Republican Senate panel seeking subpoenas in Biden, Ukraine Burisma probe

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The effort to seek subpoenas appears to be intensifying after panel’s unsuccessful attempts to get voluntary testimony.

So what took so long?

Republican Senate panel seeking subpoenas in Biden, Ukraine Burisma probe

The effort to seek subpoenas appears to be intensifying after panel’s unsuccessful attempts to get voluntary testimony

By: Joseph Weber, Just The News, July 2020:

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is considering subpoenas to get testimony regarding his probe into the connection between the Ukraine gas company Burisma and Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is considering subpoenas for current and former Joe Biden advisers because they won’t comply with his request for them to give voluntary depositions, as reported by Politico. 

Republicans’ focus on Biden and his son has intensified as Election Day 2020 is now about 100 days away.

GOP leaders and others want to know more about the relationship between Burisma and Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic public affairs firm that did consulting work for the gas company, for which Hunter Biden was a board member.

Blue Star reportedly wanted to leverage Hunter Biden’s board membership to get a meeting at the State Department under the Obama administration, for which Joe Biden was the vice president.

The Bidens have denied wrongdoings.

Johnson, Wisconsin, is seeking testimony from former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a senior foreign policy adviser on Biden’s campaign; former special envoy for International Energy Amos Hochstein; and former senior State Department officials Victoria Nuland and Catherine Novelli, according to Politico.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Primary Subsource’s’ for Bogus Russia Dossier: Igor Danchenko – Soros Connected Associate of Lying Schiff Star Witness Fiona Hill

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

11 Incidents in Which Lawful Gun Owners Made a Difference

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As the Supreme Court continued its decadelong silence in protecting the Second Amendment, Americans last month nevertheless proved that they understand the importance of the right to keep and bear arms.

The FBI conducted a record-high 3.9 million background checks for firearms sales and transfers in June. The previous record of 3.7 million was set just this past March.

It is little surprise that, during these difficult and uncertain times, many Americans who never before considered the prospect of gun ownership are coming to appreciate their Second Amendment rights. Even in “normal” times, Americans often rely on their firearms to protect themselves and others.

According to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times a year. There’s good reason to believe that most of these defensive gun uses never are reported to police, much less make the local or national news.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

For this reason, The Daily Signal each month publishes an article detailing some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from 2019 and 2020 here).

The following examples of defensive gun use represent only a small portion of the stories we found in June. You can explore more examples in The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database.

  • June 1, Edinburg, Virginia: A Virginia pastor drew his handgun to protect himself from five trespassers who assaulted him on his property. Police said the pastor had noticed two of them apparently disposing of large items illegally in a dumpster at an apartment complex he owns, and asked the two to leave. They became angry and returned with three others, surrounding the pastor. The five threatened him with racial slurs, and one head-butted him. The pastor defended himself with his handgun and called 911. After an unfortunate mix-up in which police initially detained the pastor, officers arrested the threatening individuals and charged them with hate crimes.
  • June 4, Gustavus, Ohio: A homeowner spotted a man underneath a car in his driveway late at night, and grabbed a shotgun to confront him. The man, who police suspect was trying to steal car parts, rushed at the homeowner, who shot and wounded him. Investigators later discovered that the would-be thief possessed several power tools and had put a jack under the homeowner’s car.
  • June 5, Dudley Shoals, North Carolina: When two armed men tried to rob a convenience store, the clerk drew his own gun and fired at them until they fled. The store’s security camera captured the drama, police said.   
  • June 6, Lake Elsinore, California: A store owner intervened with his firearm to protect a woman from an assailant, police said. The store owner had seen the man punch and kick the woman. The attacker left when the store owner attempted to stop him, but returned minutes later holding a metal object. When the store owner stood between the man and the woman, the assailant pushed him to the ground and began to beat the woman again. The store owner retrieved his firearm and shot the man, who fled. Police later arrested him.  
  • June 13, Ogden, Utah: A vengeful ex-boyfriend drove to the residence of his former girlfriend shared with her new boyfriend and, after an argument, opened fire on them. The woman, who police said was the past victim of domestic violence by him, drew her own handgun and fired in self-defense. Police later arrested the man and charged him with numerous felonies.
  • June 14, Rome, New York:  A good Samaritan with a shotgun came to his neighbors’ rescue when he realized their apartment had been broken into by an armed intruder, police said. The intruder entered through a bedroom window and pistol-whipped a woman. The neighbor went into the apartment and fired at the intruder, who fled.
  • June 16, Delta Township, Michigan: A concealed-carry permit holder intervened to defend himself and other motorists when a mentally distressed man began firing a handgun at cars on a highway. Emergency dispatchers received at least 10 calls about the man before he jumped in front of the permit holder’s car and pointed a gun at him, police said. The permit holder, who had been on his way to enjoy a round of golf, shot and killed the man.   
  • June 20, Turner, Maine: A homeowner held two suspected burglars at gunpoint until law enforcement could arrive and arrest them. The homeowner, who had noticed a back door was forced open and a lock ripped off, saw the two leaving the residence with items in their hands. He drew his handgun, detained them, and called police.
  • June 23, Spokane, Washington:  An armed mother used her firearm to protect her teenage son after a meet-up to buy a cellphone turned into an attempted robbery. Her son had agreed to meet the[MK1]  sellers in a grocery store parking lot, but the cellphone was not as advertised. When he declined to buy it, the men assaulted the teen and tried to take money from his pocket. Police said the boy’s mother, who had parked nearby, saw what was happening, drew her firearm, and fired at the men—who promptly got into their vehicle and fled.
  • June 27, Louisville, Kentucky: When a man opened fire on a crowd protesting the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in her apartment, armed bystanders fired back, wounding the shooter. Eventually, several protesters were able to hold the shooter at gunpoint and convince him to drop his weapon. Police said the shooter had been arrested twice in previous weeks on riot-related charges. Earlier that day, other protesters had asked the man to leave because of his “disruptive behavior.”
  • June 29, North Freedom, Wisconsin: Parents shot their adult son in self-defense after he fired rounds at their home and broke in during the early morning hours.  Police said the parents called 911 to report that someone was shooting at their bedroom windows. They attempted to retreat to the basement when their son entered the home, but ultimately shot and wounded him. Police charged the son with attempted murder and other felonies. He already was facing charges for other violent offenses.

Sometimes, lawful gun owners get it wrong and end up in the national news for using their guns irresponsibly. But more often, they get it right and few of us hear about it.

Many of us don’t hear about mothers defending their sons, or good Samaritans coming to the rescue of innocent neighbors.

Many of us don’t hear about the protesters whose Second Amendment rights saved the lives of those exercising their First Amendment rights.

Many of us don’t hear about the countless others whose lives and livelihoods were protected because of lawfully owned firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens.

As the silence from the Supreme Court reaches deafening levels, we promise to keep telling these stories and highlighting the importance of protecting the right to keep and bear arms.

COMMENTARY BY

Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer is a senior legal policy analyst at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

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In America, the System Trends Toward Justice

These are trying times in our nation’s history. Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today, with polar opposite viewpoints on public policy and the government’s role in our lives.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation asked world-class speaker, educator, and researcher David Azerrad to walk you through his research and outline the differences between the “two regimes” in our society today—conservatism and progressivism—and their primary differences.

When you get access to this course today, you’ll learn key takeaways like what it means to be a conservative, what “modern progressivism” is, how a conservative worldview differs from a progressive one, and much, much more.

You will come away from this online course with a better understanding of the differing points of view, how they align with your principles, and how to defend your beliefs.

Don’t wait—start taking “The Case for Conservatism” course online now.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Vandalizing American History: A List of 64 Toppled, Defaced, or Removed Statues

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The list of American statues and other monuments that have been toppled, decapitated, defaced, or removed since the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis grew longer almost daily through June and into July.

A mob cheered as it pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In Washington, D.C., rioters used ropes to tear down a bronze depiction of Albert Pike, a Confederate general, and then set the 11-foot statue on fire.

Vandals have not discriminated among the monuments they target, defacing statues of Confederate and Union soldiers alike, and going after those that have no association with racism, such as an 120-year-old statue of an elk in Portland, Oregon.

Vandals defaced—and/or officials removed—at least four statues and monuments in each of three states: Alabama, New York, and Texas. Five such incidents occurred in North Carolina, nine in California, and 11 in Virginia.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

Here is a list of 64 statues and other monuments vandalized or removed since May 30, according to news reports. The list may not be complete, so numerous are the incidents.

1. May 30: Edward Carmack, Tennessee 

Rioters pulled down a statue in Nashville, Tennessee, depicting 19th-century newspaper editor Edward Carmack. According to the Tennessee State Museum, Carmack criticized Ida B. Wells, an African American journalist and civil rights advocate who wrote against racial injustice.

