Tag Archive for: crime

The Dobbs Leaker Intended to ‘Kill One of the Justices,’ Expert Says

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One year after the leak of the Dobbs decision, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said the pro-life ruling made the conservative majority “targets of assassination” — a deadly outcome which a legal expert described as the “ultimate purpose” of the unauthorized disclosure.

Last May 2, Politico posted a draft of the landmark Supreme Court ruling, which returned abortion to the constitutional standard that prevailed for the 184 years of U.S. history before the controversial Roe v. Wade decision. A wave of pro-abortion violence swept the nation, targeting traditional churches, pro-life women’s centers — and the homes of the six Supreme Court justices believed to have crafted the decision. One year later, Alito said the still-unsolved release was designed to normalize the intimidation of constitutionalist judiciary.

“Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Justice Alito told The Wall Street Journal on Friday. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.”

He added, while the official investigation concluded it could not identify the individual who released the report, “I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible.” But, he added, “that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody.” While most observers believe a left-leaning clerk, or justice, leaked the opinion in an attempt to alter the course of judicial history, liberals have countercharged that Alito released the draft decision to the media himself — charges Alito calls “infuriating” and “implausible.”

“This made us targets of assassination. Would I do that to myself? Would the five of us have done that to ourselves?” Alito, the author of Dobbs, asked WSJ’s James Taranto. “It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft . . . from becoming the decision of the court,” one component of a six-week-long “campaign to try to intimidate the court.”

That campaign reached its apogee last June 8, when a mentally disturbed man who camouflaged himself appeared among raucous crowds of protesters outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home with the intention of assassinating the embattled justice. The suspect turned himself in before carrying out his plan. Police reported the man — who was armed with a gun, a tactical knife, pepper spray, and zip ties — confessed “he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to an abortion” and believed killing Kavanaugh would “give his life meaning.” Media outlets reported that the would-be assassin, Nicholas Roske of California, identified online as a “trans gamer girl” and “sissy slave” named “Sophie.”

The murder plot is the foreseeable, possibly intended, effect of the Biden administration’s refusal to protect pro-life justices and soft targets following last May’s leak, a legal expert told The Washington Stand.

“I don’t think the Biden administration did anything to help protect the justices of any substance. They stood on the sidelines,” Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, told TWS. “They should have prosecuted individuals. Not a single individual was prosecuted.”

“It was pretty clear, both from the leak and from the assassination threats, that the ultimate purpose was to intimidate a justice into changing his or her mind or inciting people to kill one of the justices in the majority in order to stop the overturn of the abortion decisions,” Staver added.

He accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of maintaining “shameful silence” while “these justices’ lives were being threatened.”

Federal law makes it illegal to protest, picket, or parade outside a federal official’s home “with the intent of influencing” his or her official duties, such as changing the vote of a Supreme Court justice. Garland testified that U.S. Marshals decided of their own accord not to arrest any of the pro-abortion activists outside numerous justices’ homes.

But slide presentations specifically instructed law enforcement not to arrest anyone without first coordinating with the U.S. Attorney Attorney’s office. “[A]rrests of protestors are a last resort to prevent physical harm to the Justices [sic] and/or their families,” said training documents exposed by Senator Katie Britt (R-Ala.). The law, the slides contended, “logically goes to criminal threats and intimidation,” not other forms of protest specifically listed in the statute.

Democrats slow-walked legislation that would have given justices greater protections, with then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisting that “no one is in danger” just one day after the Kavanaugh arrest. “The justices are protected.”

“Perhaps some Democrats may want this dangerous climate hanging over the justices’ heads as they finish the term,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last summer.

The Biden administration’s inaction comes amid a surging wave of threats targeting judges. The number of threats against judges and jurors skyrocketed 387% between 2015 and 2021, from 926 to 4,511 six years later, according to statistics released by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Congress has since voted to give the justices around-the-clock protection by U.S. Marshalls outside their homes. Alito says he’s now “driven around in basically a tank, and I’m not really supposed to go anyplace by myself without the tank and my members of the police force.”

Pro-life advocates marked the ignominious anniversary by declaring that violence, against grown jurists or unborn children, will not prevail. “Here is our message to those who use violence to impose their violent pro-abortion ideology: You will not win. Love is stronger than hate,” said Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s vice president of government affairs, Marilyn Musgrave. “The overwhelming majority of Americans are on the side of life. Threats and intimidation will not deter us from our mission. We will not rest until every child in America is protected and all mothers are free from abortion coercion.”

Nonetheless, the offender will probably elude justice, Staver said. “I don’t expect anyone’s ever going to be held accountable” for the Dobbs disclosure, Staver told TWS. “I wish that their investigation would have been more definitive.” The list of potential leakers is “very short, and Justice Alito would be in a good position to know that list of names.”

“That person, and probably more than one person who assisted with this leak, should be held accountable,” Staver concluded.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Two Street Riots, One Weekend: The Violent Legacy of Anti-Parent Policies

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Hundreds of people blocking streets, looting stores, and destroying property should not be normal occurrences. They are not normal in a peaceful, prosperous society. Alas, they are increasingly normal in America’s large cities. Unusually violent street incidents in Chicago and Los Angeles over the weekend illustrate the nation’s civilizational decline and point to at least one of the (many) causes.

Videos captured early Sunday morning show that a mob approximately 100 strong smashed through a glass door at an Arco gas station in Compton, California and ransacked the place while the overnight clerk hid in the bathroom. The “mob of looters … left a trail of destruction” at multiple stores, according to one local news report, while another said sheriff’s deputies received reports of gunshots in the area. Police arrived too late to stop the mayhem — not to mention being wildly outnumbered — but are reviewing video for possible charges.

The incident was apparently related to illegal street takeovers — at least three occurred Sunday night — connected to illegal street racing. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Clarence Williams said the street takeovers occur “just about every weekend.” Local resident Kevin Evans said of the perpetrators, “I don’t think they are Compton residents. We don’t tear up our own city like this.” (That hasn’t always been true.)

Meanwhile in Chicago, hundreds of teens swarmed the city’s downtown area on Saturday night, climbing on buses, smashing car windows, attacking bystanders, and generally creating chaos. Two teens were taken to the hospital with gunshot wounds, while a woman said her husband was hospitalized after a crowd smashed their windshield and beat him severely. The under-age crowd attempted to enter Millennium Park, where people under 21 are not allowed without an adult. Assisted by SWAT teams, hundreds of Chicago police attempted to restore order and escort tourists to safety. Police arrested nine adults and six juveniles, a slim fraction of the lawbreakers that night.

Saturday’s violence wasn’t the first time. On Friday, “a similar gathering” of hundreds of teens at 31st Street Beach turned violent when a 14-year-old was shot, and other cars were damaged, including one set on fire. One eyewitness described “kids fighting, chasing each other, some of them got guns.” The incidents also echo last year’s “Teen Takeover,” when, Chicago’s downtown was plunged into “absolute chaos” as mayoral candidate Paul Vallas tweeted. “Juveniles jumping on top of buses, cars, terrorizing residents, tourists & businesses. These mass groups fought CPD [Chicago Police Department] & only minimal arrests were made.” Sadly, Chicago’s routine violence only receives widespread attention when it spills out into affluent neighborhoods.

Multiple eyewitnesses laid at least part of the blame for the Chicago chaos at the feet of parents. “What’s it going to take?” asked one witness. “The community has to step up, parents have to step up, we can’t keep blaming politicians and waiting on them.” Outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot made the same point. “Parents and guardians must know where their children are and be responsible for their actions. Instilling the important values of respect for people and property must begin at home.”

Another anonymous Chicago native perhaps said it best, “Where are their parents at? That’s my question.”

That’s a great question. First, it rightly intuits that parents bear a responsibility for their children’s moral formation.

Second, it points toward at least a piece of the solution: parents are absent because they have been shut out of a position of influence in their children’s lives — by design. Education experts believe they know better than parents and therefore can supersede a parent’s authority. “I have a master’s degree,” testified Arizona teacher Alicia Messing. “What do the parents have?” She added, “the purpose of public education is not to teach only what parents want their children to be taught, it is to teach them what society needs them to be taught.”

Left-wing politicians are 110% behind the arrogant absolutism of the Educrats. As former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe accidentally said out loud in the 2021 campaign, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Of course, that predictably unpopular narrative — McAuliffe lost his bid to retake the governor’s mansion — has leftists such as White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre or Education Secretary Miguel Cardona searching around for a more sympathetic framing. They much prefer a “parents versus Republican politicians” narrative to the “parents versus teachers” reality.

