Tag Archive for: New Jersey

TERROR ON THE TURNPIKE: Jewish Girl Severely Injured in Horrific Attack on Yeshiva School Bus in New Jersey

Horrific attack on a school bus in New Jersey carrying young children from a Yeshiva: a rock the size of a baseball was hurled at the bus on the NJ Turnpike, smashing a window and fracturing the skull of an 8-year old girl.

The third grader is currently undergoing surgery and in serious condition. The bus was full of children returning from a school trip.

Targeting Jewish children. More of the poison fruit of Islamic Jew hatred.

A nine-year-old girl was seriously injured in the head after a stone was thrown at a school bus traveling on the highway in Bergen County, New Jersey.

The incident occurred as two buses from a haredi school were returning from a class trip. While traveling on the highway, a baseball-size rock was thrown at one of the buses, and the girl, a third-grade student, was severely injured in the head.

The girl suffered a skull injury and was transported by ambulance to a local medical center. Volunteers from the Bergen County Hatzalah organization also arrived at the scene.

The girl now requires surgery. The public is asked to pray for the full recovery of Gila Bracha, the daughter of Michal Ilana.

State Police are investigating; there are no arrests yet.

UPDATE: Mexican man Hernando Morales threw a rock through a NJ school bus window fracturing an 8-year-old girl’s skull

Rock thrown at school bus on New Jersey Turnpike, child seriously injured, police say

By: Naveen Dhaliwal, CBS News, January 9, 2026:

Police say a rock was thrown at a school bus on the New Jersey Turnpike on Wednesday, shattering a window and seriously injuring a young child.

It happened just after 2 p.m. in the northbound lanes of the Turnpike near Exit 70A/B for Leonia and Teaneck.

The bus was on its way back to Yeshivat Noam, a Jewish school in Paramus. School officials said the bus was transporting third-grade students back from a school trip to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City when the incident occurred.

New Jersey State Police said a rock was thrown at the school bus as it was traveling in the right lane, shattering a window and striking an 8-year-old student.

Yeshivat Noam confirmed the injured student suffered a skull fracture and is currently receiving medical treatment.

Police say a rock was thrown at a school bus on the New Jersey Turnpike on Jan. 7, 2026, shattering a window and seriously injuring a young child.

Continue reading.

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EXCLUSIVE: RNC Responds To 28 Bomb Threats, Nearly 500 Tips Of Suspicious Election Activity

The Republican National Committee responded to 28 bomb threats and nearly 500 tips while Americans voted Nov. 4, officials told the Daily Caller, the latest example of their efforts to secure election integrity.

Ahead of the 2025 elections, the RNC put an election integrity team on the ground in both Virginia and New Jersey and invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the cycle, the Caller previously reported. Prior to Election Day, the party recruited 964 poll workers in New Jersey and successfully placed 463 on Election Day, more than double what had been achieved in previous years, the Caller learned.

“Election integrity is essential, and the RNC is leading the fight to secure the ballot. This cycle, we are building a strong ground operation with staff, attorneys, and volunteers to ensure accountability at every level,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters told the Caller in a statement.

“In New Jersey and Virginia, our teams resolved hundreds of issues in real time, defended ballot security laws, and made sure every lawful vote was counted. While Democrats try to make it easier to cheat, Republicans are safeguarding confidence in our elections,” the chairman continued.

The increase in poll workers and volunteer attorneys on the ground in both New Jersey and Virginia helped the RNC respond to 478 reports of voting issues on election day, the party shared with the Caller. The reports ranged from polling place disturbances and machine malfunctions to voter check-in and accessibility concerns.

A party election integrity official told the Caller that they tracked bomb threats at 28 locations during last Tuesday’s voting, which affected 37 precincts.

The official explained to the Caller how they respond to such security threats in real time. The party will get an immediate notification of election integrity concerns from one of their poll observers on the ground, and then the worker tracks how long voting booths are closed.

“We just tried to continuously feed information back up to the beast so that we at the top can then communicate to elected officials, to local police, to the registrars of election, whomever is in charge at that specific location … so we know exactly what what they’re tracking, and we just try to have a dialogue,” the party official told the Caller.

“And it’s never antagonistic. It is just truly dialogue. So we can, you know, help communicate and find a solution,” the official continued.

The party also got involved in a lawsuit in New Jersey to stop the Bergen County Board of Elections from counting over 300 “naked” ballots, which did not have an inner envelope. The judge sided with the party, ruling that the ballots violated the law.