2. May 30: Confederate monument, Mississippi

Vandals painted red handprints on the University of Mississippi’s Confederate monument in Oxford, Mississippi, along with the words “spiritual genocide.”

3. May 31: Charles Linn, Alabama 

A mob toppled a statue of Charles Linn, a Confederate navy captain who was one of the founders of Birmingham, Alabama. The vandals set afire and defaced the depiction of Linn once it was on the ground.

4. June 1: Gen. Robert E. Lee, Alabama 

Police arrested and charged three men and one woman in connection with toppling a statue of Robert E. Lee outside a high school in Montgomery, Alabama, that bears the name of the celebrated Confederate general. Authorities dropped charges of first-degree criminal mischief against all four June 11.

5. June 2: Gen. Robert E. Lee, Maryland 

Someone applied graffiti to deface the plaque in front of the statue of Lee at Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland.

6. June 2: “Appomattox,” Virginia

The United Daughters of the Confederacy removed the “Appomattox” statue in Alexandria depicting a lone soldier to commemorate all of the city’s Confederate soldiers. The bronze statue had stood in Old Town Alexandria since 1899.

7. June 3: Confederate Cemetery, South Carolina

A vandal or vandals defaced a Confederate monument at a cemetery in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, by painting a swastika, the letter “X,” and the letters “USA” on it.

8. June 3: Mayor Frank Rizzo, Pennsylvania 

Workers removed a statue of Frank Rizzo, the Democratic mayor of Philadelphia in the 1970s, from the steps of the Municipal Services Building. Someone had spray-painted the bronze statue of Rizzo, also a former Philadelphia police chief. Rizzo allowed violence against black Americans while mayor from 1972 to 1980, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

9. June 4: Gen. Robert E. Lee, Virginia 

A judge blocked the efforts of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, to remove a 60-foot statue of Lee from Monument Avenue in Richmond. Vandals had covered the statue in graffiti, and its location has been the site of numerous protests since Floyd’s death.

10. June 5: Orville Hubbard, Michigan 

Officials in Dearborn, Michigan, removed a statue of Orville Hubbard, the city’s mayor from 1942 to 1978. Hubbard was a firm advocate of racial segregation, accrding to the Detroit Historical Society. The family of the late mayor now possesses the statue, which had stood outside the Dearborn Historical Museum.

11. June 5: Adm. Raphael Semmes, Alabama

Crews removed a statue of Raphael Semmes, an admiral in the Confederate navy, in downtown Mobile, Alabama. “Moving this statue will not change the past. It is about removing a potential distraction so we may focus clearly on the future of our city,” Mayor Sandy Stimpson, a Republican, said.

12. June 6: Williams Carter Wickham, Virginia 

Demonstrators toppled a statue of Williams Carter Wickham, a Confederate general, in Richmond’s Monroe Park. Graffiti reading “BLM” (an acronym for Black Lives Matter) covered the base of the statue, which had stood in the park since 1891.

13. June 8: Confederate monument, Virginia 

Rioters littered a Confederate monument in Norfolk,  Virginia, with toilet paper and graffiti, including the letters “BLM.” City officials said they planned to remove the monument.

14. June 8: Confederate monument, Indiana 

Indianapolis city workers removed a monument dedicated to Confederate soldiers who died in a Union prison camp in Indianapolis during the Civil War. “We must name these instances of discrimination and never forget our past—but we should not honor them,” Mayor Joe Hogsett, a Democrat, said.

15. June 8: John Breckinridge Castleman, Kentucky 

City crews in Louisville, Kentucky, removed a statue of John Breckinridge Castleman, a Confederate officer, from the center of the Cherokee Triangle neighborhood. Castleman became a brigadier general in the U.S. Army after the Civil War and was instrumental in setting up Louisville’s segregated park system, The Courier-Journal reported. Officials planned to move the statue to Cave Hill Cemetery, where Castleman is buried.

16. June 8: Confederate monument, North Carolina 

The City Council of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, approved removal of a Confederate monument featuring a soldier standing atop a tall pillar.

17. June 8: Confederate statue, Florida

Crews removed a statue of a Confederate soldier from Hemming Park in Jacksonville, Florida. “We’ve got to find a way to come together,” Mayor Lenny Curry, a Republican, said the next day. “We’re not going to agree on everything—that’s just not human history, human nature. We’ve got to find common ground.”

18. June 9: Lawrence Sullivan Ross, Texas

A man spray-painted the word “racist” and the acronyms “BLM” and “ACAB” (an acronym for “All Cops Are Bastards”) on a statue of Lawrence Sullivan Ross, a Confederate general, on the Texas A&M campus in College Station. The man also placed a rainbow wig on the statue’s head.

19. June 9: Confederate monument, Texas

A small group of demonstrators used black spray paint to cover a plaque at a monument reading “In memory of our Confederate patriots 1861-1865,” outside the Walker County Courthouse in Huntsville, Texas.

20. Early June: Matthias Baldwin, Pennsylvania

Vandals defaced a statue of inventor, manufacturer, and abolitionist Matthias Baldwin in Philadelphia with graffiti reading “COLONIZER” and “MURDERER” on an unknown date in early June. They also covered the face of the statue with red paint.

21. June 10: Jefferson Davis, Virginia 

Demonstrators used ropes to pull down a statue of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, in Richmond, Virginia, which was the capital of the Confederate States of America. The bronze depiction of Davis originally was placed along Monument Avenue in 1907.

22. June 10: Confederate monument, Virginia 

A large crowd beheaded statues of four Confederate soldiers, all part of the same monument, in Portsmouth, Virginia. Rioters covered the monument with graffiti and pulled down one figure, which hit a man in the head, landing him in a hospital.

23. June 10: Christopher Columbus, Massachusetts

Vandals beheaded the statue of Columbus in Boston’s North End, prompting the city to remove it. Vandals previously had defaced the statue with paint in 2015 and beheaded it in 2006.

24. June 10: Christopher Columbus, Virginia

Rioters pulled down the statue of Columbus that had stood in Richmond, Virginia, since 1927. They placed a burning American flag on top of the statue before throwing it into a nearby lake.

25. June 10: Christopher Columbus, Minnesota

Protesters gathered outside the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul used rope to pull down a 10-foot bronze statue of Columbus.

26. June 10: Christopher Columbus, Florida 

Rioters spray-painted black-power fists, a hammer and sickle, and the initials BLM over a plaque beneath the statue of Columbus in Miami. They also covered the statue’s face and hands in red paint. Police arrested seven suspects shortly afterward.

27. June 10: Juan Ponce de León, Florida 

Vandals spray-painted a statue of Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in Bayfront Park, the same Miami park where someone defaced the Columbus statue. Authorities said a protest began peacefully, but quickly grew violent.

28. June 10: Confederate monument, Alabama 

The Madison County Commission voted to remove a Confederate monument outside the courthouse in downtown Huntsville, Alabama.

29. June 11: Don Juan de Oñate, Texas 

Vandals spray-painted obscenities and other words on a sculpture of Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate outside El Paso International Airport in Texas.

30. June 11: “One Riot, One Ranger,” Texas

A city work crew removed a statue of a Texas Ranger entitled “One Riot, One Ranger” that had stood at Love Field airport in Dallas since 1963.

30. June 11: Philip Schuyler, New York 

Officials decided to remove a statue of Philip Schuyler, a Revolutionary War general, from in front of Albany City Hall. In a tweet, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, a Democrat, said Schuyler reportedly was “the largest owner of enslaved people in Albany during his time.”

32. June 12: Christopher Columbus, Pennsylvania

Vandals defaced the base of a Columbus statue with red handprints and graffiti reading “MURDER” and “OG PIG” in Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park. The incident marked the third time the statue has been defaced in recent years.

33. June 13: Christopher Columbus, Rhode Island

Workers removed a statue of Columbus in Providence, Rhode Island, after rioters splashed red paint across it and hung a sign reading, “STOP CELEBRATING GENOCIDE.” The city officials were determining whether they would relocate the statue.

34. June 13: Christopher Columbus, Illinois 

A vandal or vandals spray-painted the acronym BLM on a statue of Columbus on Chicago’s Museum Campus.

35. June 14: George Washington, Illinois 

Vandals defaced a statue of the Founding Father and first president in Washington Park, covering the base in red spray paint reading “SLAVE OWNER” and “GOD BLESS AMERIKKKA.” The perpetrators also placed a white gown and hood on the sculpture.

36. June 14: John Greenleaf Whittier, California 

A vandal or vandals spray-painted a statue of 19th-century Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier in the city named after him, writing “BLM” and “— Slave Owners” on it.  Whittier was a delegate to the first meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Convention, the Whittier Daily News reported.