As a result, more than 5,000 schools now allow — or require! — teachers to hide a child’s gender identity from parents, according to a report by Parents Defending Education. Schools have stocked closets with clothing so that students can cross-dress at school to keep their gender identity secret from their parents. They have continued to stonewall parents, even after parents have sued them, or their children attempted suicide. One Wisconsin teacher posted in her classroom, “If your parents aren’t accepting of your identity, I’m your mom now.”

If parents lack the moral authority to even know when their children attempt suicide, how can they be expected to effectively steer their teens away from street crime?

Both Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) — which are also home to some of the nation’s most powerful teachers unions — endorse this radical, new agenda of hiding essential information about a students’ identity from their parents.

It gets worse. After undermining parental influence, many schools are training children up to be left-wing activists. New curricula, some of which has been promoted in mainstream media, not only claims that activism makes children better students and better citizens, but teaches them how to do it. It’s no accident that high school students — or even younger — routinely walk out of class to participate in left-wing protests; their teachers are training and encouraging them to do so. Sure enough, there is evidence — although they try to downplay it — that LAUSD and CPS are encouraging their students in activism. Why, then, are we surprised when youth in Los Angeles and Chicago take over the streets?

Illinois state Senator Robert Peters (D), the senate black caucus chair, explicitly identified the Chicago violence with political activism, “I would look at the behavior of young people as a political act and statement. It’s a mass protest against poverty and segregation.” There’s only one problem: the word for non-governmental actors employing violence in pursuit of a political objective is not “protest”; it’s “terrorism.” For that reason, let’s hope Mr. Peters is incorrect.

“One of God’s great gifts to humanity is restraint. And when those restraints are taken off of a society, horrible things happen,” Dr. Al Mohler said last week on “Washington Watch.” “Frankly, you look at America’s major cities, [and] you don’t see much restraint about anything.” This past weekend made his point.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Experts: Trump Indictment Highlights ‘Disturbing’ Double Standard of Justice

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Former president Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on 34 felony counts by a Manhattan-based grand jury, in what Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton on “Washington Watch” called an “unprecedented indictment” of a former president. “The two-tiered system of law that is unfolding here is disturbing and just outright wrong,” said former Congressman Jody Hice, who now serves as FRC’s senior advisor to the president, on “Washington Watch.”

Representative Bob Good (R-Va.) on “Washington Watch” said the “conviction in search of a crime” is a plain attempt to prosecute a political opponent, “like we’re a third world country, or a banana republic, or a communist totalitarian state.” Good pointed out that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg campaigned by “saying he was going to go after President Trump … bragging about how many times he’d filed suit against President Trump before he ran for office. And now he’s trying to make good on that and deliver to his radical left base.”

“They went after this president for some seven, eight years now. And this is what they’ve come up with, a false business charge?” demanded Good.

Professor Phill Kline, who was formerly the attorney general of Kansas, agreed. “This [case] is not being brought because Mr. Trump is a big threat on the loose to America, even though these charges force him to face life in prison. … He’s being charged because the DA doesn’t like him.”

“They’ve turned this president every which way but loose,” said FRC president and “Washington Watch” host Tony Perkins. “Fifty congressional investigations, impeached twice by a Democrat-led House,” he recounted. “Of course, nothing stuck to him because, at the end of the day, there was nothing there.”

This opinion is not exclusively held by those immersed in the details; the crowd outside the Manhattan courthouse reportedly held the same view. Reporter Jarrett Stepman, who was present in Manhattan when the indictment was unsealed, said the sense “from the crowd, even before this came down,” was that the Trump indictment “was essentially a political charge … because of his governing philosophy, because of who he was.”

“This standard [that] is being held to now former President Donald Trump,” Stepman added, “wouldn’t be held to other people.” Days after taking office, Bragg announced he would not prosecute marijuana misdemeanors, public transportation fare evasion, most trespassing charges, unpaid traffic fines, “any violation, traffic infraction, or other non-criminal offense,” resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, prostitution, and outdated offenses.

“To be clear, President Trump’s immoral behavior of the past really set in motion these wheels of political attacks that have been churning for years now,” said Perkins.

But, Perkins added, “if [Trump] would have governed the way he is alleged to have lived prior to being president, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because the Left would have loved him. But he governed as a conservative, and he put people around him unlike any other Republican president in modern history, who actually advanced a conservative agenda.” Perkins said the Left has made him a target because “he represents a movement.”

“Unfortunately, we have seen increasing weaponization of government against political enemies,” Kline agreed. “You see that with the Department of Justice now and how they’re treating different potential investigative targets based on really their political opinions and positions that they have taken. So, we are creating a two-tiered system of justice in this country.”

“It’s also about scaring folks like you, and me … and every average day Americans and activists who are conservative, Republican, or frankly, dissident liberals,” added Fitton. Last week, IRS agents visited the home of Matt Taibbi, one of the liberal journalists reporting on the Twitter files, while Taibbi was testifying before the House Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. “They must fear — rightly so — their personal liberties [are] at stake or at risk as a result of this authoritarian, this totalitarian instinct among the Left to use the powers of prosecutors, all government bodies to try to jail their opponents.”

Hice said that the injustice of this situation should bother Christians, even if Trump’s immoral lifestyle offends them. “God loves those who stand for justice,” he said, “and this is a time where the two-tiered system … is becoming so blatantly obvious to every American citizen.”

“It doesn’t matter your points of view on whatever it is, the law should be applied to everyone,” Hice continued. “Where crimes have been committed, then there should be consequences. But where there is the strong arm of government simply going after political opponents, that is injustice.”

Perkins agreed. “We addressed this when this [scandal] came up, when the president was running for office back in 2016. This does not measure up to the standard by which we like to see as Christians in this country. In fact, I was not an early, early supporter of the president for these very reasons.” But now, he added, former president Trump is being made “a target because of his policies and the way he governed.”

“All of us have fallen and come short of the glory of God,” said Hice, and “every single one of us one day will stand before God, and we’ll give an account of our lives.”

“We understand the love and the grace of God to reach out and forgive us and transform us through giving his Son,” Hice continued, “so let’s keep that hope in mind. … And at the end of the day, God will have the final word over each of our lives. But until then, we are here in a world trying to stand for justice.”

“I can’t vouch for everything the president did,” Perkins said. But now that a man who “took the heat in advancing policies that we advocated for” is under attack, Perkins said he feels an obligation to defend “the rule of law and the fact that there is a disparity here in the justice that he is being denied.”

“I think we need to be passionate. We need to be engaged,” said Perkins. “But I do think we’ve got to be very careful that we do not breach this line of inciting and calling for political violence against our political opponents. I think that’s where we completely lose it as a country.”

Fitton echoed the same concern that the indictment of a former president and current presidential candidate will erode America’s bedrock institution. “This is a rigged prosecution for a rigged election,” he said. It “not only is designed to thwart the exercise of President Trump’s First Amendment rights, but to thwart our right to govern ourselves.”

“Bragg isn’t running the country, and we have to remind him of that. Congress should remind him of that,” said Fitton. He urged Congress to “figure out how much U.S taxpayer money at the federal level is being used by Bragg and anyone else” in New York City and “defund New York to the extent practical. If New York and the justice system up in New York wants to undermine our republic … taxpayers should have nothing to do with it at the federal level.”

“This isn’t ordinary, in terms of our nation’s history,” Fitton warned, to “have an entire movement who’s rejecting the American way, the protection of law, equal protection of the law, respect for election systems, and elections generally. … We don’t use criminal law to just go after our political opponents just because they’re our political opponents.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Murder!’: Jane Fonda’s Homicidal Call to Action Against Pro-Lifers

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Friday morning, on the infamously progressive talk show “The View,” 85-year-old actress Jane Fonda made a disturbing recommendation for dealing with pro-lifers: murder. The remarks came amid a conversation regarding Fonda’s pro-abortion activism, particularly in the months following the Dobbs Supreme Court decision last June. As hosts Sonny Hostin and Joy Behar simpered sweet nothings about Fonda winning a Nobel Prize, the conversation quickly turned awkward when Behar asked Fonda how to extend pro-abortion activism beyond merely marching and protesting.

“Well, I’ve thought of murder,” Fonda asserted, repeating the word “murder” as the women gathered around her laughed uncomfortably.