Since breaking free of a 1982 consent decree in 2018, the GOP has been building up its election integrity efforts. The RNC finally began diving head first into the election integrity realm in 2022, an official previously told the Caller. Then-RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel established an official department for election integrity following the 2022 midterm elections which allowed the party to pull resources from all departments, such as communications, politics, and legal, the Caller previously reported.

The 2024 election cycle was about building the department up, and positioned the party to continue to make real progress in the 2025 off-year election and the 2026 midterms, an official previously told the Caller. Coming off a strong presidential election cycle for the department, a RNC official told the Caller that they were able to put boots on the ground much earlier in Virginia and New Jersey than in years past.

Before doing that, the party recruited 1,500 election judges in Pennsylvania, the official shared, adding that they had a team in California tracking the Proposition 50 gerrymandering proposal. In Wisconsin, the party is continuing to work on recruiting poll workers, the official shared.

The official told the Caller that the department has not stopped working on the election integrity despite Trump’s victory in November. The department kept a full staff while other departments lost people who joined the administration.

“What we have at the RNC is we have more continuity than any department of staff that are true believers in building an election integrity operation,” the official told the Caller. “Everybody that is on our team right now participated in election integrity in one way, shape or form, last election cycle.”

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House Correspondent

RELATED ARTICLE: Inside Team Trump’s Big Bet On Election Integrity — And How It Paid Off

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

REPORT: Police Accuse Repeat-Offender Protester For Setting 11 Of Their Cars On Fire

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) identified New Jersey native Jakhi Lodgson-McCray as the suspect behind the torching of 11 police vehicles in Brooklyn earlier in June. The suspect has a criminal history and was arrested prior at multiple pro-Palestine protests, according to authorities.

NYPD said Wednesday that the 21-year-old suspect climbed over the gate at 1:00 a.m. June 12 at a parking lot one block from the Bushwick neighborhood’s police station and placed fire starters on the hoods, windshields and tires of police cars. Ensuing fires caused upwards of 800,000 dollars of damage, according to the New York Post. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said “we do believe that he acted alone, and obviously he targeted this location because it is a police facility.” The suspect was allegedly captured by surveillance cameras fleeing the scene on foot and is still reportedly at large. Kenny added that the suspect changed his disguise “several times during his escape.”

The NYPD’s social media accounts posted photos Wednesday of Lodgson-McCray, adding that “there is zero tolerance for anyone who attacks the NYPD.”

Police are also investigating whether he is responsible for a similar attempt to set a police van ablaze Wednesday in another part of Brooklyn.

Though police have not confirmed a connection, Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams suggested that the crime was motivated by recent anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) riots. Lodgson-McCray’s extensive record of arrests — dating back to 2023 — includes an incident at an anti-ICE protest in May and for burning a flag at a city embassy as part of an anti-Israel demonstration, according to authorities.

The suspect was wanted previously for causing over 1,000 dollars of damage last fall to a Columbia University statue during pro-Palestine protests, police said. He reportedly has two open criminal cases, the first for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest for allegedly obstructing traffic May 28 and another for assault and resisting arrest in May 2024. He has pleaded not guilty in both cases and was released without bail.

AUTHOR

Caleb Ruger

Caleb Ruger is a student at William and Mary studying History. He serves as Publisher at The Wren Journal, the Collegiate Network paper at William and Mary. He also serves as the Secretary of the Virginia College Republicans and Vice President of the William and Mary College Republicans. A recent Catholic convert, he is the Vice President of William and Mary’s Thomistic Institute chapter.

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Teachers Will No Longer Need To Pass Basic Reading, Writing And Math Test For Certification In This Blue State

A New Jersey law that removes a requirement for teachers to pass a reading, writing and mathematics test for certification will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

The law, Act 1669, was passed by Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as part of the state’s 2025 budget in June in an effort to address a shortage of teachers in the state, according to the New Jersey Monitor. Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass a “basic skills” test administered by the state’s Commissioner of Education.

“We need more teachers,” Democratic Sen. Jim Beach, who sponsored the bill, said according to the New Jersey Monitor. “This is the best way to get them.”

New Jersey is especially in need of math and science teachers, according to an annual report from the state’s education department.

Just months earlier, Murphy signed a similar bill into law that created an alternative pathway for teachers to sidestep the testing requirement. A powerful teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, was a driving force behind the bill, calling the testing requirement “an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.” Teachers in the state are paid an average of $81,102 annually, according to the National Education Association.

New Jersey followed the example of New York, which scrapped basic literacy requirements for teachers in 2017 in the name of “diversity.”

