprised” at the onset of his relationship with Previn and initially had “no interest in her whatsoever,” but “she turned out to be the deepest relationship in my life.”
When asked if he ever considered a relationship with his girlfriend’s adopted daughter to be inappropriate, Allen said “no,” adding there was “never a moment that it wasn’t the most natural thing in the world … it didn’t give me pause, because the relationship with Soon-Yi was very gradual. It wasn’t like I went out with her one night and kissed her.”
Despite Allen’s reputation as a man who dated younger women — and one who portrayed characters who dated younger women — Allen maintains the 35-year age gap between himself and Previn was a deviation from the norm, and that his relationship with Mia Farrow had reached a point of being a ”relationship of convenience” and was “never going to be a marital relationship.”
“I would say of the many women I’ve dated in my life, many women, they were all what the appropriate police would call appropriate, age appropriate — Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Louise Lasser, my first wife — until Soon-Yi, which is unusual for me.”
He added: “If you’d have told me I was going to wind up married, and happily married, to an Asian woman much younger than me, not in show business, I would have said ‘the odds of that are very slim. I don’t think you’re going to be right.’ But that’s what happened.”
In 2018, CBS’s Gayle King spoke to Dylan Farrow, who shut down Allen’s claims that her allegations were merely a vessel for Mia Farrow to seek revenge over his relationship with Previn.
“What I don’t understand is, how is this crazy story of me being brainwashed and coached more believable than what I’m saying about being sexually assaulted by my father?” Dylan Farrow said. “Except every step of the way, my mother has only encouraged me to tell the truth. She has never coached me.”
She added: “He’s lying and he’s been lying for so long.”
Allen and Previn, now 50, have been married for 23 years and have raised two adopted daughters now in college, which Allen claims is proof of his innocence: ”They don’t give two baby girls to someone they think is a pedophile.”
How does he feel about those in Hollywood and the public who have condemned him? “They’re well-meaning but foolish,” he says, accusing them of “enabling this lie” against a “perfectly innocent person.” But he says he ultimately isn’t bothered by what others think about him.
“Do I care that some guy sitting at home or some woman is thinking, ‘I don’t care what investigators say, I still believe he’s a pedophile’? It’s as meaningful as a person sitting at home saying, ‘I believe him and he’s a wonderful guy and he’s gotten a raw deal,’ “ he said.
Read more at usatoday.com
Just who is it attacking Asian Americans?
CNN ran no less than 3 gazillion segments about a supposed “surge” in violence against Asian Americans this week, but there was something really strange about each one. Though the anchors and reporters were careful to note the race of the victims, they studiously avoided saying even a word about the race of the attackers.
It’s not really that strange. It’s because the suspects seen on video in each of the attacks were black. Do you think CNN might have showed more urgency in identifying their race had they been white? I do!
Asians Rarely, Though Increasingly Face Hate Crimes
Americans have been targeted for their Asian ancestry more often in recent years but the incidents remain rare. There were 158 anti-Asian hate crimes reported in 2019 by police agencies to the FBI, up from 148 the year before. The FBI won’t release its 2020 data until the fall but in 16 of the country’s largest cities, according to an analysis by researchers from California State University (CSU) in San Bernardino (pdf), there was an increase to 122 incidents in 2020 from 49 the year before. The data has come to the forefront of media attention after a 21-year-old man killed eight people in several massage parlors in the Atlanta area on March 16. Six of the victims were Asian women. Many such parlors are known to illegally offer sexual services and are most commonly staffed by Chinese immigrants, many of whom have fallen victim to human trafficking rings. Authorities said …
Massage Parlors Attacked by Gunman Busted in Prostitution Stings
According to documents released Friday, the two massage parlors targeted by a deranged gunman in Atlanta Tuesday had both been subjects of prostitution stings by police, despite claims to the contrary by Atlanta’s mayor.
“As far as we know in Atlanta, these are legally operating businesses that have not been on our radar,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said after the shootings. “Not on the radar of [the Atlanta Police Department].”
Between the two parlors, 12 people were arrested in the busts. The latest prostitution sting happened in 2013.
“Almost all the arrests came in undercover stings where an officer paid for a massage and an employee offered sex or a sex act for more money,” the Washington Post reported.
Police visited the two massage parlors 21 times, according to the records.