Despite the audience’s amusement and assurances from the show’s hosts that the actress was simply joking, viewers were left to wonder — does Fonda really believe that advocating for life in the womb is justification for someone to be murdered? And in a culture where progressives are keener than ever to claim that mere words can be violence, how can Fonda get away with literally suggesting murder?

Perhaps Fonda’s comments wouldn’t hit home for pro-lifers so acutely were it not for the barrage of terrorism that the pro-life community has suffered in the last year. Family Research Council has tracked over 125 instances of pro-abortion violence against pro-life pregnancy resource centers, churches, and individuals in the past year; just this week, a pregnancy resource center in Minneapolis was vandalized with the same familiar message that pro-lifers have learned to expect: “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you.”

In many instances, pro-abortion harassment has gone far beyond vandalism and threats. A CompassCare pro-life pregnancy resource center in Buffalo, New York was firebombed in June of 2022; the attack caused $500,000 in damages and forced the center to spend the next 52 days rebuilding. Despite the violence already occurring against these charity centers, radical abortion lover Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) accused pregnancy resource centers of “torturing” women and called for their doors to be closed — a move that, were the partisan tables turned, would certainly have been characterized as an incitement of violence.

In light of Fonda’s incurable enthusiasm to do harm to those who advocate for the life of the unborn, it’s important to consider her personal background on the issue. Fonda’s mother, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and eventually died by suicide, aborted nine of Jane’s older siblings before finally giving birth to her. Both Fonda and her mother suffered sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse. While there is certainly zero excuse for her abortion advocacy, much less her calls for violence against pro-lifers, understanding Fonda’s background helps paint a fuller picture of why she is so desperate to preserve social acceptance and celebration of abortion as a moral good rather than as the affront to human dignity that it truly is.

Just last week, conservative pundit Michael Knowles was accused of advocating genocide against people who identify as transgender because of a statement he made during a speech at CPAC. Even White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre slanderously accused Knowles of calling for the “eradication of transgender people.”

What Knowles actually said was, “For the good of society and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely, the whole preposterous ideology — at every level.”

While Knowles’s circumstances are more akin to misrepresentation, given that he never actually proposed violence against human beings, the incident still serves to prove a significant cultural point: progressives can’t have it both ways. Either words must be chosen with extreme delicacy and sensitivity because they will be construed as calls to violence — or not. And, if calls for political violence against other human beings are something to be condemned, then they must be universally condemned — even when the call is coming from inside the house.

A final (and significant) point to consider is that, even when pro-abortion advocates are not calling for murder against born people, they are nevertheless fighting desperately to perpetuate the shedding of innocent blood. Every “successful” abortion ends the life of a unique, unrepeatable human being. There can be no peaceful or nonviolent support of abortion, because to support abortion is inherently a promotion of violence.

Thankfully, given what the pro-life movement has demonstrated the willingness to withstand in the last year for the sake of protecting unborn children, it’s clear that the thoughtless snark of a Hollywood celebrity will do little to deter pro-life activism.

AUTHOR

Joy Stockbauer

Joy Stockbauer is a correspondent for The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

St. Louis Transgender Clinic Under Investigation for Using Experimental Drugs on Kids, Medicaid Fraud

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A pediatric gender clinic is under criminal investigation after a whistleblower charged the center with potentially defrauding Medicaid and private insurance to prescribe transgender hormones to children as young as 11. The sworn affidavit states the St. Louis facility administered cross-sex hormones to mentally ill children, sometimes against their parents’ wishes, and ignored children’s worsening physical and mental health conditions — including at least one suicidal teenager.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced Thursday night that his office and two other agencies had opened an investigation into The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “We have received disturbing allegations that individuals at the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been harming hundreds of children each year, including by using experimental drugs on them,” said Bailey, citing an affidavit from a former employee, who switched to another area of the hospital after becoming convinced the center is permanently hurting the people it swears to help.

The whistleblower, Jamie Reed, describes herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.” She says she is married to a woman who identifies as a male and affirms, “I support trans rights.” Reed details in her affidavit and in an article at Bari Weiss’ website, The Free Press, that she began working as an idealistic case manager at the center in 2018. By the time she left last November, she left convinced the center’s actions are “morally and medically appalling” — and is likely a systemic problem in the nation’s 100 pediatric gender clinics. “By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm,’” she wrote.

“I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” said Reed. Yet she kept her concerns private for months, because “anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.”

Reed states the center provides outside psychiatrists with a “template” form letter attesting that a child identifies as transgender. If the analyst will not sign it, the center uses in-house psychiatrists, Dr. Dr. Alex Maixner and Dr. Sarah Girresch-Ward, to confirm a child’s “gender dysphoria” after a one-to-two-hour consultation, rather than a full 10-12 hour assessment. They then begin children on a pipeline that results in lifelong hormones and potentially permanently disfiguring surgery before the age of 18.

She exposed potential perjury, as surgeons at the center testified before the Missouri legislature that transgender surgeries for minors are not “on the table” at their center. “This was a lie,” said Reed in the affidavit. She said the center claimed it provided minors with referrals to surgeons who are willing to remove teenagers’ healthy breasts and genitals “for educational purposes,” but they “were in fact referrals.” And Dr. Allison Snyder-Warwick performed at least one gender transition surgery in the hospital, apparently contradicting the doctors’ testimony.

Doctors at the center prescribed teenagers the prostate cancer medication Bicalutamide, which she says caused liver toxicity in a 15-year-old boy. (His mother agreed not to sue the center but warned her son’s condition “could be a huge PR problem.”) She related horrifying tales of physical and mental harm, including a graphic description of intense vaginal bleeding caused by the side effects of “gender-affirming care.”

Reed paints the picture of a center ignoring the real needs of its patients, and the real harms inflicted by the transgender regimen, in order to maximize its profits.

“[N]early all children who came to the Center here presented with very serious mental health problems,” including autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma histories, OCD, and serious eating disorders, she said. Some erroneously identified as suffering from other psychosomatic maladies, such as Tourette Syndrome or blindness. “Privately,” the doctors recognized their other psychosomatic illnesses reflected “social contagion” … but not their gender dysphoria, even when groups came from the same high school. Others used pronouns identifying as a “mushroom” or a “rock”; one patient told employees she identified as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non-binary.” Despite these serious issues, the center “would not treat these mental health issues. Instead, children were automatically given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.”

The center also ignored indications of parental coercion of physical abuse, Reed said. In one case, a parent was “forcing” a boy to dress as a female, but the center administered cross-sex hormones, as well. In another, a 17-year-old boy brought to the center by an unrelated male and given hormones upon turning 18. His mental health deteriorated, yet staffers continued administering hormones — even after it turned out the man who brought him to the facility “had been sexually and physically abusing” him.

The experimental nature of many of these drugs set children up for a lifetime of infertility, early menopause, bone thinning, and — contrary to their advertisements — worsened mental health. “I witnessed the Center cause permanent harm to many of the patients,” said Reed. “I doubt that any parent who’s ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes.” She added “clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals.”

When parents or doctors would describe worsening mental health outcomes, the center ignored them and continued the hormones, she said. One mother, in a letter revoking consent for her son to receive hormone blockers, said her child “is a shell of his former self riddled with anxiety.”

The center even ignored pleas that their actions might contribute to a potential suicide. In one case, “a psychiatrist called the Center’s endocrinologist and explained that a child, who had already tried to commit suicide by threatening to jump off a roof, should not be given cross-sex hormones because the child was struggling with serious mental health issues,” Reed attested. “I witnessed the endocrinologist yell at the psychiatrist on the phone and speak down to this provider.”

“The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she said.

The center’s actions often lead to lifelong regret, Reed noted. A black teenager from a troubled family began receiving hormones at the facility at age 16 and had a double mastectomy at age 18. Three months later, she told the surgeon she would return to her birth gender, adding, “I want my breasts back” and asked a surgeon to have them “put back on.” Reed wrote, “The last I heard, she was pregnant. Of course, she’ll never be able to breastfeed her child.”

These are the same concerns that motivated Chloe Cole, the teenage detransitioner who now embraces her biological identity, as nearly nine out of 10 children with dysphoria eventually do. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child,” she told Florida legislators last July. “And because I do not have my breasts … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have. That realization actually was one of the biggest things that lead to me realizing that this was not the path that I should have taken.” She’s now suing the Permanente Medical Group and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan for breaching appropriate standards of care.