Other states such as California and Arizona also lower requirements for teacher certification by implementing fast-track options for substitute teachers to become full-time educators and eliminating exam requirements in order to make up for shortages in the field that were worsened by Covid, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

As students struggle to regain learning losses caused by school closures during the pandemic, some states, such as Massachusetts, have opted to lower testing requirements for students in order to allow more to pass rather than make up for the lost education.

Teachers unions continue to hold major bargaining power in some blue states, pushing legislation that protects teachers despite their failure to improve learning outcomes for students. Only about half of New York students in grades three through eight tested as proficient in English and Math in the 2022 to 2023 school year despite the state spending almost twice the national average on education and New York teachers remaining some of the highest-paid in the country, according to the National Education Association.

Murphy’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Democrats Lost The Plot On Education

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


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

New Jersey: Pro-Hamas activist tears down restaurant’s Greek flags, thinking they’re Israeli flags

Here we see the intelligence level of the average pro-Hamas activist.

WATCH: New Jersey: Pro-Hamas activist tears down restaurant’s Greek flags, thinking they’re Israeli flags

New Jersey: Enraged woman tore up Greek flags because she thought they were Israeli

by Paul Antonopoulos, Greek City Times, October 16, 2024:

“Free Palestine, this is genocide!” she shouted outside the Greek restaurant.

A woman in New Jersey in the United States started tearing up Greek flags in a restaurant, shouting, “Free Palestine, this is genocide.”

She realised after explanations from the shocked employees that the flags were not of Israel but of Greece.

The incident happened in Montclair, New Jersey, outside a Greek restaurant. After the woman realised her mistake, she apologised and said she felt ashamed….

Read more.

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OVER 100K ATTEND NEW JERSEY TRUMP RALLY : ‘I Support Israel’s Right to Win Its War on Terror!’

‘”[Biden]Total Moron, I Support Israel’s Right to Win Its War on Terror, Biggest Betrayal in the History of the USA to its Ally.” — President Donald J. Trump, New Jersey rally 2024.


Wow — unprecedented crowd. President Trump’s latest rally in NJ was the biggest in the state’s history, a blue state, no less.

Remember in November when they steal the election again.

Trump blasts Biden as ‘total moron’ before crowd of 100K at NJ rally: ‘Whole world is laughing at him’

By: Diana Glebova and Steve Janosk, NY Post, May 11, 2024 ET

WILDWOOD, NJ — Donald Trump recited all his greatest hits at a massive Saturday evening rally in Wildwood, NJ — but managed to avoid violating his court-imposed gag order by focusing on President Biden, whom he called a “total moron” and blamed for his web of legal troubles.

Trump — wearing his typical blue suit, blood-red tie and “Make America Great Again” cap — railed about inflation, offshore windmills, electric cars, the press and Chris Christie.

But unsurprisingly, it was Biden who drew his most intense vitriol.

“You could take the 10 worst presidents in the history of our country, and add them up .. and they haven’t done the damage to our country that this total moron has done,” Trump, 77, said to a cheering crowd of tens of thousands.

“He’s a fool, he’s not a smart man. He never was,” Trump said.

“He was considered stupid. I talk about him differently now because now, the gloves are off. He’s a bad guy … he’s the worst president ever, of any country. The whole world is laughing at him, he’s a fool.”

The former president also alluded to his own plethora of indictments, which allege he committed a variety of crimes before, during and after the 2016 and 2020 elections.

He blamed Biden, 81, for his legal troubles, saying, “You don’t do that to your opponents.

“It’s done in third-world countries, it’s done in banana republics, it’s not done in the United States of America.”

The crowd — which Wildwood officials estimated was between 80,000 and 100,000, a record for a Garden State political rally — cheered wildly throughout the long, but controlled speech.

Continue reading.

FULL SPEECH: President Trump Delivers Remarks at Rally in Wildwood, New Jersey — 5/11/24

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Did Anti-white, DEI Bias Steal a State Final Spot From a White Basketball Team?

Some say it was the worst call they’ve ever seen in high-school basketball.

The scene was the recent NJSIAA Group 2 state semifinal game between New Jersey team Camden — a powerhouse that hadn’t lost to another NJ public-school squad in five years — and underdog Manasquan. Down 46-45 after Camden player Alijah Curry sank a couple of free throws, Manasquan drove down the floor with 5.8 seconds left on the clock. One of its players took a long shot, which bounced off the rim — into the waiting hand of teammate Griffin Linstra, who laid the ball up through the hoop, releasing it with 0.6 seconds left on the clock.

The Central Regional High School gymnasium erupted in celebration, with Linstra’s shot being called good. But then it happened.

A Camden coach ran over and tapped one of the exiting officials, Kevin Torres, on the shoulder, and “a group of Camden coaches pleaded for the referees to meet,” reported NJ.com. The refs then consulted for a short time — and overturned the call. Incredulity among sober observers was the result.