The prevailing narrative pushed by the political left is that the shootings, which left eight victims dead, six of whom were of Asian descent, were a “hate crime” against the Asian community. But the gunman, 21-year-old Robert Alan Long of Woodstock, reportedly confessed that he targeted the massage parlors because they fed into his own sexual addiction, not because of the race of those operating them.
The third massage parlor attacked by the lone gunman was in Cherokee County, and does not appear to have run afoul of the law the way the others did.
However, according to one report, all of Long’s targets “have detailed recent reviews on an online site that leads users to places that provide sexual services.”
Still, the political left is running with the racism narrative.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Asian American leaders in Georgia Friday.
Georgia State Rep. Bee Nguyen, a Democrat and the first Vietnamese American member of Georgia’s general assembly, described the shootings as the “intersection of gender-based violence, misogyny and xenophobia.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Georgia Star News and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to dabroscareports@gmail.com.
Photo “Police Tape” by Tony Webster. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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Atlanta Shooting Suspect Charged with ‘Malice Murder’ and Aggravated Assault
Atlanta massage parlor shooting suspect 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long has been charged with “malice murder” and aggravated assault, a county sheriff announced Monday. Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that Long, who is accused of opening fire at three spas, killing eight people including six of Asian descent, could still face further charges. “Working with jurisdictions across Georgia, Robert Aaron Long was quickly apprehended and now faces malice murder and aggravated assault charges in our jurisdiction,” the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office said Monday. Malice murder is an offence in the state of Georgia that alleges express or implied malice. Long took “full responsibility” for the shootings on the night of March 16, officials said last week, adding that the 21-year-old may not have targeted the parlors out of a racially motivated animus but because he wanted to end his sexual addiction. Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds told reporters last week …
Suspected Atlanta gunman Robert Aaron Long had been to spas before
The alleged gunman who shot up three Atlanta-area spas, killing eight people including six Asian women, “may have frequented” some of the locations and had a “sex addiction,” it was revealed on Wednesday.
Atlanta shooting suspect said killing of Asian women wasn’t racially motivated, blames sex addiction
The man suspected of killing eight people, including at least four Asian women, in three separate shootings in Georgia allegedly admitted to the killings and told authorities they were not was not racially motivated.
The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, said the shooting, at three spas outside of Atlanta, were connected to his “addiction to sex,” authorities said.
Elizabeth Warren Calls Filibuster Racist Months After Filibustering Tim Scott Police Reform Bill
by Thomas Catenacci
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren called the filibuster racist Thursday, months after she filibustered Republican Sen. Tim Scott’s police reform legislation.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the filibuster is both racist and shouldn’t be permitted in the Senate since it gives the minority veto power, according to Axios. The legislative filibuster, which dates back to the 1800s, is a rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation to pass in the Senate.
“The filibuster has deep roots in racism, and it should not be permitted to serve that function, or to create a veto for the minority,” Warren told Axios on Thursday. “In a democracy, it’s majority rules.”
Warren added that the founders didn’t intend for the filibuster to be implemented in Senate legislative procedure, according to Axios. Rather, it was designed to give southern states the ability to veto any anti-slavery or civil rights law they opposed, Warren said.
Warren first announced her opposition to the filibuster in 2019, CNN reported.
However, Warren filibustered Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s police reform bill in June, CNN analyst Scott Jennings noted. After Democrats blocked his bill, Scott criticized them, saying he was “amazed” by their actions.
Given how often Warren filibustered when she was in the minority, does this make her a racist? Anyone who covers this without mentioning her record is not telling the full story. https://t.co/RshVmFZBOC
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) March 18, 2021
“If my colleagues had issues with the legislation, they should have accepted that we were willing to give them multiple amendment votes so that we can make the necessary adjustments to get this across the president’s desk,” Scott said.
Calls to eliminate the filibuster have gained momentum since President Joe Biden took office as legislation continues to pass in the House but stalls in the Senate. Biden along with many congressional Democrats have endorsed removing the procedure.
Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have repeatedly said they oppose killing the filibuster.
Manchin recently explained that removing the filibuster effectively removes the involvement of the Senate minority in legislating.
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Thomas Catenacci is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Senator Elizabeth Warren” by Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
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‘Marrying my husband made me realise I was racist’: Harry and Meghan’s new strategist says
Genevieve Roth believes that all white people are ‘rife with internalised racism and unconscious bias’. She is the founder of Invisible Hand, a ‘female-led diverse team’ based in New York.