37. June 15: Don Juan de Oñate, New Mexico

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, a Democrat, announced the removal of a statue of Spanish conquistador Don Juan de Oñate after the shooting of a man during rival protests around it. The next day, crews removed the statue from outside Albuquerque Museum.

38. June 15: John Sutter, California 

Workers removed a bronze depiction of California settler and businessman John Sutter from Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento after vandals defaced it with graffiti. Sutter abused and enslaved Native Americans in the 1840s, according to HistoryNet.

39. June 16: Howitzer Monument, Virginia 

Rioters toppled Richmond’s Howitzer Monument and littered it with graffiti. The monument, built in 1892, commemorates a Confederate artillery unit known as the Howitzers, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

40. June 19: Francis Scott Key, California 

Rioters toppled a statue of Francis Scott Key, author of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” on the day known as Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 that slaves in Texas learned Lincoln had freed them a year and a half earlier.

41. June 19: St. Junipero Serra, California  

A mob pulled down a statue of St. Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Roman Catholic priest and missionary, that had stood in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for over a century. Some sources say the Spanish missionary abused Native Americans on the West Coast and subjected them to forced labor.

42. June 19: Ulysses S. Grant, California

Rioters toppled a bust of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general and later president who played an integral role in ending slavery in America. A crowd of 400 gathered and watched in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as vandals pulled down the monument. Police were present, but made no arrests.

43. June 19: Albert Pike, District of Columbia

A crowd cheered as rioters toppled a statue of Albert Pike, apparently the only Confederate statue in Washington, D.C. The group gathered around the fallen statue shouting, “Black lives matter” before setting it on fire with lighter fluid.

44. June 19: Confederate monument, North Carolina

Demonstrators pulled down statues of two Confederate soldiers from a monument just outside the State Capitol in Raleigh. They dragged a bronze depiction of a cavalryman down the road with a rope around its neck and hung the statue from a lightpost. They dragged the statue of an artilleryman to the front of the Wake County Courthouse. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, ordered work crews to remove what was left of the monument.

45. June 20: Henry Lawson Wyatt, North Carolina

Crews removed a statue of Henry Lawson Wyatt, believed to be the first Confederate soldier killed at the start of the Civil War, from its location in Raleigh. Gov. Roy Cooper ordered the statue removed in the interest of public safety.

46. June 20: Women of the Confederacy, North Carolina

By the governor’s order, workers removed a monument dedicated to the women of North Carolina who lived during the Civil War.

47. June 20: St. Junipero Serra, California 

A crowd shouted “Take it down! Take it down!” as rioters toppled a bronze depiction of St. Junipero Serra in Father Serra Park in downtown LA. The Los Angeles Times reported that Native Americans of various ages gathered around the face-down statue as some doused it with red paint.

48. June 22: Andrew Jackson, District of Columbia

Rioters attempted to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House, but police intervened. Vandals did succeed in defacing the base of the statue with graffiti reading “KILLER” and “RACIST SCUM,” among other things. The Justice Department on July 2 charged four men with defacing the statue, including a man identified as a ringleader.

49. June 24: John C. Calhoun, South Carolina 

Workers removed a statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun from Marion Square in Charleston. The City Council had voted unanimously June 23 to remove the statue.

50. June 29: George Washington, New York 

A man and a woman threw balloons filled with red paint on two statues of Washington that stand on either side of the famed arch at Washington Square Park in Manhattan. One depicts Washington as president, the other as a Revolutionary War general.

51. June 30: Lincoln Emancipation Statue, Massachusetts

Boston’s Art Commission voted to remove a statue of President Abraham Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation while a freed slave rises from a kneeling position with broken shackles on his wrists. Citizens began a petition drive to keep the statue at its Park Square location.

52. June 30: New York City Hall, New York 

Rioters used black spray paint and tape to deface statues of three figures standing on the side of New York City Hall in Manhattan. On and around the statues, they wrote phrases such as “ALL COPS LIE,” “You f— a— cops are getting abolished,” and “NO JUSTICE NO PEACE.”

53. July 1: Elk statue, Oregon 

A mob set fire to an iconic, 120-year-old statue of an elk atop a fountain in Portland, which also had been covered with graffiti in recent weeks. The city removed the statue the next day, citing safety concerns.

54. July 2: Matthew Fontaine Maury, Virginia

Work crews in Richmond removed a graffiti-covered statue of Matthew Fontaine Maury, a Confederate naval officer during the Civil War who is more broadly known as the “Father of Oceanography.”

55. July 4: St. Junipero Serra, California 

Rioters toppled and set fire to a statue of St. Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Roman Catholic priest, outside the California State Capitol in Sacramento. They also pounded the statue with sledgehammers.

56. July 4: Christopher Columbus, Connecticut

Someone decapitated a statue of Columbus outside Waterbury City Hall.

57. July 4: “El Soldado,” California 

Someone spray-painted the words “F— Colonizers” on the base of a statue honoring Mexican-American soldiers in Sacramento. The act was a “hate crime,” Chris Marzan, spokesman for the California Mexican American Veterans Memorial Foundation, said.

58. July 4: Christopher Columbus, Maryland 

Rioters toppled a white marble statue of Columbus and threw it into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Crews lifted the remains of the sculpture from the water the following Monday.

59. July 5: Frederick Douglass, New York 

Someone ripped a statue of Frederick Douglass from its base in Rochester on the 168th anniversary of the celebrated abolitionist’s famous speech there titled “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The statue suffered significant damage, authorities said.

60. July 7: Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, Virginia 

Workers used a crane to remove a statue of J.E.B. Stuart, Confederate general, from Richmond’s Monument Avenue. Rioters had spray-painted the bronze monument of the general atop a horse.

61. July 7: Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella, California

Crews removed a statue known as “Columbus’ Last Appeal to Queen Isabella” from the rotunda of the State Capitol in Sacramento. The sculpture had been on display since 1883.

62. July 7: Confederate monument, North Carolina 

Police arrested three suspects in connection with the vandalism with graffiti of a 111-year-old Confederate monument in front of a United Methodist church in Cornelius.

63. July 8: Confederate Soldiers and Sailors, Virginia 

Workers removed a 100-foot monument known as “Confederate Soldiers and Sailors” from Libby Hill Park in Richmond. Vandals had covered the base of the monument—featuring a Confederate soldier atop a pillar—with graffiti.

64. July 11: The Virgin Mary, Massachusetts 

Someone set fire to artificial flowers in the hand of a statue of the Virgin Mary at Saint Peter’s Parish Church in Dorchester. Flames charred the statue’s face and upper body.

COLUMN BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

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A Note for our Readers:

These are trying times in our nation’s history. Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today, with polar opposite viewpoints on public policy and the government’s role in our lives.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation asked world-class speaker, educator, and researcher David Azerrad to walk you through his research and outline the differences between the “two regimes” in our society today—conservatism and progressivism—and their primary differences.

When you get access to this course today, you’ll learn key takeaways like what it means to be a conservative, what “modern progressivism” is, how a conservative worldview differs from a progressive one, and much, much more.

You will come away from this online course with a better understanding of the differing points of view, how they align with your principles, and how to defend your beliefs.

Don’t wait—start taking “The Case for Conservatism” course online now.

GET YOUR FREE ACCESS NOW »

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

NEW YORK CITY: “IDOL” painted on 100-year-old statue of Virgin Mary

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Leftists have been indulging in an orgy of destroying statues lately, but their favored graffiti for statues is “RACIST” and the like, not “IDOL.” A Leftist may have done this, or conceivably some fanatical Protestant, although that is extremely unlikely. But could it have anything to do with the introduction into Miami of a large population of people who believe that Christianity is a false, indeed idolatrous, religion, and that they are commanded to fight unbelievers so that Allah may punish them by the hands of the believers (cf. Qur’an 9:14-15)?

Could it have anything to do with the Qur’an’s suggestion that the destroyed remnants of ancient non-Muslim civilizations are a sign of Allah’s punishment of those who rejected his truth? “Many were the Ways of Life that have passed away before you: travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those who rejected Truth.” (Qur’an 3:137) The ruins of non-Muslim civilizations thus bear witness to the truth of Islam. What ensues from that idea? The creation of more ruins.

Watch the video. Is the perpetrator wearing a robe or thobe? Or is this the work of a Leftist who is unwittingly (or knowingly) advancing the same agenda as that of the Islamic State and the Taliban?

“Vandals Allegedly Target Statues of the Virgin Mary in Boston, Queens,” by Amy Furr, Breitbart, July 12, 2020 (thanks to the Geller Report):

Two statues of the Virgin Mary were reportedly vandalized over the weekend in Boston, Massachusetts, and Queens, New York.

At around 10:00 p.m. Saturday, officers responded to a call about a fire in the area of 284 Bowdoin Street in Dorchester, the Boston Police Department said in a Facebook post.