Then there was a secondary result: accusations of anti-white bias.

You see, Camden appears an entirely black team, while Manasquan appears entirely white.

Know that subsequent video review left no question that the call was errant. “In an email to the NJSIAA [New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association], cited in the legal papers, Torres admitted his call was wrong after seeing videos of the play,” NJ.com also writes. The NJSIAA made the same admission and issued an apology.

So the whole situation was most odd, indeed. As NJ.com further related, the “sequence of events” that led to the reversed call “is not standard…,” and a veteran official “told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday morning, ‘That [ref group] conversation never should have happened.’”

Manasquan appealed the decision and even filed a lawsuit to delay the championship game, scheduled for four days later (3/9), until the matter could be settled. But despite its apology, the NJSIAA “pointed to its bylaws that say once the referees leave the court after a game, the final score is official and cannot be appealed,” NJ.com tells us. As for the lawsuit, a judge rejected Manasquan’s request.

The CBS News segment below includes the video evidence of the blown (biased?) call.

This may not be popular, but I understand NJSIAA’s decision. Rules are rules, and if they dictate that a game’s outcome is to be considered irreversible once the referees depart, this standard must be followed. The rules can be changed if they’re deemed insufficient, of course. But our society’s increasing disregard for rules and laws (as reflected in the ignoring of 2020-election ballot standards) is a sign of civilizational decline. I also accept the judge’s ruling: It’s not a good idea having courts make any and all societal decisions from the monumental to the mundane.

What I don’t accept is the racial double standard apparent here. Good luck finding mainstream media that even allude to it; anti-white prejudice is their Voldemort of biases. However, the blogosphere addressed it, as did Internet commenters.

“A DEI call if there ever was one,” wrote a YouTube poster here. (Another respondent then asked him what DEI was, proving that Rip Van Winkle wasn’t alone in being able to sleep 20 years straight.)

“Can’t let the white kids win,” opined a tweeter on X.

“-2pts for white privilege,” stated another.

And while we can’t read minds, five questions do suggest themselves. Were the situation reversed:

  1. Would the Manasquan coaches have similarly importuned the refs to reverse their call?
  2. If they had, would the officials have likewise complied?
  3. If so, would the story’s racial aspect be ignored by media?
  4. Would the NJSIAA have still adhered to their no-reversal ex post facto rule?
  5. Would the judge still have rejected an appeal?

My answers:

  1. This would’ve been less likely.
  2. No, the probability is vanishingly low.
  3. Not a chance.
  4. Probably, but it’s not a given.
  5. Most likely.

It’s hard to imagine the refs reversing such a call for the white team. And had they, the media would’ve made a federal case out of it, screaming “Racism!” all the way. The pressure on the NJSIAA would’ve consequently been extreme, too, which is why we can’t be sure they would’ve taken the same principled rules stance.

To be clear, I think it’s unlikely the refs were purposely biased. In all probability, however, politically correct conditioning and social pressure — fashionable prejudice — did cloud their judgment. (The Left calls this “unconscious bias.”) Remember that many today are programmed to respond to and be intimidated by black grievance; no one wants to be that guy who robs a dominant black team of a title with a possibly bad call (that’s a career-ender). I also suspect that the errant decision reflects our time’s emotionalism, where principle is subordinated to feelings.

After all, what could the Camden coaches have said when pleading their case that was so convincing? “The shot was after the buzzer!”? That they claimed to have seen it differently than the refs is unsurprising and is neither proof nor even an argument. I mean, if non-official feedback matters, why didn’t the refs then just take a poll of all the players and spectators present?

Of course, with all our country’s problems, this is small potatoes. Significant, however, is what this incident may be an example of — that very real phenomenon called “black privilege” (see Fani Willis et al.),

Oh, Camden would go on to “win” the championship game. It’s a victory that should forever be accompanied by history’s biggest asterisk.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on X (formerly Twitter), MeWe or Gettr or log on to SelwynDuke.com

©2024. Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.

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‘Climate Virtue Signaling’: Another Blue State Commits To Banning New Gas-Powered Car Sales By 2035

New Jersey will prohibit the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 in order to fight climate change, state officials announced Tuesday.

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Shawn LaTourette, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection announced Tuesday that Murphy would file the “Advanced Clean Cars Rule II” for adoption on Dec. 18, with the policy coming into effect on Jan.1, 2024. The policy will bind the state to completely phasing out the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035, with incremental benchmarks for increasing the minimum share of manufacturers’ new fleets that are zero emission vehicle requirements along the way.