Evanston, Illinois, to Pay Reparations to Black Families Harmed by Decades of Racist Housing Policies
Evanston, Illinois, has become the first city in the United States to make reparations available to its Black residents for past discrimination and the lingering effects of slavery. The Chicago suburb’s City Council voted 8 to 1 to distribute $400,000 to eligible Black households, with qualifying residents receiving $25,000 for home repairs or down payments on property. The program is being funded through donations and revenue from a 3% tax on the sale of recreational marijuana, and the city has pledged to distribute $10 million over 10 years. “There’s no way to express how significant this is,” says Danny Glover, an actor and activist who is a member of the National African American Reparations Commission. “Imagine how that resonates beyond Evanston, Illinois. Imagine the kind of discourse that happens, the discussions in community by ordinary citizens about reparations.” We also speak with Robin Rue Simmons, a member of the Evanston City Council and reparations advocate, and Dino Robinson, a historian and executive director of the Shorefront Legacy Center, the only community archive for Black history on Chicago’s suburban North Shore.
Sen. Tim Scott Hammers Democrat Hypocrisy Using ‘Racist’ Filibuster Against Him
Joe Biden rambled his way into the debate over eliminating the senate filibuster this week. According to Joe it’s a relic of the Jim Eagle Jim Crow era. He didn’t have a good answer when asked, if he really feels that way, why not call for its elimination now. Jen Psaki didn’t have a good answer when challenged if Biden thought the filibuster was Jim Crow adjacent all the times he supported the filibuster. Funny how the rhetoric changes with the wind. Like all the Democrats calling the filibuster racist in 2021 after using the filibuster to block Sen. Tim Scott’s police reform bill in 2020.
If you’re quick to point out the OBVIOUS hypocrisy there, you are not alone. Tim Scott agrees.
Tim Scott blasts Dems overuse of ‘racist’ to describe opponents’ politics
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It was a frustrating, irritating moment where the Democrats used the filibuster to block police reform that would have positively impacted disproportionately African American communities. Here’s what we know about the Democrats. They were for the filibuster before they were against the filibuster. I keep asking myself, will the real Chuck Schumer please stand up?
[Democrats] use the word racist whenever they’re trying to scare people into their corner.
I saw somewhere on Twitter the argument that “historians” and “fact-checkers” agree that the filibuster is a legacy of the Jim Crow era. The clear implication that anyone who supports it is raaaaaacist. For the fecal matter and giggles of doing so, let’s say they are sincere in their belief. The obvious question is if Democrats were celebrating the legacy of Jim Crow all the times they used the filibuster. Tim Scott is an example. The multiple times they filibustered crucial coronavirus aid comes to mind as well. I also wonder if Donald Trump’s predecessor was a Jim Crow stan when he supported the filibuster as U.S. Senator. These all seem like obvious questions to challenge the left on.
Unless — and I’m just spitballing here — Biden, Democrats, woke supremacists, “historians” and those “independent” “fact’ checkers all know that they’re full of sh!t. We should consider that as an option.
Biden ‘Attempts’ to Talk About Abusing the Filibuster | Louder With Crowder
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REPORT: Investigation Clears Cafeteria Worker At Elite College Smeared As Racist By Student, But Now She Has Trouble Finding A Job
A student at an elite Massachusetts college accused a cafeteria employee and janitors at the school of racial discrimination, but after an investigation cleared everyone involved, the cafeteria employee still can’t shed the student’s accusation years after the incident, The New York Times reported.
PIERS MORGAN: I’m not a racist and neither is Sharon Osbourne but that didn’t stop the woke mob lynching her
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9414297/PIERS-MORGAN-Im-not-racist-neither-Sharon-Osbourne.html
Continue reading PIERS MORGAN: I’m not a racist and neither is Sharon Osbourne but that didn’t stop the woke mob lynching her …
Gina Carano Responds To Former Senator Heidi Heitkamp Calling Her A ‘Nazi’ On ‘Real Time With Bill Maher’
Gina Carano responded to former Democratic North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s accusations that the actress is a “Nazi” and more during “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
“Here we have more of the dehumanizing phase of cancel culture,” the 38-year-old actress tweeted Monday, along with a clip of the former senator accusing her of being involved with “white supremacy.”