Even removing parental consent was not enough to stop the ideologically motivated doctors at the center according to Reed, who testified, “On several occasions, the doctors have continued prescribing medical transition even when a parent stated that they were revoking consent.”

The center also fudged the billing codes for many of these prescriptions, Reed said, sending erroneous invoices to private insurance and sometimes state or federal programs. Employees falsely claimed that one child who received puberty blockers was experiencing precocious puberty, Reed wrote.

The whistleblower’s comments have triggered a statewide investigation from the Missouri attorney general, the Missouri Department of Social Services, and the Division of Professional Registration. Sheila Solon, the director of the Division of Professional Registration, promised her agency will “take any necessary action against the licenses” of Missouri doctors involved in the center’s work that violates the “health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Missouri.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Abortion Is Not the Answer for Women with Disabilities

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Joe Biden: The Bull Connor of the Pro-Abortion Movement

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For a man who ran for president to save the soul of America from racism, former segregationists’ buddy Joe Biden resembles few people more than the infamously abusive police chief Bull Connor. Both allowed domestic terrorists aligned with the Democratic Party to vandalize, bomb, and set fire to their opponents’ churches with impunity while using maximum force to arrest peaceful, Christian, protesters.

Sixty years later, little more than the names and faces have changed: Connor’s allies rallied behind the banner of white supremacy, while Biden’s supporters mobilize around “abortion on demand without apology.” The Biden administration’s refusal to protect pro-life Christians bears an eerie resemblance to Bull Connor’s collusion and selective prosecution. Imagine how civil rights protesters would have fared if George Wallace won the 1964 presidential election, and you get a sense of Biden’s treatment of peaceful, prayerful, pro-life advocates.

‘We’re Going to Allow You 15 Minutes….’

The Freedom Riders, who tested Southern segregation laws from Virginia to New Orleans, planned to stop in Birmingham on May 14, 1961. The Ku Klux Klan — and the Alabama lawman they helped elect Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor — had other plans. The KKK plotted a series of coordinated strikes against the protesters spanning multiple cities. Klansmen knew the details of the demonstrators’ travel itinerary, because the Birmingham sheriff’s department told them — and the sheriff’s department knew, because the FBI told them. As the protesters departed Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. warned the Freedom Riders, “You will never make it through Alabama.”

In the days leading up to their arrival, Bull Connor personally gave the Klan the green light to rough up Yankee “meddlers.” Connor’s right-hand man, Birmingham Police Department Sgt. Thomas H. Cook, arranged for a meeting with a man named Gary Thomas Rowe, a member of a violent chapter of the Klan — but also an FBI informant. Historian Raymond Arsenault recounts the scene:

Unaware that Rowe planned to relay his words to the Birmingham FBI office, Cook laid out an elaborate plot to bring the Freedom Ride to a halt in Birmingham. He assured Rowe that other members of the Birmingham Police Department, as well as officials of the Alabama Highway Patrol, were privy to the plan and could be counted on to cooperate. “You will work with me and I will work with you on the Freedom Riders,” he promised. “We’re going to allow you 15 minutes. …You can beat ‘em, bomb ‘em, maim ‘em, kill ‘em. I don’t give a s***. There will be absolutely no arrests. You can assure every Klansman in the country that no one will be arrested in Alabama for that fifteen minutes.”

“By God, if you’re going to do this thing,” Cook later told the Imperial Wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Shelton, “do it right.” Similarly, Bull Connor instructed the Klan to “make them look like a bulldog got a hold of them.”

The Klan didn’t have to be told twice; they planned to strike twice. They swarmed the first of the two vehicles, a Greyhound bus, when it arrived in nearby Anniston, breaking its windows and slashing its tires. Police escorted the protesters as far as the city limits … where the Klansmen were waiting. One Klansman threw an explosive device into the back of the bus and, as protesters scurried out of the door for their lives, the mob beat them savagely. “Then, God Almighty intervened,” remembered Hank Thomas: The bus’s gas tank exploded in two bursts, frightening the crowd away. “A miracle happened in Anniston.”

Klansmen posed as passengers of the Trailways bus carrying the other group of Freedom Riders. In Anniston, the Klan insisted the riders segregate the bus and pummeled several passengers — including Walter Bergman, then age 61 — to make their point. Although Bergman would remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life and have to learn to feed himself again, a local policeman told his assailants, “Don’t worry about no lawsuits. I ain’t seen a thing.”

Unfortunately, the real violence awaited in Birmingham. Confident they would face no repercussions, the Klan invited CBS News reporter Howard K. Smith to witness the violence as the bloodied protesters descended the bus stairs to desegregate the terminal’s lunch counters. A mob of Klansmen (including the FBI informant, Rowe) and members of the National States Rights Party swarmed, sometimes beating protesters 12-on-one. The melee continued until one of Connor’s detectives, Red Self, told the Klansmen: “Get the boys out of here. I’m ready to give the signal for the police to move in.”

Faced with local intransigence, the FBI would soon arrest the four people responsible for firebombing the Greyhound, but it would be far from the last act of unpunished violence. A tragic 40 unsolved bombings over two decades earned the city the nickname “Bombingham.”

Not content to outsource his brutality to the Klan, Bull Connor ordered his police to use all means necessary to quash the message of Christian civil rights protesters.

Release the Guilty, Jail the Innocent

Bull Connor’s police proved more likely to arrest peaceful protesters than the Klansmen perpetrators. In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” courtesy of Connor’s constabulary. As King and his supporters went to jail for “parading without a permit” (holding unauthorized demonstrations), Connor said:

[W]e are not going to stand for this in Birmingham. And if necessary we will fill the jail full, and we don’t care whose toes we step on. I am saying now to these meddlers from out of our city, the best thing for them to do is stay out if they don’t want to get slapped in jail. … I’ve never seen anyone yet look for trouble who wasn’t able to find it.

Volunteers evaporated from the desegregation campaign. King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), responded with “The Children’s Crusade,” recruiting more than 1,000 schoolchildren to march through Birmingham on May 2 and 3, 1963. As the youngsters left the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church carrying signs with such messages as, “Segregation is a sin,” Connor’s men arrested 959 the first night. But they did not merely apprehend the marchers: Police blasted young children with high-powered firehoses, beat them with batons, and sicced police dogs on them.

The cruelty was the point. The pretense of law masked ruthless hatred, as segregationists used overwhelming force to discourage them from ever again publicly voicing views disfavored by the powerful.

As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Joe Biden Bull-ies the Pro-Life Movement

Fast forward 60 years, and violent hatemongers with powerful political allies have again received free rein to terrorize their nonviolent, Christian foes. But Jane’s Revenge has enjoyed more than a 15-minute reign of terror. Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last May 2, pro-abortion fanatics have launched a wave of arsons, vandalism, and death threats against at least 101 pro-life churches or pregnancy resource centers. Abortion activists firebombed pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the same way Bull Connor let the Klan firebomb Freedom Riders’ buses — with the same number of arrests: zero. Leftist extremists perpetrated 52 attacks before the FBI even announced its investigation.

This wave of violence, like most cowardly violence, targets the powerless — unborn babies, their desperate mothers, and the nonviolent Christian churches and nonprofits that serve them — but this wave also victimized the powerful with impunity. On June 13, two people threw a lit flare into the offices of Washington State Rep. Andy Barkis (R). Eight days later, vandals smashed the windows at the local office of U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.). Like the Klan in Alabama, pro-abortion fanatics feel confident enough to leave their calling card — often scrawling, “If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you” on pro-life women’s centers and churches — and to alert the media they will take “increasingly drastic measures.”

Biden’s nonfeasance embodies the administration’s defiant message that its ideological opponents enjoy no legal protection — a far cry from the promise Biden made the day after the media declared him winner of the 2020 election: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” The atmosphere of hatred has resulted in an 84-year-old pro-life woman being shot. (The male suspect said he shot her by accident.)

At least one congressman has connected the dots. The wave of anti-life terrorism represents “the death cult’s echo of the KKK’s burning cross — brazen, violent intimidation,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). “But the federal government responded to the KKK. Where is the Biden Justice Department amid this violent campaign of national scope?” The administration, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), instead aim to “put a stop” to pro-life pregnancy resource centers.

“To my knowledge, no one — no one — has been prosecuted under the FACE Act,” noted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as House Republicans passed a resolution condemning violence against pregnancy resource centers on January 11. J. Edgar Hoover, who shared the racial views of his time, arrested the Anniston bombers in a matter of days. In a world of high-definition security cameras and facial recognition software, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have apparently arrested no one in eight months.