“Here we see yet another Democrat elected official pandering for votes by interceding in the markets in a way that will create perverse incentives for automakers and inevitably higher costs for consumers,” David Blackmon, a 40-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who now writes and consults on the energy sector, told the Daily Caller News Foundation about the policy. “This is just one more example of why politicians are literally the very worst class of people in our society to be making energy-related decisions for the rest of us. Everything they do in this space only serves to make our situation worse.”

New Jersey joins a growing list of states that have adopted 2035 bans on the sale of new gas-powered cars. Other states with similar or identical policies include  California, Vermont, New York, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Virginia, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut, according to Coultra.

The state will start restricting the number of gas-powered vehicles that can be sold in the state in 2027, before arriving at zero in 2035, according to Murphy’s office. The 2027 benchmark will require manufacturers to ensure that zero emissions vehicles compose 43% of their new car fleets.

The policy does not ban ownership or use of internal combustion engine vehicles, and it will not bar the sale of used gas-powered cars, according to Murphy’s office.

“There is no justification, environmental or otherwise, to ban gas powered vehicles,” Tom Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, told the DCNF. “All it does is force automakers to charge more for the types of vehicles that consumers actually want to buy. This power grab by unelected bureaucrats will make it harder for tens of thousands of New Jersey residents to buy their first car.”

Environmentalists and other green energy advocates often tout electric vehicles (EVs) as the future of American transportation and car culture, but they have several significant problems that their gas-powered counterparts do not. Public charging station performance remains inconsistent, drivers often have range anxiety, EVs tend to perform poorly in cold weather and they cost significantly more than gas-powered cars.

“By filing the landmark Advanced Clean Cars II rule, New Jersey builds upon its standing as a national leader in climate action and its participation in the global Accelerating to Zero commitment,” Murphy said of the policy.

Notably, some of Murphy’s other decarbonization efforts have not gone as smoothly as hoped. In October, Orsted, a major offshore wind developer, terminated two massive wind farms off the state’s coast that were expected to provide low-emissions power to the state for years to come. Now, the company is attempting to get out of up to $300 million it owes the state, which could ultimately leave New Jersey taxpayers on the hook.

“Governor Murphy needed another means of climate virtue signaling since Orsted messed up his offshore wind plans by cancelling two major projects last month,” Blackmon told the DCNF. “This is what he chose.”

Murphy’s office did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez and Wife Indicted on Bribery Offenses

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife will be indicted Friday morning on bribery offenses in the Southern District of New York.

“A press event will be held today at 11:00 a.m. to announce the unsealing of an indictment charging Robert Menendez, U.S. Senator from New Jersey, and his wife, Nadine Menendez, with bribery offenses in connection with their corrupt relationship with three New Jersey businessmen,” the Twitter account for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Of New York said in a statement.

Per the indictment, “Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in the home.”

The Menendez indictment also says Menendez, who is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, provided sensitive U.S. Government information” to Egypt.

READ THE INDICTMENT HERE: 

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

Menendez denied the allegations in a statement shortly after the press conference.

In 2015, The Daily Caller broke news of prostitution allegations against Menendez that ended up picking up the attention of the FBI.

Menendez also threatened to call the police on the Daily Caller when asked about the Green New Deal in 2019.

(This is a developing story. More information will be added as it becomes available.)

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HENRY RODGERS

Chief national correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter.

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New Jersey: Judge says Muslim with ‘jihad’ journal accused of stealing school bus not competent to stand trial

Of course. Judge Mike Hammer doesn’t have the first foggiest idea of what jihad is, so he ascribes Bader Alzahrani’s words and actions to mental illness. In this, he stands firmly within the contemporary mainstream.

Man with ‘jihad’ journal accused of stealing school bus not competent to stand trial, judge says

by Sarah Cassi, Lehigh Valley Live, June 8, 2023:

A Saudi national accused of stealing a school bus in New Jersey and driving it to Pennsylvania before getting caught in the Poconos is not mentally competent to stand trial, a U.S. federal judge has ruled.

Bader Alzahrani, 22, is facing charges from incidents in January, including receipt of a stolen vehicle transportation of a stolen vehicle in federal court, and motor vehicle theft, burglary, theft of moveable property, criminal damage and criminal trespass in New Jersey court.

In an order signed March 27, federal Judge Michael Hammer said based on a psychiatric report sealed by the court, Alzahrani has a mental disease or defect that makes him unable to understand the court proceedings and properly participate in his defense….

Alzahrani was in the U.S. on a student visa and was attending an unidentified university, but he left the school in October and was reported missing, an FBI agent wrote in court papers.