GOP congressman: It’s racist to suggest voter ID requirements hinder African-Americans
Rep. Brooks joined John Solomon for a wide-ranging interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Facts Matter (March 29): Heavily Armed Antifa Rioters Stormed Oregon Capital
At the southern border, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) attempted to take a video of the migrant detention facility, but he was blocked by a Biden staffer who told him to respect the rules. Meanwhile, city officials in Baltimore have announced that they are permanently no longer going to prosecute “low-level” crimes like prostitution and drug […]
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Protesters, National Guard spar over locks on fence outside Chauvin courthouse
Protesters and the National Guard are clashing in Minneapolis — over padlocks. Police brutality protesters in Minneapolis have been placing padlocks with the names of people killed by police on the fencing surrounding a courthouse where George Floyd’s accused killer is standing trial. But shortly after the locks go up outside Hennepin County District Court,…
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Former Officer’s Trial in George Floyd’s Death Begins
The trial for former police officer Derek Chauvin in George Floyd’s death is underway. The jury heard opening statements Monday.
The post Former Officer’s Trial in George Floyd’s Death Begins appeared first on NTD.
Commentary: Movement Grows to Recall Progressive District Attorneys
by Edward Ring
The advocacy group “Fair and Just Prosecution” says the goal of progressive criminal justice reform is to create “a justice system grounded in fairness, equity, compassion, and fiscal responsibility.” Starting around 2016, this movement picked up momentum across the United States, primarily by funding candidates in county district attorney elections. There are now dozens of cities and counties with elected district attorneys that are enforcing massive shifts in prosecutorial conduct.
Reforms were needed. But so far, they have been a disaster.
While the most visible source of funding for these district attorney candidates is the notorious George Soros, the movement is much bigger than the agenda of one billionaire. It taps a core belief of progressives, that America’s criminal justice system is punitive and disproportionately targets nonwhite and low-income communities. It also taps into a sentiment shared by progressives and libertarians, that “victimless” crimes, primarily drug related, should not be crimes at all.
It would be a mistake to assume that no legitimate motivations inform these progressive district attorneys and their donors. Along with the careerism, hatred for American institutions, desire to wreak havoc on our society, and even well-intentioned but hideously misapplied desire for social justice, there are problems that need to be fixed and ideas that ought to be tried. But so far, in every city and county where progressive district attorneys have taken office, crime is rising, with entire neighborhoods awash in filth, chaos, and lawlessness.
Places where progressive district attorneys are now elected and in office include the major cities of St. Louis, Chicago, Orlando, Philadelphia, and Austin, as well as Columbus, Ohio; Aurora, Colorado; and Michigan’s Oakland County, a suburb of Detroit. But California, naturally, is where the progressive prosecutors have achieved the most reach.
California’s Example
Four major counties in California now have progressive prosecutors, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has a resume that suggests radical “reforms” are in his DNA. This headline, posted by NBC News when he was elected in December 2019, says it all: “Parents guilty of murder and raised by radicals, Chesa Boudin is San Francisco’s next district attorney.”
Boudin has lived up to his stereotypes, to the point where even San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed, who ordinarily would be considered radical herself, has become disillusioned. Quoting from an article published by the San Francisco Chronicle in early 2021, “Breed said—without naming anyone—that the criminal justice system could have prevented the death by holding McAlister accountable for his crimes.”
Breed was referring to Troy McAlister, who
allegedly ran a stoplight in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood in a stolen car, striking and killing two pedestrians. Police say McAlister had a gun, and methamphetamine and alcohol in his system. McAlister had a lengthy rap sheet dating back years and was released from prison after completing a sentence for robbery in April. Since then, he had been arrested several times, including as recently as December 20, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, but his arrests were referred to his parole officer, and he was not charged.
This is “restorative justice” at work. Breed went on to say “the criminal justice system in our city has failed.”
If San Francisco has acquired infamy in recent years for ungovernable, crime-ridden neighborhoods, a homeless invasion, thousands of heroin addicts, and an app—cleverly named “Snapcrap” that tracks the incidences of human feces on city sidewalks, its counterpart in Southern California boasts all these same dismal attributes, but on a much larger scale. Los Angeles County hosts the largest unified trial court system in America, and their newly elected district attorney, George Gascón (pictured above), is working from the same progressive playbook.
“Within weeks of taking office,” Politico reports, “Gascón instructed prosecutors to stop seeking the death penalty and trying juveniles as adults. He ordered a halt to most cash bail requests and banned prosecutors from appearing at parole hearings. Most controversially, he barred prosecutors from seeking various sentencing enhancements.”