At least, no one who shares the administration’s extreme commitment to abortion. “But if you’re a pro-life activist, and you’re praying outside of an abortion clinic like Mark Houck, guess what happens to you?” asked Jordan. “The FBI kicks in your door, arrests you, puts you in handcuffs, and does it in front of your wife and seven children,” using dozens of heavily armed agents. Biden’s DOJ meted out similar treatment to Paul Vaughn, a 55-year-old father of 11. Just as black-and-white footage of Bull Connor unleashing his dogs on children inspired national revulsion of segregation, Biden’s overreach should inspire outrage at federal collusion with the abortion industry.

As pregnancy resource centers burned, in July Biden’s Justice Department established the Reproductive Rights Task Force to take “proactive and defensive legal action” to protect the abortion industry (and punish its foes) — and tapped as its leader Vanita Gupta, who as a “civil rights” officer in Obama’s DOJ tried to force all public schools to allow men to use women’s restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations or lose all federal funding. She applied her ideological fervor equally well to abortion. Biden’s Justice Department arrested 26 pro-life advocates by last October, with more following, including:

  • Franciscan friar Fr. Fidelius Mocinski (whose birth name was Christopher), just as local New Jersey prosecutors dropped charges for conducting his “Red Rose Rescues”: entering abortion facilities and giving mothers red roses. In this case, he lay down in front of an abortion facility’s entrance, just as protesters in the ‘60s laid down in front of Lyndon Johnson’s presidential limousine. (“If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car,” cracked segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama (D) during the 1968 presidential campaign, “it’ll be the last car he’ll ever lay down in front of.”);
  • Nine defendants who entered a Washington, D.C., abortion facility and sang “let there be peace” (as a live-stream of the event shows) in October 2020. At least one of the women had participated in Rose Rescues;
  • Eleven defendants who entered an abortion facility in Tennessee in March 2021. If convicted, some of the defendants stand to serve up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars;
  • Pastor Daniel Courney of Enfield, N.J., one month after it wrung an agreement out of him not to commit “future FACE Act violations” — which, out of fear, would effectively cause him to end his presence outside abortion facilities; and
  • Bevelyn Williams and Edmee Chavannes, who happen to be black women from the South, for allegedly violating the FACE Act as far back as June 2020. (Curiously, their indictment begins with peaceful pro-life activity in 2019.) In one alleged violation in the indictment, Chavannes told an abortion facility employee, “Do not touch me.”

The arrest total seems all the more lopsided, since pro-life women’s centers are 22 times more likely to be attacked than abortion facilities. Both Gupta and Garland touted their work prosecuting pro-life advocates at a civil rights assembly last December. Both invoked Martin Luther King Jr.

As noted, in many cases the Biden administration presses pro-life advocates to sign agreements not to protest any more — a similar tactic employed by the Obama-Biden administration. A federal judge questioned whether the Obama-Biden administration’s prosecution of Mary Susan Pine “was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion provider], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities.” (Ultimately, the DOJ paid Pine $120,000 in legal fees.) One could be forgiven for asking the same question of these cases.

A trial may conclude some of these acts violated the law, just as civil rights protesters violated the law of their day — the law their peaceful, prayerful actions aimed to change. But today’s prayerful pro-life advocates see their homes raided, not aided, by the federal government led by a vice president who raised bail money for the BLM’s “mostly peaceful” rioters. They face enormous legal bills, a criminal record, huge fines, and perhaps more than a decade in prison.

Despite these pressures, the pro-life movement has not buckled, as the terrorists and their federal government enablers wished. When bombed, they have rebuilt. When denied protection, they have secured their ministries of mercy. When denied justice, they hired their own private investigators. They have suffered long and done good. They have emerged from the fiery crucible of persecution with a stronger resolve to help the weak and save the innocent. The pro-life movement is “hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” … And, one day, manifested in our laws.

We shall overcome.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

At Least 269 K-12 Educators Arrested on Child Sex Crimes in First 9 months of 2022

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Who is hiring these pedophiles. Pull your children out of government schools. Democrats hate you. What more effective way of destroying and our wonderful country then by abusing your children and shredding the family?

At least 269 K-12 educators arrested on child sex crimes in first 9 months of this year

74% of the arrests involved alleged crimes against students

By Jessica Chasmar | Fox News October 14, 2022:

Virginia counselor charged twice for sex crimes allowed to work for nearly two years

Fox News’ Mike Emmanuel reports on a Fairfax County, Virginia, twice-convicted sex offender who was allowed to work for nearly two years before being fired.

Nearly 270 public educators were arrested on child sex-related crimes in the U.S. in the first nine months of this year, ranging from grooming to raping underage students.

An analysis conducted by Fox News Digital found that from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, at least 269 educators were arrested, which works out to roughly one arrest a day.

The 269 educators included four principals, two assistant principals, 226 teachers, 20 teacher’s aides and 17 substitute teachers.

At least 199 of the arrests, or 74%, involved alleged crimes against students.

TRUSTEE OF TRANSGENDER KIDS’ CHARITY RESIGNS AFTER UNEARTHED SPEECH TO GROUP FOR ‘MINOR-ATTRACTED PERSONS’

The analysis looked at local news stories week by week featuring arrests of K-12 principals, assistant principals, teachers, substitute teachers and teachers’ aides on child sex-related crimes in school districts across the country. Arrests that weren’t publicized were not counted in the analysis, meaning the true number may well be higher.

Only 43 of the alleged crimes, or 16%, did not involve students. It is not known whether another 10% of the alleged crimes involved students.

Men also made up the vast majority, with over 80% of the arrests.

OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY PLACES PROFESSOR ON LEAVE AFTER INTERVIEW DEFENDING ‘MINOR-ATTRACTED PERSONS’

There are an estimated 3.2 million public school teachers in the country, meaning the arrests compiled by Fox News Digital make up only 0.0084%.
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“The number of teachers arrested for child sex abuse is just the tip of the iceberg — much as it was for the Catholic Church prior to widespread exposure and investigation in the early 2000s,” Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The best available academic research, published by the Department of Education, suggests that nearly 10% of public school students suffer from physical abuse between kindergarten and twelfth grade.”

“According to that research, the scale of sexual abuse in the public schools is nearly 100 times greater than that of the Catholic Church,” he said. “The question for critics who seek to downplay the extent of public-school sexual abuse is this: How many arrests need to happen before you consider it a problem? How many children need to be sexually abused by teachers before you consider it a crisis?”

Many of the arrests in Fox News Digital’s latest analysis involved especially heinous allegations.
Eugene Pratt, a former principal, elementary school teacher and coach who taught at-risk youth in multiple Michigan public schools, is accused of sexually assaulting at least 15 boys and young adult men over the course of several decades.

Eugene Pratt, a former principal, elementary school teacher and coach who taught at-risk youth in multiple Michigan public schools, is accused of sexually assaulting at least 15 boys and young adult men over the course of several decades. (Genesee County Sheriff’s Office)

Eugene Pratt, 57, a former principal, elementary school teacher and coach who taught at-risk youth in multiple Michigan public schools, was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in August. He is accused of sexually assaulting at least 15 boys and young adult men during his education career spanning several decades.

Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson, whose office is investigating Pratt, told ClickOnDetroit in August that sexual predators often put themselves in a supervisory position so that they have easy access to victims.

“When you see positions that he held that involve being a principal, school administrator, counselor, GED coordinator, and even after he taught, where he was arrested last week out of New Paths, as a driver, as a transport officer,” Swanson said. “Individuals like Eugene Pratt put themselves in positions of authority over others in order to act on their prey and to find and identify vulnerable people.”

Keep reading…..

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

No Safe Space: Chemical Abortion and Trafficked Daughters

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“My strategy was to be unseen. I became numb. Most abuse victims don’t know they are victims. We just know that this is life.” — Darlene, survivor

Darlene was 13 when she was first molested. To this day, she remembers running and hiding under the bed, desperate to disappear. “It just sort of flipped a switch in me, because I had no safe place anymore.” Fatherless, she watched her mom go from one abusive relationship to the next, until one day Darlene just stopped going to school. “That was when my world seemed to completely spiral out of control,” she admits. “[A] guy came to my neighborhood who was so jovial and so friendly to everybody. He was so magnetic is the only thing I can think of. All the kids in the neighborhood gravitated to him — and I had no idea that I was his target.”