On Jan. 15, a home break-in was reported in Livingston, New Jersey, and a backpack found inside with Alzahrani’s Saudi Arabian passport and a journal with writings about jihad and threats against Jews and police officers, prosecutors said.

The journal, with entries in Arab and English, had phrases including, “Why didn’t you slaughter the police officer who threw the Quran?,” “Blood, blood, destruction, destruction. Allah,” and “Destruction of the new world and the earth will be destroyed from all sides,” according to court records.

There were also derogatory remarks about Jews and white people and other violent references, records state.

Read more.

AUTHOR

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WIND TURBINE SLAUGHTER: Another Dead whale Washes Onto Jersey Shore — 9th One in NY-NJ Area in Just 2 months

“Renewables” are the most expensive, least effective and most destructive forms of energy on the planet.

How many pipelines and energy projects were stopped dead in their tracks over some innocuous environmental concern or obscure fish “endangerment.” Further proof of how full of garbage these cretins are.

These same destroyers are banning our cleanest forms of energy like natural gas and nuclear power.

Dead whale washes onto Jersey shore — 9th one in NY-NJ area in 2 months

By Allie Griffin, February 13, 2023:

Whale carcass washed up on a beach in Manasquan, NJ

The whale is the ninth dead whale to wash up in the NY-NJ area since

A dead whale was found on a New Jersey beach Monday — the ninth one to wash ashore in the New York-New Jersey area since early December in what activists are calling an alarming uptick.

The massive marine mammal ended up on Whiting Avenue beach in Manasquan after it was tossed around in the surf, according to Point Pleasant Mayor Paul Kanitra.

Clean Ocean Action, an environmental conservation organization, said that the high number of whale deaths in a roughly two-month period has not been seen in the region in about 50 years.

The group said it believes off-shore wind energy projects could be the culprit of the rising fatalities.

“This alarming number of deaths is unprecedented in the last half century, the only unique factor from previous years, is the excessive scope, scale, and magnitude of offshore wind powerplant activity in the region,” COA said in a statement.

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

3 States Account for 42 Percent of All COVID-19 Deaths in America. Why?

Despite the recent coronavirus surge in southern states, three states—New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—account for about 42 percent of COVID-19 deaths in America. Why?


In a recent article in The AtlanticThomas Chatterton Williams decried America’s handling of the coronavirus.

The words “utter disaster” are used, and Williams, an expatriate, contrasts America’s response to that of France, where he currently lives.

“As Donald Trump’s America continues to shatter records for daily infections, France, like most other developed nations and even some undeveloped ones, seems to have beat back the virus,” Williams writes.

To be sure, the US response to the coronavirus was far from perfect (more on that later). But the article shows one of the challenges with this pandemic: even as more data is acquired, the picture doesn’t always get clearer.

In some ways, COVID-19 data are like a Rorschach blot from which writers, politicians, and experts can glean whatever conclusions they wish to find. Take Sweden, where daily COVID-19 deaths recently reached zero.

According to Newsweek editorial director Hank Gilman, Sweden’s “lighter touch” approach was a failure because seven times as many people died there than in neighboring Scandnavian countries such as Finland and Norway. He is not alone in the assessment.

On the other hand, Sweden suffered far fewer deaths per capita than several European neighbors that instituted strict lockdowns—including Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom—and has avoided some of the economic fallout other nations have endured. Unlike other countries, its currency is growing stronger.

Indeed, Sweden’s death rate is remarkably close to that of France, which Williams praised as a model in contrast to the “utter disaster” in the US. However, the US actually has a lower per capita death rate than both Sweden and France—at least for now. (While it’s true COVID cases are on the rise again in the US, deaths recently reached three-month lows.)

This raises questions about how we measure success in the age of COVID-19. While most attention is being paid to rising case numbers, death tolls would seem to be the most important metric. While US deaths per capita (401/1M) put the country among the ten highest in the world—ahead of France and Sweden, but just below the Netherlands—those numbers also don’t tell the entire story.

Few may have noticed that 42 percent of all COVID deaths in the US come from just three states—New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. These three states account for nearly 56,000 of the nearly 133,000 deaths in the US, even though they represent just 10 percent of the population. If these three states are excluded, the US suddenly finds itself somewhere in between nations such as Luxembourg (176/1M) and Macedonia (166/1M), where some of the better fatality numbers in Europe are found.

Why have New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts suffered so much more than other US states? We don’t yet know the answer to that question, but evidence suggests it could be policy related.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier this year received a great deal of criticism when the state’s policy of prohibiting nursing homes from screening residents for COVID-19 came to light. Cuomo eventually reversed that decision under intense criticism from public health experts and trade group leaders.