“On arrival at Saint Peter’s Parish Church, officers observed a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary which had been set on fire,” the department noted…

In a similar instance on Friday, the Diocese of Brooklyn said the New York City Police Department (NYPD) was investigating the vandalization of another statue of the Virgin Mary at the Cathedral Prep School and Seminary in Queens.

“Security footage shows an individual approaching the 100-year-old statue shortly after 3 a.m. Friday morning and daubing the word ‘IDOL’ down its length,” the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported.

Friday, the Brooklyn Diocese Press Office tweeted video footage of the alleged incident:

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VIDEO: Minneapolis Police Officer Rich Walker testifies before Senate, ‘Officers afraid of going TO JAIL’

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The Stone Commute Highlighted Democrats’ Hypocrisy––But Now They’re Waking Up

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“Trump Spares Stone from Imprisonment, Sparking Howls of Amnesiac Democrats” was the colorful headline of a recent Wall St. Journal by journalist, author and former Asst. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY, Andrew C. McCarthy.

The “Stone” in the headline referred to Roger Stone, a longtime associate of President Trump who was sentenced to 40 months in prison two years ago for lying to Congress, among other counts, during the failed fiasco of the Mueller investigation into the non-existent collusion of then-candidate Trump with Russian operatives to rig the 2016 election in his favor.

Stone, now 67, was arrested in a predawn raid on his home by a heavily armed SWAT team, a saga that was “coincidentally” caught by a CNN camera crew who just happened to be parked outside his home at 4 a.m. Imagine that.

According to Jan Wolfe from Reuters, Stone had connections to the WikiLeaks website, which released damaging emails about Trump’s election rival Hillary Clinton. Uh oh…can’t have those damning e-mails released. Hence the sadistically harsh sentence––the original recommendation was seven-to-nine years––and the brouhaha about Stone’s commutation.

Of course, the leftwing media were “outraged,” “shocked,” “appalled” at President Trump’s miscarriage of justice, although interestingly the president didn’t issue a full pardon, so the felony conviction of Mr. Stone still stands, as does his appeal.

GLARING HYPOCRISY

But you would think, as reported by investigative journalist Mark Hyman, that he had just pardoned two-dozen FALN Puerto-Rican terrorists who murdered at least 24 people.

Or commuted the 58-year sentence of far-left terrorist Susan Rosenberg after only 16 years. It is so consistent with her hate-America mindset that today, Rosenberg is a member of the board of directors for the left-wing group that handles the donations made to the Marxist-front organization, Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Or pardoned Marc Rich, who renounced his U.S. citizenship, traded illegally with Cuba, did business with Iran while it held 52 U.S. hostages, and with Libya which was responsible for the Pan Am 103 bombing that killed 189 Americans.

Oops, that was Pres. Bill Clinton. Just before good ole boy Bill issued the pardons, Rich gave $450,000 to the Clinton Library and his wife Denise donated over a million dollars to the Democrat Party and the Clinton Foundation. Imagine that.

But there is more. According to Spectator journalist Hyman, “the 56 clemency petitions Clinton approved during his first term were the fewest of any president since Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third commander-in-chief, who issued a mere 45 clemencies. Consider Jefferson’s clemencies were given when the U.S. had a population of only 5 million compared to the 285 million during Clinton’s first term.”

But everything changed when Hillary decided to run for U.S. Senator from New York. After her decision, Hyman says, “Bill doled out 380 pardons and commutations. Clemency was dished-out in return for money, gifts, and influence…Hillary stockpiled financial and political IOUs and cashed-in when she ran for political office, including the presidency.” Imagine that.

Again, not one word of outrage from the craven media.

A FATAL ATTRACTION TO MISCREANTS

Many of Barack Obama’s pardons and commutations were for drug dealers and violent offenders. He pardoned Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, the traitor who leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to WikiLeaks and was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. He pardoned the convicted terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera, the leader of the FALN, responsible for 130 attacks in the U.S., who was serving a 70-year sentence when Obama set him free, the list is long. That is the very very short list.

Remember the media’s indignation? Me neither.

But Stone’s mortal sin was that he lied to––guess who?––the proven pathological liars in the Obama regime’s FBI, CIA, DOJ, et al, who were trying to frame candidate and then President Trump. Nothing less than the guillotine for him!

MEDIA MALFEASANCE

Well, whaddaya know? The entire uproar is already off the radar as the corrupt media are now back to:

ARE THE TABLES TURNING?

The vast American public out there already knows of the Democrats’ double standards.

They see the breakdown of law and order in Democrat-run cities and its encroachment into the suburbs and don’t want any of that wanton violence in their state, city, or the block they live on.

Even Regressives are horrified by the No-Bail laws enacted by Democrat legislators when they see that the psychopathic criminals who are setting cars on fire and committing violent assaults walk free, as did the thugs who attacked and smashed the faces of high-ranking police officials in NY City the other day.

And they are watching Joe Biden’s rapid and pitiful devolution.

On the positive side, President Trump is opening up America and, happily, the Democrats themselves are now waking up! According to an article in The New York Times, “Two-thirds of battleground state voters who chose Trump in 2016 but selected Democrats in the midterms say they will return to the president” [in 2020].

©All rights reserved.

Harvey Weinstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein: These People Are Sick

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Yes, I will get to Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in a moment but first this. Pedophilia is the Achilles Heel of the Deep State. I encourage you to click on the link and read the article and the resources within. This may be a good place to start.

The President is well aware of the pedophilia and child sex trafficking and you should be too. And if you are, excellent, then pass this on to inform others. This brief article does not dive down deep. It’s purpose is to raise the awareness of one of the biggest scars of humanity. Perhaps it may inspire you to dig deeper. No worries, it’s all beginning to come out. Watch what happens over the next few years.

So what does President Trump know and what is he doing about this? You must watch the video link below dating back to 2016 and read about HR1865, Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017. President Trump’s bill HR1865 was passed into law which will grant powers to facilitate the tracking of these offenders as well as measures to prevent such acts. This law most famously shut down sections of both Craigslist and Back Page but in fact accomplishes much more than this.

WATCH: Trump on Clinton & Epstein Island

To gain a more in depth understanding on the subject of child sex trafficking you must become familiar with Jaco Booyens. I had an in depth, powerfully moving and informative discussion with Jaco and you can listen to this by clicking on the link below.

WATCH:

These People Are Sick

Those that follow the President as closely as I do,know that he has stated numerous times that these people are sick. Well they are. Below is an image of those excerpted from the Epstein flight log. Yes, these people are sick and they are now being exposed. This is the exposure stage on this and many other deep state related fronts. We are now at steps 6-11 on the Scale of Discovery and Action.

Yes this is hard to read. I covered this one of my recent live news broadcasts and you can see the image there on the screen. You can also find it here at QMap.Pub. Here are but a few names on the list. Alan Dershowitz, Alec Baldwin and Anderson Cooper. Barak Obama, Ben Affleck and Beyonce Knowles. Bill Clinton, Bill Murray and Charlie Sheen. Chelsie Handler, Chrissy Teigen and Courtney Love, (I will get to Teigen in a moment). Demi Morre, Gwen Stefani and Jim Carrey. Jimmy Kimmel, John Cusack and John Legend. Kathy Griffin, Katy Perry and Kevin Spacey. Larry Summers, Naomi Campbell and Oprah Winfrey. Quentin Tarantino, Pharrel Williams and Robert Downy Jr. Steven Spielberg, Steven Tyler and Steven Colbert. Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep and Wanda Sykes. Will Ferrell, Will Smith and no surprise here, Woody Allen. Oh and Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, who have been to the island, have not come forward to assist in anyway shape or form. AG Barr has stated that in this ongoing investigation, that anyone complicit should not rest well at night. Well there are a lot of collective hours of sleepless nights.

Watch this clip – no joke

Chrissy Teiegen American model and TV personality made the flight log list. She is also the wife of singer, Trump hater, John Legend who also made the flight list. It’s been reported that Chrissy Teigen deleted 28,000 tweets and blocked 1 million accounts. She had far too many reference to eating human flesh and pedophilia related comments. Check out this clip of her below at time marker 8:30.

Must See

“Ask Prince Andrew About It”: Trump Warned Epstein’s Island Was “Absolute Cesspool” In 2015.

WATCH

What’s Next?

And with the apparent “suiciding” of Jeffery Epstein, this brings us to Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell’s alleged victims are coming out of the woodwork. Alleged victims of the longtime associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein testified at the defendant’s arraignment and bail hearing. Two of the alleged victims had not spoken to law enforcement until 2019. Their stories, according to the prosecutors, share remarkably similar details about Maxwell. “The powerful testimony of these victims, who had strikingly similar experiences with Maxwell, together with documentary evidence and witness testimony, will conclusively establish that the defendant groomed the victims for sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein,” the prosecutors’ memo states.