By her 14th birthday, she was a commodity. “The first time he sold me was to a businessman,” Darlene thinks back. “He was a bouncer at an illegal gambling ring, and he’d bring me to that back alley — and he’d leave me in the car and men would use me there, over and over and over. And then when he opened the door, he said, ‘Gee, you look like hell.’ … I was beaten, gang-raped, drugged, dragged, and bruised in a sick game of dehumanization.” No one, not even her mother, stopped it. “Sometimes I was out on the streets for days at a time, sometimes weeks.” Her buyers were businessmen, city councilors, professionals, criminals.

After she’d been passed around for five years, she was sold to a man who told her, “in graphic detail how he’d forced other girls to have an abortion.” By that point, Darlene had been trafficked so long, she thought she couldn’t get pregnant. “I didn’t think it would happen,” she said. Until she did. When her abuser found out, he threatened to kill her if she tried to escape without having an abortion. “He even threatened to do it himself.” Terrified, she threw herself at his feet, begging him not to force her. He threw the phone in her lap and waited until she called and made an appointment. “In my mind, I had no choice,” she remembers.

Years have passed, but there are thousands of other Darlenes trapped in horror stories like hers. This very second, there are men online, in malls, walking through neighborhoods, luring girls away from unhappy homes with one goal: to sell them and use them for sex. Like Darlene, they’ve been kicked, beaten, starved, punished, and forced to subject themselves to a level of brutality and humiliation most of us can’t comprehend. Most of these young girls end up pregnant — as many as 71% according to one report. And not just once. Multiple times. “A third of women trafficked ‘underwent numerous abortions as victims of trafficking’” — most against their will.

Now, with Roe v. Wade gone, and abortion activists frantic to protect their biggest business, the plot has become more sinister: abortion pills, through the mail, where no one has to know. The new back-alley method that gives predators like Darlene’s an even easier way to inflict harm.

Before the abortion industry invented chemical killing, there was at least a good possibility that abused and hurting girls would see an adult face to face, a nurse or health care worker in a safe place where they could tell the truth and get help. And while abortion centers like Planned Parenthood’s were notorious about covering up these nightmarish crimes, there was a better chance of teenagers breaking their silence and getting rescued — than removing all supervision and forcing them to go through this dangerous abortion process alone.

As so many doctors have warned, these are lethal drugs. The Left tells women that it’s a simple, safe, natural, and private process. What they don’t tell them is stories like Solome’s. “I had blood all over my legs and went in the tub to wash them. The cramps got so bad I couldn’t even move. I couldn’t even cry…” she testified to the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus. “I couldn’t get to my phone to dial 911 and go to the emergency room…” There was so much pain and blood, she thought she might die. “I haven’t really healed from my experience, and I don’t know if I ever will.”

Imagine the harm rapists and other predators could do if these drugs were as available as the Biden administration is demanding. Children, innocent women, and sex victims of all kinds would be in an endless cycle of violence — with no guarantee that they would survive the complications. Because the last place a serial abuser is going to rush his victims is an emergency room where the girls would have easy access to law enforcement.

And yet, President Biden, controlled by the radicals in his party, has decided to take the side of those monsters, demanding that states make it easier for everyone to get their hands on these deadly drugs. In a term that has redefined extremism, he has decided to become the president of predation. “As our nation faces another significant health care crisis, this guidance is to remind the roughly 60,000 retail pharmacies in the United States of the unique role pharmacies play in ensuring access to comprehensive reproductive health care services,” according to Health and Human Services.

This, Dr. Ingrid Skop warns, despite the fact that chemical abortions have four times as many complications as surgical abortions. The Biden administration, she explained on “Washington Watch,” took away all in-person supervision.

“They can get it delivered by mail without ever encountering a doctor. … [And] these medications work by cutting off hormonal support and then causing contractions. The further along a woman is, the more likely it is to fail. When it fails there, the woman is at risk for infection. She’s at risk for hemorrhage. And that tissue that does not pass out has to be removed surgically. Even under the prior recommendations, using it up to 10 weeks gestation, about 5-8% of the time it does fail and the woman needs surgery. But in this new world where nobody’s even checking to find out how far along she is, it’s going to fail more frequently.”

For any woman, those are inhumane odds. For a woman trapped in a life of sex abuse, it’s a death sentence. The idea that anyone — let alone the leader of the free world — would try to push this poison on innocent mothers and children is abhorrent. What he’s telling the desperate, hurting girls like Darlene is that there’s no way out. That there is no safe place. “Women who are in this situation,” she tells people now, “need healing. They need guidance, they need compassion. But they don’t need abortion.”

She should know. The night Darlene begged her captor for her baby’s life, she had a dream — of a little face, part of a hand “with those distinct stubby fingers,” part of a ribcage. Looking back, she knows it was supernatural, a window into a womb she didn’t know. She woke up, raised her arms in the air in an act of desperation, and said, “God, if you’re real, I need you to show up.” He did, hatching a plan for her to escape with the help of a social worker assigned to track her as a runaway. She faked her abortion and found her freedom.

Darlene was saved by heroes — people who valued her life and her baby’s. Girls everywhere deserve a government and a president who does the same.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column appeared in The Washington Stand is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

POLL: Inflation, Economy And Crime Still More Important Than Abortion To Voters Post-Dobbs

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Voters still rank economic concerns and rising crime higher in importance than abortion even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a Cygnal study released Wednesday found.

The most important issues to voters polled were the high cost of living/inflation, the economy in general and crime/violence. A full 62% of voters ranked these issues as the most important to them.

Only eight percent said abortion was the most important issue to them.

The study had a margin of error of 2.19%. Cygnal interviewed registered voters via online panel, and the poll was conducted through June 25 and 26 and surveyed over 2,000 voters. Cygnal has a B+ rating according to FiveThirtyEight and has predicted 95% of races correctly.

Among independents, high cost of living/inflation, economy in general and jobs were top concerns, with 60% of independent voters ranking them as the most important issues to them. Comparatively, 20% of independent voters ranked abortion as the most important issue to them.

According to the poll, voters seem to have a slight preference for Republicans candidates over Democrat candidates heading into the midterms. Of those surveyed, 48% said they would prefer a Republican candidate and 44% said they would prefer a Democratic candidate.

The polling also showed Republicans leading as the party most trusted to handle economic issues. Republicans are trusted to handle the high cost of living and inflation, for instance, at a rate of 51%, compared to 49% who trusted them in a January poll. The percentage of voters who trusted Democrats to handle those issues remained steady from January, at 39%.

“Friday’s decision did nothing to change the headwinds state Democrats will face this year as a result of a dismal national political environment,” the Republican State Leadership Committee said of the polling numbers.

AUTHOR

SARAH WEAVER

Staff writer.

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VIDEO: What is Human Trafficking?

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING HAS TRULY BECOME A GLOBAL THREAT to vulnerable men, women, and children worldwide. It is an injustice that affects millions of people every year on every continent and at all socioeconomic levels. Human trafficking is a highly-organized and lucrative business, generating 150 billion USD per year, 99 billion of which is generated by sex trafficking within the prostitution industry.

The latest global estimate according to the International Labor Organization (the United Nations agency that deals with global labor issues), calculates that nearly 21 million people are victims of human trafficking worldwide. Roughly 4.5 million of those victims are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

The most significant number of victims are said to come from Asia and the Pacific region, although human trafficking in Africa continues to grow when compared to its 2005 estimates. The International Labor Organization also estimates that 55 percent of all trafficking victims and 98 percent of sex trafficking victims are women and girls. That is why sex trafficking is often considered a “gender” crime and why Exodus Cry focuses its intervention largely on women and girls.

Defining human trafficking

The most widely accepted definition of human trafficking comes from the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, otherwise known as the Palermo Protocols. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2000 and accepted by over 150 countries, the Palermo Protocols defines human trafficking as:

“The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”

Exploitation is at the heart of human trafficking. In the case of sex trafficking, exploitation implies the forced prostitution or sexual abuses of vulnerable men, women, and children. The United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) declares it a crime to coerce, force, or mislead men, women, and children into sex slavery, whether those efforts to coerce are subtle or overt. However, if a victim is a minor (under 18), it is a considered a crime regardless if there is evidence of force, fraud, or coercion.