This week, the New York State Department of Health issued a report that concluded 6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to nursing homes between March 25 and May 8 as a result of the order.

”The data shows that the nursing home residents got COVID from the staff, and presumably, also from those who visited them. Unfortunately, we did not understand the disease early on, we did not realize how widespread it was within our community, and therefore, it was able to be introduced into a vulnerable population,” said New York Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker.

The report, however, also claimed that “most patients admitted to nursing homes from hospitals were no longer contagious when admitted and therefore were not a source of infection … [and] … nursing home quality was not a factor in nursing home fatalities.”

The report cites the high nursing home fatality rates of Massachusetts and New Jersey as additional evidence that New York was not an outlier in nursing home deaths.

“…an examination of fatalities in our neighboring states—despite having populations much smaller than New York’s—illustrates fatalities at these facilities were not a New York-specific phenomenon: Connecticut reports 3,124 deaths in these facilities, New Jersey reports 6,617, and Massachusetts reports 5,115, to New York’s 6,432 fatalities.”

However, it’s worth noting that both New Jersey and Massachusetts had similar policies in place, according to the AARP and other news stories. Moreover, the actual number of nursing home deaths in New York is difficult to know, since New York changed its reporting so that nursing home residents who die of COVID-19 are not counted as a nursing home death if they die at a hospital.

The context of the US numbers matters for several reasons. For one, understanding why New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts have suffered so much more from the coronavirus may hold keys to combating the virus.

Secondly, there is currently a great deal of scrutiny on states such as Florida, Texas, and Arizona, which have seen case numbers increase in recent weeks, a spike that began in mid-June after states reopened their economies. The implication is that these states dropped the ball by reopening too soon.

None of these states, however, has a per capita fatality rate that even approaches New Jersey, Massachusetts, or New York. Below are the figures as of July 7.

  • New Jersey: 1,728.7
  • New York: 1,660
  • Massachusetts: 1,189
  • Arizona: 265
  • Florida: 179
  • Texas: 94

Considering these numbers, one would not expect to see a governor from New Jersey, New York, or Massachusetts lecture these other states on their handling of the coronavirus. But that’s exactly what Gov. Cuomo did, claiming his state-ordered lockdown “saved lives” and chastening governors who opened their economies.

“I say to them all look at the numbers,” Cuomo said, referring to leaders in the states seeing rises in COVID-19 cases. “You played politics with this virus, and you lost. You told the people of this state, you told the people of this country, the White House, ‘Don’t worry about it. Go about your business.’”

Cuomo makes no mention of the social costs of the economic lockdowns—mass unemployment, widespread bankruptcy, and surging mental health deterioration, drug abuse, and global poverty. Nor does he mention his state’s catastrophically high COVID death toll.

The extent to which policy decisions are linked to the high fatality rates in these states is still unknown. We’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and still learning about the virus. But that is precisely why lawmakers should exercise caution in their policy prescriptions.

In his 1974 Nobel Prize speech, the economist F.A. Hayek warned against the temptation to use collective action with incomplete knowledge, saying such action would likely cause more harm than good.

“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm,” Hayek stated. “The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”

Hayek saw a world that increasingly seemed to believe central planners could solve any and all social problems. Such a worldview carried the seed of great harm, he believed.

We don’t yet know how this pandemic or economic collapse will end, but some have predicted it shaping up to be a blunder of historic proportions.

“The first half of 2020 will go down in history as the largest nationwide public policy failure since the Great Depression,” the economic historian Phil Magness recently observed. “A part of that failure derives from the largest wide-scale suppression of economic and social liberties in most of our lifetimes, all executed to negligible effect at solving the problem it intended to target.”

If Magness is correct, the crisis, though tragic, may also offer a healthy dose of an elixir Hayek would say humans desperately need: humility.

“The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society,” Hayek concluded in his address.

The lockdowns and the nursing home tragedies show just how destructive and fatal such striving to control society can be.

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

Paterson, NJ: First Muslim Police Chief in US is Sworn in on the Qur’an

Whenever this kind of thing comes up, there is no discussion of what the Qur’an actually says. It calls for warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers, second-class status for women, hatred of Jews, and more. So a case can be made that this was not the best course of action for Paterson officials to take. At very least, a public discussion should take place. The idea that one cannot even raise questions about the wisdom of oath-taking on the Qur’an is in line with the Left’s sinister and increasingly open authoritarianism, but it is not in line with the American principle of free inquiry.

“First Muslim Police Chief in US City Sworn in with Hand on Quran,” by Safaa Kasraoui, Morocco World News, February 16, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Rabat – US has appointed a Muslim police chief for the city of Paterson, New Jersey, earlier this month.