When you do the deeper dive research, you begin to understand that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were part of a Mossad and CIA op. One of the reasons the Epstein Island existed besides satisfying their sick appetites, was to keep everyone in check as blackmail in order to control the powerful elite. Well now, the video footage, photos and surveillance tapes are in the hands of the justice department. This story has just begun and remember Pedophilia is the Achilles heel of the deep state. So what’s next? I’ll tell you what’s next. Stay tuned.

©All right reserved.

UK Rightly Pushes Back on Gender Transitioning for Minors

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On both sides of the Atlantic, advocates for transgender rights are increasingly substituting ideology for biological reality.

But while here in the U.S. the Supreme Court last month was writing into Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act legal protections for people who identify as transgender that the authors of the law never intended, the United Kingdom appeared to be moving in the other direction, standing up for common sense.

On the other side of the pond, just five days before the Supreme Court handed down its decision, bestselling “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling published an intensely personal essay in response to criticism of her position on the issue of gender identity.

In the essay, Rowling, who is British, revealed her past experiences with sexual assault and domestic abuse, and expressed concern about transgender activists’ attacks on single-sex spaces for women.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

As a former teacher and a supporter of children’s charities, Rowling also stated her discomfort with the rush to medically transition children with gender dysphoria and especially the massive increase in young girls suddenly identifying as transgender.

Despite the vitriol she received in response from the left, Rowling refused to back down from her stance.

The comments by Rowling, along with other recent developments in the United Kingdom, show promising signs that the relentless advance of transgender ideology in medicine and public policy finally might be encountering some resistance across the Atlantic.

Britain’s minister for women and equalities, Liz Truss, recently announced plans to ban sex-change procedures for anyone under the age of 18.

Truss told a parliamentary committee April 20: “I believe strongly that adults should have the freedom to lead their lives as they see fit, but I think it’s very important that while people are still developing their decision-making capabilities that we protect them from making those irreversible decisions.”

Transgender activists frequently recommend those medical interventions—which include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery—for children who suffer from gender dysphoria.

Parents of children questioning their biological sex are advised to unquestioningly affirm the child’s new, self-identified gender and help them to transition socially with the help of a new name, pronouns, and wardrobe.

Little attention is paid to the adverse effects of that treatment, however. As Ryan T. Anderson and Robert P. George have written, such interventions “should be prohibited”:

Prudent legislation is needed to prevent adults from interfering with a child’s normal, natural bodily development.

‘Gender affirmation’ procedures violate sound medical ethics. It is profoundly unethical to intervene in the normal physical development of a child as part of ‘affirming’ a ‘gender identity’ at odds with bodily sex.

Activists have frequently brushed off concerns about possible regret following gender transitions, ignoring evidence that shows that they carry a number of physical and psychological risks.

The use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can lead to increased cancer risk, decreased bone density, and adverse effects on brain development. In addition, hormones and surgeries can sterilize children who would normally be considered far too young to make such a serious—and permanent—medical decision.

In contrast, a “watchful waiting” approach allows children time to accept their biological sex instead of rushing to alter it and can help address any underlying issues causing the distress.

Studies show that 80% to 95% of children experiencing gender dysphoria who do not transition eventually come to accept their bodies, while nearly all children who are placed on the path of social transition go on to pursue medical interventions.

The U.K.’s decision to prevent those under 18 from being subjected to those unproven procedures demonstrates the importance of considering the best medical and scientific evidence, even if it contradicts the activists’ narrative.

Britain’s National Health Service recently made another change related to its treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.

The Health Service’s website, which provides information about medical conditions and treatment, includes a section on gender dysphoria in children. A section on the use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues to prevent puberty in children who identify as transgender previously stated, “The effects of treatment with GnRH analogues are considered to be fully reversible, so treatment can usually be stopped at any time.”

That’s a common talking point for transgender activists, often employed to support early transitions while avoiding discussion of detrimental side effects or the lack of medical evidence supporting the use of puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria.

Surprisingly, that section on the National Health Service website was recently updated to read:

Little is known about the long-term side effects of hormone or puberty blockers in children with gender dysphoria. …

It’s also not known whether hormone blockers affect the development of the teenage brain or children’s bones. Side effects may also include hot flushes, fatigue, and mood alterations.

Rowling noted those concerns in a tweet, writing, “Many health professionals are concerned that young people struggling with their mental health are being shunted towards hormones and surgery when this may not be in their best interests.”

The National Health Service site also notes that the use of cross-sex hormones can lead to irreversible physical changes, such as deepening of the voice in females and breast development in males, as well as permanent infertility.

The changes to its site were made without fanfare, suggesting that the Health Service still fears activists’ outrage against even reasonable medical cautions.

Despite its own update, the Health Service continues to recommend and administer these medical treatments to minors. The Minister for Women and Equalities’ report on banning some of those treatments is not expected until later this summer, and its exact recommendations remain to be seen.

The changes to the Health Service’s website and the minister’s comments provide reason to hope that they will move toward a more cautious approach to treating children with gender dysphoria, protecting vulnerable youth from rushed, ideologically motivated—and often irreversible—interventions.

Policymakers in the United States would be well advised to do the same.

COMMENTARY BY

Andrea Jones

Andrea Jones is a research assistant in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society.

A Note for our Readers:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Myth Of Systemic Police Racism Is Leading To Targeted Attacks Against Cops

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This is the second piece of a two-part series on how systemic police racism fuels the war on cops. Read part one here.

Recent looting, arson and targeted violence against police wasn’t about police reform, and the assassination of police officers wasn’t about mourning or respecting George Floyd—so what’s really going on?

A quick look at two radical movements behind George Floyd protests — Antifa and Black Lives Matter — provides some insight. It is difficult to pin down an official “party line” with these amorphous groups, but there are similarities: The Black Lives Matter organization has called for national defunding of police and dismantling the nuclear family. The Movement for Black Lives calls for a Marxist-inspired agenda, which includes defunding police, eliminating prisons, ending all immigration enforcement, and paying slavery reparations. Antifa is even less centralized, but its adherents’ penchant for destruction, violence, riots and vandalism inspired by the supposed “racialized capitalism” of the United States is well documented.

The common thread uniting these movements is the belief that the United States as a country is illegitimate, inherently racist, and irredeemable. They view the police as racist defenders of this evil order.

This destructive pathology is a theme being echoed by many media and left-wing elites. In doing so, they fan the dangerous flames of racial hatred and violence while they downplay theft, arson, mob violence, the killing of innocent citizens, and the assassinations of police officers. The damage and vandalism that rioters have inflicted reveal their true motives and hatred for America. In Boston, a monument was desecrated honoring the 54th Massachusetts, the first black volunteer regiment in the Union Army that fought in the Civil War, which, of course, ended slavery. In Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Monument — dedicated to Americans who died fighting the real fascists of Germany, Italy, and Japan — were defaced.

During the recent anarchy, a disturbing trend became clear — much mainstream media supported the defund-the-police agenda while rationalizing mob violence. They appear to be in total collusion with the far-Left. As historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson observed, “There’s a narrative where the Media has joined Antifa and Black Lives Matter in forging the agenda that the United States was at the beginning, in continuation, in its present, and in the future a racist country that can only be remedied by violence that draws attention to the need for radical redistribution and reparations.”

This is exactly what we are seeing. The media is pivoting from the fake charge that the police are systemically racist to the position that all white people are racist. Making an assertion designed to turn black and white Americans against each other, CNN anchor Don Lemon asked “if you grew up in America, you came out of American soil. Considering the history of this country, how can you not be racist? How can you not have racial blindspots, how can you not see that the factory reset in America is whiteness?” This is pure projection, because making a value judgment on people based upon their skin color is part of the very essence of racism. It is the antithesis of the example, beliefs and teachings of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who dreamed of a future where Americans would judge one another “not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The myth that black people are being hunted by the police is doubly tragic because it deflects attention away from the real issue of deadly violence facing black citizens. For people who believe black lives really matter, two questions should be asked:

First, who is really killing most black people? Second, who are the people really saving black lives?

It is a fact that black Americans, particularly young black men, are being killed in American cities at an alarming rate—but not because of the police. In 2018, police shot and killed 990 people, 228 of whom were black. The same year, there were 14,123 homicides in the United States. The number of black victims was 7,407, of which 93% were killed by other black people.

This is the real epidemic confronting the black community, but there is no outrage from the mob or the media. For police-hating professional activists, “black lives matter” only when they are killed by the police. This hypocrisy was on full display during the recent murder of a black teenager in Seattle’s “Autonomous Zone” and the continued carnage in Chicago’s black community. There was no outrage or protest in response to the cold-blooded shooting of Lorenzo Anderson in Seattle and zero concern that a violent mob of CHOP comrades prevented police and medics from reaching and saving Lorenzo as he bled to death.