Victims are trafficked across both national and international borders, infiltrating nearly every part of the world, according to one World Health Organization report. The global scale of the problem is attributed to the various roles nations play in the exploitation of the victims, whether that be recruiting, harboring, transporting, or acting as destinations for victims. One UN report estimates that trafficking victims represent over 130 different nationalities and are present in almost 120 countries. While the problem is clearly of global scale, with some 600,000 to 800,000 victims trafficked across international borders each year, most human trafficking surprisingly still occurs within national borders.

The effects of human trafficking on victims

HUMAN TRAFFICKING HAS A DIRECT EFFECT ON THE PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELL-BEING OF VICTIMS. During the initial trafficking, victims are coerced and deceived usually through the exploitation of their current circumstances, as most victims have a history of abuse and are already living in precarious circumstances.

Once enslaved, victims typically are forced into unsanitary and stressful living conditions and receive little to no healthcare or basic services. Their movement is often restricted, their personal documentation withheld, and most experience significant physical, emotional, sexual, and psychological violence. Escaping from slavery is extremely difficult and dangerous, putting the victim at great personal risk. If rescued, integration back into society is incredibly difficult because of the shame, stigma, threat of retribution, and trauma experienced during enslavement.

Global efforts to combat human trafficking

There are several international organizations fighting human trafficking at the global level. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime combats human trafficking worldwide through promoting policies that incriminate traffickers and protect victims. The UN agency also produces tools and publications to help train law enforcers and raise awareness of this injustice worldwide.

Additionally, many governments are taking action to protect potential victims from trafficking predators. The United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) was established by the US Department of State and has been highly influential in protecting potential victims worldwide. The TVPA defines, mandates, and funds United States’ anti-trafficking efforts, including producing the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, which is the most comprehensive resource of governmental, anti-human trafficking efforts in the world. The United States’ Officer to Combat and Monitor Trafficking in Persons is also combating human trafficking worldwide through three avenues—prevention, protection, and prosecution—which includes activities to raise awareness, identify victims, enforce appropriate laws, and convict traffickers.

However, perhaps some of the greatest work being done to combat human trafficking is performed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These anti-trafficking groups are working hard to prevent human trafficking, protect vulnerable populations, lobby for policy reformation, and even rehabilitate victims both at local and global levels. Exodus Cry is an active part of this global community of abolitionists and involved in these key areas of intervention.

How you can help combat human trafficking

You can join us in our fight to stop human trafficking and end modern-day sex slavery through engaging in any of our three areas of action—shifting culture, changing laws, and reaching out.

Through committing to praying for victims, raising awareness, advocating for policy reform, and donating to organizations like Exodus Cry who are combating this injustice, you are playing a direct part in ending slavery today.

Join the movement. Sign the pledge. Become an Abolitionist.

©The Exodus Cry. All rights reserved.

Law Center Files First Ever Anti-Trafficking Lawsuit Against Pornography Producers on Behalf of Survivor

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How Cissy Steele Groomed Jane Doe

Cissy Steele was using the internet to disguise herself as a talent agent from Royal Loyalty Management who was looking for models and actresses when she came across Jane Doe (not her real name). Steele then proceeded to prey upon Jane Doe by intentionally cultivating a sense of trust and building a false relationship. Steele reached out to Jane Doe online and offered her lucrative acting and modeling opportunities. After communicating, Steele convinced Jane Doe to take a modeling opportunity with the promise of making Doe into a successful model and actress. Steele manipulated Doe to go a step further and move into Steele’s home with the reassurance that this move would benefit Doe’s supposed new career.

Online Grooming Turns Into Sex Trafficking Situation

Once Jane Doe was ensconced in Steele’s house, Steele furthered her deception of Doe by setting up several faux modeling photoshoots. After a few months, Steele began verbally degrading Doe and telling Doe that the only way she had a chance at becoming a lucrative actress or model was through pornographic “acting.” When Jane Doe resisted this pressure, Steele began using psychological manipulation, direct coercion, intimidation, threats, and physical violence against Doe including threatening to kill Doe’s dog and harm her family. In the end Steele managed to effectively imprison Jane Doe and coerce her into commercial sex acts with men at various hotels in several states. All the money made from Jane Doe’s sexual exploitation was immediately pocketed by Steele.

From there, Steele also trafficked Jane Doe to multiple pornography production companies in California and Nevada including Diabolic Video Productions, Black Ice Ltd., Zero Tolerance Entertainment, Third Degree Films, and Elegant Angel, Inc.  All of the pornography producers directly paid Steele for Jane Doe’s participation in the videos despite clear signs that Doe was being trafficked.

Pornography Production Companies Complicit in Crime

The pornography production companies distributed the videos of Jane Doe to a multitude of internet pornography providers. As a result, the online porn providers illegally profited from the sex trafficking of Jane Doe through advertisements on their websites as well as through viewers’ subscription fees.

Eventually, with the help of a friend, Jane Doe escaped from Cissy Steele’s home and control and began a new life. Despite Jane Doe’s many efforts to have the videos taken down, her videos remain on several online sites to this day.

Legal Argument Filed on Behalf of Jane Doe

Cissy Steele, the pornography production studios, and the internet pornography websites violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) which prohibits anyone from knowingly using force, fraud, and coercion to entrap victims into commercial sex acts and profiting off of their exploitation.

Accordingly, Jane Doe has now sued Cissy Steele, the pornography production companies, and the online pornography providers which continue to show and sell videos of her sexual abuse and exploitation against her will. The case, filed on September 24, 2020, is in federal district court in San Diego.

As horrific as this case is, it is not an anomaly. Countless Jane Does are trafficked and exploited by the pornography production industry and internet pornography providers. Jane Doe repeatedly attempted to have her sex trafficking videos removed to no avail and there are websites that continue to profit off of her sexual abuse and exploitation to this day. The same is the case for myriad survivors who find their sexual abuse images and videos on internet pornography websites and are afflicted with the paralysis of not being able to remove the degrading and re-traumatizing content. As long as someone is willing to pay for this content, pornography production companies and internet pornography providers have proven more than willing to provide it—no matter how violent, dangerous, and degrading the content may be.

Jane Doe is Not the Only Victim

Take the case of Mia Khalifa as another example.

In 2015, Mia Khalifa mistakenly signed a contract with a pornography production studio and resigned after two weeks. The contract she signed gave the company control over the websites and domains that contained her stage name. Although Khalifa has been out of the pornography business for over five years, the pornography production company is still promoting her videos and creating an illusion that she is still engaged in the commercial sex industry even though she has worked hard to have her videos removed from pornography sites. This reality has made it difficult for Khalifa to find employment in other fields, which only furthers the reach and extent of the exploitation.

Like many others, Khalifa’s attempts to remove her videos have been met by indifference from the pornography companies. “Pornography companies prey on callow young women and trap them legally into contracts where they’re vulnerable,” Khalifa noted in comments published by The Guardian. She also stated that during every filmed scene she would black out, yet no one on the set seemed to notice or offer any assistance: “The abuse and exploitation of young women is normalized in pornography, and if you don’t comply, you’re threatened, beaten, and intimidated.”

Pornography Producers Are Sexual Exploiters

Whether or not there is a contract in place, the sexual exploitation and abuse that comes from pornography production studios and internet pornography providers is degrading, traumatizing, and crippling. These abusive companies know they are profiting off of the sexual exploitation of women who have been beaten down, manipulated, often drugged, and are in no condition to acquiesce to such exploitation. The pornography industry’s lack of regulation hinders many survivors from fully healing, as they are continuously haunted by the existence of videos of their abuse living on in the Internet.

The Hope Jane Doe v. Cissy Steele Gives

The Cissy Steel lawsuit is the first federal lawsuit against a pornography producer and online pornography website for federal anti-trafficking violations. We hope this lawsuit and many others like it will hold pornography producers and internet pornography providers accountable for the damage, abuse, and exploitation of the untold numbers of women and children trafficked in the pornography industry.

Read NCOSE Law’s Amended Complaint here.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center offers survivors of pornography-related abuse a way to seek justice. More information can be found at: https://sexualexploitationlawsuits.com/.

COLUMN BY

Madison Van Oss

LEGAL ASSISTANT
Madison is the Legal Assistant for the Law Center at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Madison supports the Law Center and its quest to bring justice to survivors of the sex trade industry through civil and criminal litigation. Madison brings with her a master’s degree in Homeland Security, several years of professional experience in the corporate world, as well as strong desire to protect and defend individuals against sexual abuse and exploitation.