What on earth did Gascón think would happen? Even before progressive district attorneys were elected in some of California’s biggest counties, it was almost impossible to police the state effectively. The turning point in California’s progressive assault on law enforcement was the passage in 2014 of Proposition 47. Supported by nearly all Democratic politicians, a smattering of libertarians, the ACLU, and several unions including AFSCME and SEIU California, this ballot initiative was misleadingly marketed as the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”
Ostensibly to empty the jails of expensively housed “nonviolent” offenders, unintended consequences were felt immediately. Five years later, the negative consequences of Prop. 47 continue to compound and intensify. Prop. 47 freed tens of thousands of felons from state prisons and county jails back into communities. It reduced the penalty for possession of most illegal drugs including heroin and methamphetamine to a misdemeanor, and it also reduced to misdemeanor any crime where the value of property stolen doesn’t exceed $950—even for multiple offenses.
George Gascón, with plenty of help from hapless Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, now presides over a county that plays host to the largest homeless population in America, over 60,000 people. These permanent homeless encampments, an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe, are havens for criminal activity.
And small wonder. Vagrancy, petty theft, and hard drug use are decriminalized, and now Gascón’s office is preventing effective prosecution of more serious crimes. Crime rates are soaring in Los Angeles County just as they are everywhere that progressive district attorneys have been elected.
Recalls Seek to Stop the Spread
Resistance is forming, however.
The Los Angeles Times reports several of Gascón’s“reforms” have been blocked by an L.A. County judge. In particular, the judge ruled that Gascón cannot stop prosecutors from using sentencing enhancements. The lawsuit by the union representing L.A. prosecutors argues that Gascón’s efforts violate state law and, among other things, endanger public safety by making it harder to keep gang members off the streets. Now police officers are joining the rebellion, led by L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva.
Perhaps inspired by the unprecedented success of the recall campaign against Gavin Newsom, a nearly all-volunteer effort that collected more than 2 signatures to force California’s governor to fight for his political life in a special election later this year, earlier this month in Los Angeles, Villanueva’s Recall George Gascón committee filed a notice of intent to collect recall signatures. If the petition is approved for circulation by the L.A. County Clerk’s office, supporters will have 160 days to gather 590,000 signatures to get a George Gascón recall on the ballot.
In California these days, recalls are contagious. In San Francisco, the Recall Chesa Boudin campaign filed notice of intent to recall on February 8, and the San Francisco Department of Elections approved petitions for circulation on March 4. The campaign has until August 11 to collect and submit 51,325 valid signatures.
Effective Criminal Justice Reform and Results
Criminal justice reform can put an end to overreliance on often coerced plea bargains and punitive incarceration. But reform doesn’t have to condemn our cities to lawlessness. As balance is restored and the electorate becomes more aware of the issues, genuine progress is possible.
The injustice of harsh sentencing has to be weighed against its overall value in deterring crime. The staggering expense of incarceration, or, for that matter, the staggering expense of homeless shelters in cities riddled with corruption, has to be confronted and corrected. Not every jail must be a supermax. Not every homeless shelter has to cost $100,000 (or more) per bed. The liberty of individuals to consume drugs has to be balanced against the rights of the people who live in the neighborhoods they’ve taken over.
If George Soros and the progressive movement he represents have done one good thing, it’s that they’ve removed district attorney elections from the backwoods of political theater. These elections, which Soros and a handful of other major donors were able to quietly dominate for the last few years, picking off city after city, are no longer obscure. District attorney candidates, and the philosophy they intend to bring to office, are finally getting the scrutiny they deserve.
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Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness and co-founder in 2013 of the California Policy Center.
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Defiant Michigan Restaurant Owner Jailed After Appearing On Tucker Carlson Show
LANSING, MI- A Michigan restaurant owner has been jailed by the order of the state attorney general. Her crime? Complaining about her long-running battle against the AG on Fox News Network’s Tucker Carlson show and operating a business in the state of Michigan.
Carlson: They want you to know that defiance is the real crime
CARLSON: Marlena Pavlos-Hackney is in jail. She was arrested very early this morning, before 6 a.m. by police, taken away in ankle shackles and wrist cuffs. One of the few people in this country who gets up really early to go to work because she really cares, trying her very hardest and they grabbed her and they sent her away for longer than people who commit gun crimes in Detroit get.