The mob and media silence was equally deafening after the Father’s Day weekend bloodbath in Chicago’s black community. More than 100 were shot with 15 dead, including four black children—one of them three-year-old Mekhi James. The deadly Chicago weekend was not an outlier. The slaughter has continued over the last two weeks, with more than 150 people shot and 40 dead, almost all in the black community. Among those killed since late June have been 10 children under the age of 18 including seven-year-old Natalia Wallace and one-year-old Sincere Gaston. The leftwing media hasn’t dwelt on their murders and Black Lives Matter hasn’t protested either.

Why are so many black people being killed in American cities? It is an unfortunate, but seldom acknowledged fact that black Americans as a group, particularly young black men, statistically commit violent crime at a rate much higher than their representation in the population. This is especially true in large urban areas. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, despite the black population of the United States being less than 13%, black offenders committed 52% of all homicides between 1980 and 2008. This higher crime rate also results in more contact with the police. In his book, Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, Kentucky State University professor Wilfred Reilly observes that “a Black crime rate which is 2.5 times the white crime rate and rises to 10 times the white crime rate in many major cities obviously explains most or all Black-white disparities in terms of unpleasant encounters with the police.”

So, the answer to the first question is that most black people killed in the United States are being killed by other black people — particularly by young black men. But as to our second question, who is saving the lives of Black people and preventing these outrageous numbers from being even higher? That answer is simple—it is the police.

Violent crime offender rates in Chicago are similar to most big cities, showing significant overrepresentation of both black victims and perpetrators of violent crime relative to total population. The Chicago Police Department’s Murder Analysis Report of 2011 showed that black Americans accounted for 75% of homicide victims and 71% of homicide offenders while comprising only 29% of the city’s population. Most of the city’s violent crime and homicides of black Chicagoans occur in predominately black neighborhoods.

However, during the period from 1991 to 2011, murders were reduced by 54% from a high of 943 in 1992 to 433 in 2011. Chicago Police Department manpower and resources were targeted at areas of gun violence; officers arrested shooters who were prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison; thousands of illegal firearms were taken off the streets each year; and police were strategic and proactive, maintaining high visibility to further deter violent crime. These tactics and results were applied and replicated in other big cities.

In New York City, the reduction in murder and other violent crime was even more dramatic. This unprecedented violent crime reduction in Chicago, New York, and other big cities across the country likely resulted in tens of thousands of black lives saved by the police.

My 24-year career in the Chicago Police Department spanned this period. I served as a patrolman, gang team officer, sergeant and tactical unit lieutenant in high-crime neighborhoods. How did ordinary, law-abiding black residents view the police? Two examples are instructive.

In the South Chicago District, I organized and led CPD’s first districtwide bike patrol unit. On our first day of operations, we wanted to make an impression, so I led our eight-member team to ride as a group through the most violent, gang-infested beat in the district. Honestly, we didn’t know what to expect. But as soon as we turned the corner at 80th and Marquette and pedaled down that street, an amazing thing happened. About six or seven black women — mothers and grandmothers — came out on their porches and front steps to cheer, applaud and bless us!

As a community policing sergeant and lieutenant, I chaired almost 100 community and problem-solving beat meetings in mostly all-black communities. I worked closely with residents—regular people who had to live every day with the intimidation, gang violence, disorder, and fear that neighborhood crime generates. Contrary to the elites and professional anti-police activists who advocate distrust and hatred of the police, the black residents who actually live in these neighborhoods — wanting nothing more than safety and a decent quality of life for their families — had only two complaints about the police: first, that there weren’t enough of us (they wanted more), and second, they wanted to know why couldn’t CPD just knock the thugs and hoodlums off the corners.

Tragically, violence, shootings and homicides are now back on the rise. The media’s anti-police propaganda war, combined with a lack of support from some department administrations and city governments, have resulted in what Heather MacDonald identified as the “Ferguson Effect.” Because of the hatred that has been deliberately engineered, police officers across the country are understandably backing away from the type of proactive policing that is required to effectively deter violent crime. The result is that violent crime is back up, and so are the numbers of black homicide victims.

If anyone in America was wondering what a country without the police would look like, they don’t need to imagine it anymore. Riots, looting, arson, mob violence and murder—this is what America looks like when the police are not allowed to enforce the law and maintain order. Without the police, the inevitable result is anarchy and the rule of thugs, gangs and the mob. We saw it happen before our eyes in Seattle, where another mayor and police chief not only surrendered one of their police precinct stations to the mob, but also ceded an entire portion of the city where the police were prohibited from patrolling.

In many cities, lawless mobs have defaced churches, have trashed Christian icons and have torn down historic statues and monuments with no fear of police action and arrest — just as the mob in Portland, Oregon, pulled down and set fire to a statue of George Washington with no police in sight.

This is just commonsense, policing 101. Crime and disorder doesn’t stop itself—the police have to step in and enforce the law, and this isn’t happening in our cities. One of the few enforcement actions taken to put a stop to this anarchist free-for-all was President Donald Trump’s executive order to protect our nation’s monuments.

The campaign to defund the police is gathering momentum and moving quickly in various forms, but all with the same end goal to sabotage, cripple or eliminate the police. Defunding is already underway in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Portland, and the total dismantling of a police department is progressing in Minneapolis.

But while these are serious threats, nothing can kill an organization quicker than the destruction of its members’ morale. This is proceeding even more rapidly, with little or no push back from police or political leaders. In fact, just the opposite has been happening.

While every cop in America is being called a racist murderer, rioters who were arrested for attacking the police, looting and other crimes have been let off scott-free. In New York City, district attorneys refused to prosecute hundreds of lawbreakers; in St. Louis 36 rioters and looters were set free without facing charges; and in Fort Worth, the police chief dropped criminal charges against 50 rioters as a gesture of “reconciliation.” Criminal destruction without punishment, attacking police without consequences and advocating physical resistance to lawful arrest all claim moral justification through the lie that the police are systemically racist. This has already resulted in new violence and will lead to more.

This is a fight for survival, not only for the police, but for our country and civilization, as well. We are rapidly approaching a tipping point. Unless police leaders and decent Americans stand up, speak out and fight back against this all-out assault upon the values and foundations of American society, the far-Left won’t need to defund the police to accomplish its destruction, because policing as an institution will simply implode and slowly die. Good cops will quit or retire early; remaining officers will go through the motions, perform minimal job functions while completely backing off from any proactive police action; and men and women of good character who wanted to serve and make a difference in their communities will not even apply for the job.

America’s tradition and principles, the rule of law, legitimacy of the police and the foundations of our democracy are being attacked from all sides. We are in a cultural civil war. America can be saved, but it will take police leaders and all Americans who believe in our country to stand up together to speak out—now. This must start with exposing the big lie that that police in the United States are systemically racist.

COLUMN BY

MAURICE RICHARDS

Maurice Richards is the former Chief of the Martinsburg Police Department in West Virginia. He served as Chief from 2015 to 2020 after 24 years as an officer and lieutenant in the Chicago Police Department. Richards holds a doctorate in Adult Education from Northern Illinois University.

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PODCAST: New York City Eliminated Its Anti-Crime Unit. Violent Crime Has Surged.

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New York City has seen a 53.5% increase in shootings and a 27% increase in killings this year, according to GianCarlo Canaparo, a legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

The New York City Police Department disbanded its plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit amid calls to defund the police in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. The increased violence might be a result in part of the city’s decision to disband the unit.

Canaparo joins the show to explain the factors contributing to New York City’s crime spike and what should be done to curb the violence.

We also cover these stories:

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

  • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced a bill to protect statues and monuments from protesters.
  • There is evidence that Russia is trying to hack research about a COVID-19 vaccine from the U.S., U.K., and Canada.
  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has put his foot down on the mandating of face masks by cities in the state.

“The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Virginia Allen: I am joined by GianCarlo Canaparo, Heritage Foundation legal fellow. GianCarlo, thanks so much for being here.

GianCarlo Canaparo: Thanks for having me, Virginia.

Allen: Well, I wish that we were here to talk about happier news today, but we are discussing, really, the frighteningly high spike in violent crime in New York City. Last weekend was a really tragic weekend in New York City. Could you begin by just telling us a little bit about what happened last weekend?

Canaparo: Sure. I’ll start by telling you the story of Davell Gardner. Davell was 1 year old. He was with family and friends at a neighborhood barbecue when unknown assailants drove up, hopped out of their car, and opened fire on the barbecue. They hit three men, wounding them. Thankfully, all of them seem to be fine, but Davell died of his wounds.

The same day, two other children, ages 12 and 15, were shot in Brooklyn and Harlem, and they were among a total of 64 people shot in New York, just this last weekend.