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

WOW! Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot defends ban on protesters on her block: ‘I have a right to make sure that my home is secure

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Right but YOU don’t have the same right to a safe and secure home. My God, the hubris!

Hunchback can’t see her own hunch.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot defends ban on protesters on her block: ‘I have a right to make sure that my home is secure

By: MSN, August 20, 2020:

Mayor Lori Lightfoot defended the Chicago Police Department’s ban on protesters being able to demonstrate on the block where she lives, telling reporters Thursday that she and her family at times require heightened security because of threats she receives daily.

A group of people wearing costumes: Some protesters hold umbrellas while facing off with police near Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home in Logan Square on July 23, 2020. © Armando L. Sanchez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune/TNS Some protesters hold umbrellas while facing off with police near Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home in Logan Square on July 23, 2020.

Lightfoot refused to elaborate on the specific threats, but said she receives them daily against herself, her wife and her home. Comparisons to how the Police Department has protected previous mayors’ homes, such as Rahm Emanuel’s Ravenswood residence, are unfair because “this is a different time like no other,” Lightfoot told reporters.

“I think that residents of this city, understanding the nature of the threats that we are receiving on a daily basis, on a daily basis, understand I have a right to make sure that my home is secure,” Lightfoot said.

Lightfoot and Chicago police Superintendent David Brown were asked at an unrelated news conference about a Tribune report noting police have banned protesters from demonstrating on her block in the Logan Square neighborhood, ordering officers to arrest anyone who refuses to leave.

The directive surfaced in a July email from then-Shakespeare District Cmdr. Melvin Roman to officers under his command. It did not distinguish between the peaceful protesters Lightfoot regularly says she supports and those who might intend to be destructive, but ordered that after a warning is given to demonstrators, “It should be locked down.”

Activists and police sources could not cite instances when the city repeatedly locked down her predecessor Emanuel’s block against protesters. The Kenwood block where former President Barack Obama lived with his family when his primary residence was in Chicago was shut down for access only by residents after his election.

But Lightfoot said such comparisons “don’t make any sense,” after Brown referenced the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as well as civil unrest that have flared since the George Floyd killing at the hands of Minneapolis police.

“I’m not going to make any excuses for the fact that, given the threats I have personally received, given the threats to my home and my family, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they’re protected,” Lightfoot said. “I make no apologies whatsoever for that.”

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Since the order, and even for a time just prior to its writing, Chicago cops have repeatedly blocked protesters’ access to the block with groups of officers and barricades. Police have often kept protesters contained at the nearby corner of Kimball and Wrightwood avenues, though one standoff between activists and officers last month saw police go as far as bringing in an armored vehicle in case things got out of hand.

Aside from the expanded police presence to block protesters from reaching her home, Lightfoot already receives 24/7 protection from cops including officers stationed at the residence. The aggressive policing has sometimes siphoned away resources from the area’s police district, some sources with knowledge of the situation said, leading to quiet grumbling.

Both Lightfoot and Brown noted there are laws on the books banning residential protests, but Brown acknowledged the Police Department does not always enforce them. Brown said the city tries to give “wiggle room” for protesters.

Brown also cited instances where peaceful protests have been “hijacked” by agitators as reason for keeping demonstrators off Lightfoot’s block.

“We have seen very peaceful First Amendment protests for the most part but embedded in each of those protests have been very violent people. And they’re embedded. They put up umbrellas. And they come for a fight,” Brown said. “So we have to prepare for what we’ve seen.”

Have a tip we should know? Your anonymity is NEVER compromised. Email tips@thegellerreport.com

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

Chicago Store Owner Spent $300,000 To Reopen Destroyed Business After Riots, Only For It To Be Struck Again By Vandals

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A Chicago shop owner thought he had a second chance after his store was destroyed during the riots and violence following George Floyd’s death in May, the Associated Press reported.

But that second chance was fleeting. After Walid Mouhammad, the owner of African Food & Liquor, spent $300,000 to reopen his store in Chicago when it was vandalized in May, surveillance video showed Monday the inside of his shop being robbed and ransacked for the second time, according to the Associated Press.

Mouhammad has worked at the West Side Chicago convenience store for 33 years, with 20 years as its owner. His store was vandalized in late May, when riots and protests broke out across the country following the death May 25 of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.

Mouhammad is unsure if he’ll be able to reopen again after his store was destroyed and emptied the second time. Police were blocks away when his landlord and several workers called 911 to report that people were trying to break into his store.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned vandals that the city would hold them accountable for their actions, but Chicago has continued to spiral into violence and crime.

Over 100 people were arrested and 13 officers were injured amid looting and violence Sunday in Chicago. The violence was  reportedly prompted by an officer-related shooting. High-end shops were broken into and looted, and even a Ronald McDonald House was vandalized while sick children and their parents slept inside.

Chicago is also experiencing a surge in crime.

The Chicago Police Department counted 105 murders in July alone, a 139% increase over July 2019, which saw 44 murders. Police counted 406 shooting incidents, a 75% rise compared to July 2019’s total of 232.

The city’s murders are up 50% when comparing the January-July periods from 2020 and 2019, and shootings have jumped 47% for the same period.

COLUMN BY

MARLO SAFI

Culture reporter.

RELATED TWEET:

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

REPORT: As Crime Surges, New York Police Union Is Expected To Endorse Trump

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The New York City Police Benevolent Association (PBA) is expected to announce their endorsement of President Donald Trump over the weekend, the New York Post reported.

The announcement could come Saturday at the president’s country club in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to the report. Other law enforcement groups have endorsed Trump for reelection, including the National Association of Police Organizations, which endorsed the president in July.

The union, which represents 24,000 NYPD officers, didn’t endorse a candidate during the 2016 election, the Post reported. Their expected endorsement of Trump comes after a surge in crime and weeks of protests.

Black Lives Matter protests spread nationwide following the May 25 death of George Floyd. The protests turned violent in several places across the country, including in New York, where protesters clashed with officers, set police cars on fire, and looted businesses.

New York experienced a surge in violent crime as looting and rioting continued. In June, shootings in New York City increased by 130%, murders increased by 30% and burglaries were up 118%, NYPD crime statistics showed.

Lawmakers answered the demands of protesters and passed a budget June 30 to defund the NYPD by $1 billion, a move that was supported by Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

President Donald Trump called on de Blasio and Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to address the rise in crime, saying in a July 5 tweet that the federal government is “ready, willing and able to help, if asked.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1279887994107891717?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1279887994107891717%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2020%2F08%2F14%2Fnew-york-police-union-endorse-trump%2F

The president also expressed support for the police, saying that they “have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1278324681477689349?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1278324681477689349%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2020%2F08%2F14%2Fnew-york-police-union-endorse-trump%2F

PBA president Mike O’Meara criticized the treatment of police officers in June, saying to “stop treating us like animals and thugs, and start treating us with some respect.”

“That’s what we’re here today to say,” he continued. “We’ve been left out of the conversation. We’ve been vilified. It’s disgusting.”

COLUMN BY

JORDAN LANCASTER

Reporter.

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

Homicides Skyrocket In Dozens Of Nation’s Largest Cities, Analysis Finds

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Homicides in 50 of America’s largest cities rose by 24%, a new analysis found.

In total, 36 of 50 of America’s largest cities examined saw a double-digit rise in homicide rates, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Austin and Chicago’s homicide rates have increased more than 50% in comparison to last year’s rates, according to the Journal.

Fort Worth’s homicide rate increased more than 25% while Dallas and San Jose both saw a less than 25% decrease in homicide rates in comparison to last year, the paper found.

Other crimes, such as robbery, decreased by 11% among 41 of America’s largest cities that provided robbery data, the Journal’s analysis showed.

Police say robbery, burglary and rape rates have gone down perhaps because of the coronavirus lockdowns, the analysis noted, adding that authorities have also attributed the rising homicide rates to rising gang violence.

Homicide rates are also up because criminals have grown bolder as institutions, including police, have stepped back because of police reform protests and the coronavirus, analysts and law-enforcement officials said, according to the analysis.

Protests calling for racial justice and police reform have been ongoing since George Floyd died in police custody. George Floyd died after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes, according to video footage.

Although many in the Democratic Party don’t directly call to defund the police, many of them sympathize with the movement and some endorse it, the Daily Caller reported.

The WSJ analysis used individual police department reports on city crime and public information data. The analysis also used the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab for analysis completion and review.

COLUMN BY

MARY ROSE CORKERY

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.