Allen: Wow. And sadly, GianCarlo, this is a trend that we’re seeing right now in New York City. So far this year, New York has seen a 53.5% increase in shootings and a 27% increase in murders. You just wrote a sobering, but really fantastic, piece for The Daily Signal about this crime surge. Could you just give us the big picture of what is going on in New York City right now, as it relates to this rise in violent crime?

Canaparo: Yeah, sure. So far, as of the last time that the NYPD put out stats, which was on the fifth of this month, we’ve seen 528 shootings in New York. Like you said, these numbers are up big time; 50% shooting, 63% shooting victims, almost 30% increase in murders just this year.

This comes following a lot of anti-police protests and riots, as well as New York City’s decision to disband the police force’s anti-crime unit. And New York is not alone in this. We are seeing this trend in a lot of big cities. Chicago is on track to have its most violent year since the mid-’90s. We’ve seen, in that city, 336 murders as of July 2, so this is a really distressing trend of violence throughout America’s big cities.

Allen: You mentioned that the NYPD, they dismantled their anti-crime unit. What did this unit actually do, and what is not happening in New York City right now because of it being disbanded?

Canaparo: Sure. The anti-crime unit was undercover, plainclothes cops assigned to each precinct and city housing. They went after illegal guns, local crime sprees, and focused on burglaries. Incidentally, we’ve seen that burglaries are up 45% in New York this year so far.

The reason that they were disbanded, I think, is because they were involved in more police shootings than other departments, by the nature of what they did, focusing on violent crimes and guns. But what you’ve seen, then, is that the New York Police Department is now deprived of, basically, its first responders to the most violent types of crimes.

Allen: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that if these are the police officers, like you say, that are in plain clothes and living in the community, probably 99% of the time they’re the first ones that are able to be on those crime scenes and respond.

Canaparo: Right, exactly right. They’re the officers who are going to be there before people know that the police are there or coming, and so they’re going to be in a lot hotter situations than the average officer who comes in sirens blazing after an incident has commenced or finished.

Allen: OK, wow. Right now, there’s a lot of finger pointing going on in the Big Apple, with Mayor Bill de Blasio saying it’s the courts and the courts saying no, it’s de Blasio and the NYPD, and everyone is blaming someone else. Who should actually be held accountable and responsible for this massive crime spike?

Canaparo: Boy, there’s really no shortage of people to blame. We saw earlier this year that New York undertook some criminal justice reforms, including, I think, the consensus in now is that its bail reform was somewhat disastrous. It released a lot of felons for COVID-19 to get them out of prisons because those were vulnerable populations.

We see that there are elements to these Black Lives Matter protests, which are more than just a cry for justice. There is a movement, a Marxist, anti-police, anti-establishment movement behind this motto, which has been encouraging violence and a culture of lawlessness.

We’ve seen that the New York Police Department has, in some cases, not engaged, not put its foot down, which means that people slowly, or rather quickly, actually, learn that there are not consequences to criminal action. So you’ve got this culture of lawlessness and violence that is spinning out of control in New York.

To see this firsthand, you can go online, and, I mean, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of videos, really disturbing videos of just violent lawlessness going on. The sort of thing that a healthy society does not glorify.

Allen: To what extent do you think COVID-19 should be factored into this, to where you have a lot of people out of work, or maybe have less work, and they’re bored or they’re restless? Are they maybe now more prone to get involved in criminal activity?

Canaparo: Yeah, it’s hard for me to say to what extent COVID-19 is affecting this. But … it makes sense intuitively, to me at least, that with the release of criminals from jails for COVID-19 purposes and the fact that people are not otherwise engaged productively with jobs or what have you, it makes sense to me, these are factors that come together and seem to be causing this problem.

Allen: Yeah. Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district includes parts of the Bronx and Queens, she made a very interesting comment that the spike in crime was due to poverty and people not being able to feed their families, so they’re stealing bread.

What does this comment reveal about just how out of touch Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and others, radical leaders on the left, are … with reality?

Canaparo: Sure. Well, first, let me walk through how this conversation started, because there’s a timeline here that affects how people are talking about this.

She gets on a video and she says, “Well, maybe the rising crime has to do with,” like you said, “people feeling the need to shoplift some bread or go hungry,” was her quote.

That statement taken at face value is belied by the evidence. Right? This is not shoplifting. We’ve seen a 53% rise in shootings. We’ve seen murders on the rise. Burglary is on the rise, and to be clear, an increase in people shoplifting for bread would not lead to a rise in burglary stats because New York charges shoplifting as larceny.

Now, larceny stats are actually down in New York. Petite larceny, meaning anything less than $1,000, is down 7.5%. Grand larceny for bigger thefts [is] down 20%. So shoplifting is not what’s leading to this rise in violent crimes.

When she was presented with these facts and got a lot of pushback, she did what she and a lot of politicians often do, which is to retreat from the specific claim into a generality.

She said, “Republicans are just all upset that I’m connecting the dots between crime and poverty,” is what she said. Well, that’s gaslighting, pure and simple. Right? Because, if this was just about poverty, we would expect to see that month over month, recently, these crime stats would be going down because as economies have slowly reopened, we’ve seen the unemployment levels drop quite dramatically, in fact.

By the end of July, unemployment dropped about 5%. It’s still very high. It’s still too high, hovering around 11%, but down significantly.

If her explanation [was correct], crime, poverty are related was the explanation here, we’d expect to see month over month a drop. But, in fact, what we’ve seen is month over month, 165% more shootings, 204% more shooting victims, and 21% more murders, month over month. That causality is backwards.

Even if she’s allowed to retreat away from her specific claim that this is shoplifting, her general claim that this is just the relationship between crime and poverty doesn’t explain what’s going on.

Allen: Wow. Well, New York has showed us that defunding parts of your police department, it doesn’t work. It only leads to more chaos, more crime. But it’s obvious, after the death of George Floyd at the hand of police officer Derek Chauvin that reforms do need to take place and … need to happen.

How should cities and communities across America respond to the death of George Floyd so that another man or woman is not wrongfully killed at the hands of a police officer?

Canaparo: What we need to see from reformists is a commitment to reform based on what we actually know, and not just what we think or feel we know about how police behave.

We need targeted reforms that prevent or punish or eliminate bad actors from within the police forces. But to paint with a broad brush and to simply disband, defund, or eliminate police forces will only encourage bad actors in the community to do what they’re going to do with impunity.

Allen: GianCarlo, to what extent is this a state and local level issue versus something that Congress should take action on?

Canaparo: Oh, it’s almost exclusively a state and local issue because the vast, vast majority of police-citizen interactions are at the state and local level. Federal police forces are not out there on the street dealing with people on a day-to-day basis.

Every community is going to have different needs. Communities that are quieter, communities that have a lot more police presence, they’re going to have different needs and considerations, and how each community interacts with its police force is a deeply local decision.

Allen: Yeah, interesting. New York had terrible crime in the 1970s and Mayor Rudy Giuliani is largely credited with cleaning up crime in the ’90s. Although, his methods have been attacked by some. What is New York City’s history of crime?

Canaparo: In a city like New York, it’s really easy for somebody to get lost in the crowd. That dynamic, that mentality can lend itself well to, in some people, the conception that, “Well, I can commit crime because I won’t get caught.”

What big cities like New York and Chicago need is a police presence that is there, that’s visible, that’s engaged and involved with the community. To cultivate not only a sense that police are there for our protection for the vast majority of people who are good and law-abiding citizens, but also to cultivate amongst people who are not that they are not going to get away with criminal behavior.

Allen: If you could sit down with some of New York City’s leaders today and say, “Hey guys, this is really what we need to implement first. Today, right now, this is what needs to change in order to strengthen that police force and bring this crime surge down,” what would you say to them?

Canaparo: A couple of things. No. 1, again, I would just reiterate that to tackle these issues, we need to be going at it from a data-driven approach—what do we actually know—and not listen to social activists who are espousing of a philosophy that is not necessarily tied to the facts. …

No. 2, there are going to be bad actors within the police forces, like there are bad actors everywhere. We need a system where they can be found out and punished.

Now, one of the problems that police forces face is, as with teachers and other unions, a union can create a lot of stickiness for bad actors in the police force, that they can’t be fired or they can’t be removed from the beat. Those sort of concerns need to be whittled down.

On the other side of the extreme, though, you can’t just get rid of your police forces in an overcorrection because there are always going to be bad actors in the community as well.

You’ve got to find that balance. You need the police engaged with the community, building trust with the community, present in the community. But you can’t divorce from that relationship the fact that police are necessary, most police are good, hardworking people who are just trying to do their jobs.

Allen: We encourage all of our listeners to follow GianCarlo’s work and follow him on Twitter, @gcanaparo. GianCarlo, thank you so much for your time today, just really appreciate your insight on this really important subject.

Canaparo: My pleasure. Thanks, Virginia.

COLUMN BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

A Note for our Readers:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: American Cities, Home to ‘Unfriendly’ Fire

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To say Independence Day was unusual this year is an understatement. There were few home town parades celebrating it, fewer firework displays, and more protesting from the far-Left. Americans were particularly appalled by the gun violence in our major cities, most notably:

New York – 44 shootings, 63 victims, 11 fatalities
Chicago – 47 shootings, 87 victims, 17 fatalities
Atlanta – 11 shootings, 31 victims, 5 fatalities

TOTAL – 102 shootings, 181 victims, 33 fatalities (some were innocent young children).

All of this in just one weekend, not to mention the other metro areas experiencing similar problems. And remember, this was a weekend intended to celebrate American independence, not mayhem.

These numbers are higher than last year’s. To see how bad it currently is, I reviewed the statistics as produced by the police departments of the three cities. Here are the alarming numbers I found:

New York City – Mayor Bill de Blasio (D)

Shooting victims through June 28th
2020 to date – 616 – Avg 24 shooting victims/week
2019 (total) – 406 – Avg 8 shooting victims/week

Chicago – Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D)

Shooting victims through July 5th
2020 to date – 1448 – Avg 54 shooting victims/week
2019 (total) – 1018 – Avg 39 shooting victims/week

Atlanta – Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D)

Shooting victims through June 28th
2020 to date – 344 – Avg 13 shooting victims/week
2019 (total) – 285 – Avg 5 shooting victims/week

These figures indicate the numbers will double or triple this year over the last.

Not surprisingly, Chicago leads the way in shootings as their reputation has gained worldwide notoriety. Ironically, New York and Chicago have some of the toughest gun control laws in the country, yet the violence only escalates. New York City’s gun laws are tougher than the state’s, which are tough to begin with, and; Chicago brags about their gun laws where they have banned the possession of certain semi-automatic firearms and laser sights, among other things.

In addition to tough gun laws, all three cities are considering de-funding the police in order to curb the strength of the police and/or changing how they react to violent situations. We should probably first ask the families of the 33 fatalities and 181 victims from the 4th of July weekend what their opinion is on the subject. Now is not the time for a wacky social experiment, but rather time for law and order.

For a long time, President Trump has said the Federal Government is willing to come to the assistance of the cities through financial and tactical resources to restore law and order. All the mayors and governors have to do is ask. Unfortunately, his offers are routinely snubbed by Democrat mayors, particularly de Blasio, Lightfoot, and Bottoms. So much so, it seems like they are under orders from senior Democrat officials not to deal with the President as it might be perceived as another “win” for Mr. Trump prior to election day. In the meantime, the shootings and fatalities pile up. This makes you wonder about the priorities of these mayors, particularly Mayor de Blasio who is more interested in painting “Black Lives Matter” on 5th Avenue, in front of Trump Tower.

In the end, the citizens of New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and other Democrat urban areas better get used to burying bodies while the mayors play politics. To them, it is more important to beat President Trump in the general election as opposed to saving the lives of their own local citizens.

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – Also, I have a NEW book, “Before You Vote: Know How Your Government Works”, What American youth should know about government, available in Printed, PDF and eBook form. This is the perfect gift for youth!

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EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission.  ©All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

VIDEO: President Donald J. Trump’s full July 14th Press Conference

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Here is President Donald J. Trump’s full press conference held in the Rose Garden on July 14, 2020.

WATCH: President Trump’s remarks begin at the 58:30 minute mark.

©White House. All rights reserved.

PODCAST: With Crime Exploding, Democrats Become Anti-Police, BLM — Made In China and more…

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

DR. RICH SWIER

Dr. Rich Swier is a “conservative with a conscience.” Rich is a 23-year Army veteran who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his years of service. Additionally, he was awarded two Bronze Stars with “V” for Heroism in ground combat, the Presidential Unit Citation, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry while serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam. Dr Rich now publishes the the “DrRichSwier.com eMagazine“. A daily review of news, issues and commentary!

TOPIC: BLM — Made In China

ROBERT CHARLES

Robert Charles is also a spokesman for AMAC, as well as former Assistant Secretary of State. He also served in the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, and counsel to the U.S. House National Security subcommittee for five years. Additionally, he ran a major portion of the U.S. House Oversight Committee for five years during which time he ran the joint committee in the Waco investigations. He’d be ideal for speaking to what’s next after impeachment and the congressional craziness or handicapping Bernie and the other Dems’ chances. He can also speak to how seniors will have a disproportionally large impact in the 2020 election and what that means.

TOPICS: With Crime Exploding, Democrats Become Anti-Police

GEORGE PARRY

George Parry Contributor to The American Spectator, The Federalist, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. George is a former federal and state prosecutor. George served as: Special Attorney for the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section, U.S. Department of Justice ; Unit Chief, Investigations Division, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office ; Special Organized Crime Prosecutor, Blair and Cambria counties (central Pennsylvania) ; Legal Analyst, KYW-TV ; George now has a private trial practice in Philadelphia.

TOPIC:The Politics of Life and Death

Activists Call For Defunding The Police As Violent Crime Surges Across The Nation

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Activists continue to call for defunded police departments during weeks of protests following the death of George Floyd. At the same time, the police are facing a spike in violent crime in several cities across the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Milwaukee is set to break the record of 167 homicides that were reported in 1991 when serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was free. Homicides in Chicago are nearing the record-high numbers from 2016, which was the highest homicide rate since 1996. Kansas City, Missouri, had 99 homicides during the first 6 months of this year, more than that same period in any previous year, the Wall Street Journal reported. Homicides are up 23% in New York and 11.6% in Los Angeles, both of which had seen falling homicide rates in previous years.

Meanwhile, the idea of defunding the police has continued to gain traction. The Minneapolis City Council unanimously voted to dismantle their police department last month, and the Oakland School Board followed suit, voting to ban police from their California schools.

Major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, have passed massive budget cuts for the police departments. New York City Officials cut $1 billion from the NYPD June 30, and the next day, the Los Angeles City Council cut $150 million from their police budget.

Some officers said that cities are cutting police budgets without a plan in place to reallocate the money to allow the department to do its job. “You don’t tear down the building you’re living in until you have a new building to move into,” said Art Acevedo, Houston police chief and head of the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales called the timing of coronavirus, massive unemployment and nationwide protests a “perfect storm,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

The coronavirus pandemic also led to budget cuts for police departments and worsened public relations by making community outreach difficult, experts said.

“We had a series of events that many of us probably never experienced in our time,” Morales noted.

Others have said being a police officer today is more dangerous. Former New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly said “what you see is a backing away.”

Many departments are worried about officers retiring early as morale has suffered within departments. The “Blu Flu” in Atlanta made headlines last month after police officers called out sick or didn’t show up for their shift after one of their fellow officers was charged with felony murder for the death of Rayshard Brooks. A video showed Brooks resisting arrest before grabbing the officer’s taser, which he was attempting to run away with when he was shot.

The Atlanta Police Department said in a June 17 tweet that “the department is experiencing a higher than usual number of call outs with the incoming shift. We have enough resources to maintain operations & remain able to respond to incidents.”

Last week, 179 NYPD officers resigned. In 2019, just 35 officers resigned within the same period, making this year an increase of 411%.

COLUMN BY

JORDAN LANCASTER

Reporter.

RELATED STATISTICS: Chicago Massacre Totals for the Year 2020

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ilhan Omar Should Be Expelled from House for Threatening to ‘Tear Down’ Our Political System, But Won’t Be

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My latest in PJ Media:

It’s a fine thing to be a member of not one, not two, but three protected victim classes: that most ardent of patriots, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Jihad), has now directly violated the oath of office she took when she became a member of the House of Representatives, but because she is so multiply victimized, nothing will be done.

It all happened Tuesday, when the Left’s brightest young star said that her colleagues’ latest treasonous cause, defunding the police, would not be enough: “We can’t stop at criminal justice reform or policing reform for that matter. We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system, we are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, in the air we breathe.”

Those “systems of oppression” that need to be torn down, in her sage view, include “our economy and political system.” Omar continued: “We must recognize that these systems of oppression are linked. As long as our economy and political system prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality. So we cannot stop at criminal justice, we must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

The “whole system of oppression.” All right. But that is not exactly what Rep. Omar promised to be about when she became an officer of the United States government. Here is the oath Ilhan Omar took when she became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives: “I, Ilhan Omar, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

This is a quite clear-cut case. Calling for the “dismantling” of the “political system” is the direct opposite of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In a sane Congress, she would be expelled. The Constitution says: “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member” (Art. I section 5)…..

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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Germany: Four Muslims attack Munich’s chief rabbi

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.