Ibrahim “Mike” Baycora is the city of Paterson’s first Turkish-American and Muslim police chief, Anadolu Agency reported.

A video shows the security personnel putting his left hand on Quran to swear in during a ceremony at city hall has gone viral.

The 60-year old chief has been serving at Paterson’s police department for over three decades.

Proud of the promotion, Baycora said he considers Paterson as his home “for the better part of a half a century.”

“Paterson has been in my blood my whole life, and now to be its police chief after a 32-year career — what an honor!”

He said he does not think that his religio [sic] will make a difference….

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

Michigan, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida, NJ public schools: Islam glorified, Christianity vilified, U.S. bashed

There is nothing wrong with students learning about Islam in school, if what they’re taught is accurate. But it isn’t. Because of the overpowering influence of the multiculturalist ethos and fears of charges of “Islamophobia” and “racism,” public school materials on Islam and other religions are for the most part heavily biased, with scarcely a critical word about Islam, Muhammad depicted as a cross between Gandhi and Sheriff Andy Taylor, no mention of jihad or dhimmitude, and harsh criticism of Christianity.

TMLC Uncovers Tax-Payer Funded Islamic Propaganda Forced On Teachers,” Thomas More Law Center, August 22, 2019 (thanks to R.):

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has uncovered evidence of a well-orchestrated Islamic propaganda campaign aimed at teachers in school systems throughout Michigan and several other states.

Concerned about a two-day mandatory teacher-training seminar on Islam conducted by a Muslim consultant hired by Michigan’s Novi Community Schools District, TMLC filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the workshop.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Law Center, commented on the results of their investigation, “We found that the teachers were subjected to two days of Islamic propaganda, where Islam was glorified, Christianity disparaged, and America bashed—all funded by Novi taxpayers.”

Moreover, during the past five years the school district has presented no teacher-training seminars focusing on Christianity, Judaism or any other religion – only Islam.

The hired Muslim consultant was Huda Essa, a resident of the Dearborn area and of Arab descent. She appeared before the Novi teachers in a hijab, the Muslim headscarf, billing herself as an expert in “cultural competency” and “culturally responsive teaching.”

Most disappointing was the fact that of the more than 400 teachers attending the workshop, not one teacher challenged Essa’s denigration of Christianity or attacks on America.

TMLC inspected dozens of internal school documents, including audio recordings of Essa’s presentation.

The information on Islam she provided to Novi teachers was riddled with falsehoods and errors of omission that were clearly meant to deceive.

Essa provided no truthful information on Sharia law and jihad, two of the most important aspects of Islam. All references to terrorism were dismissed as having nothing to do with Islam. White Christian males, she suggested, are more dangerous than Islamic radicals.

Essa is the face behind Culture Links LLC, a Michigan-based consultancy. She describes herself on the Culture Links website as an advocate of social justice who encourages children to “take pride in their many identities.”

But, as TMLC discovered from the Novi documents, the one identity Essa does not celebrate is that of patriotic Americans who believe in our nation’s exceptionalism.

And her message extends far beyond Novi.

Essa’s client list reveals she has been spreading her “trash America first” philosophy to colleges, universities, schools and professional educator associations throughout Michigan, California, Georgia, Texas, Florida and beyond. In Michigan alone her website lists nine school districts as clients – Oakland County Schools, Ann Arbor Schools, L’Anse Creuse Public Schools, Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, Roseville Community Schools, Farmington Public Schools, Dearborn Public Schools, Birmingham Public Schools and Melvindale Public Schools.

Under the banner of promoting diversity, inclusion and a multicultural approach to education, Essa sets about comparing Islam to Christianity, calling them “mostly similar.” The one big difference, she claims, is that Islam is the world’s “only purely monotheistic religion.”

Islam’s holy book, the Koran, came straight from Allah to the prophet Muhammad and, unlike the Jewish and Christian scriptures, has never been altered or changed, she told the Novi teachers. Significantly, the Koran commands Muslims to “Fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them, take them captive, harass them, lie in wait and ambush them using every stratagem of war.” (Koran 9:5)

Her message was clear: The Koran is superior to the Bible. But she did not address the fact that it calls for the extermination of Christian and Jews.

While quick to indict America as guilty of “cultural genocide,” Essa was silent on the 1400 years of actual genocides, also known as jihads, in which Muslims wiped out Jewish tribes on the Arabian Peninsula, and slaughtered millions of Christians throughout the Middle East, North Africa and the European Continent. Referring to Islam, Winston Churchill wrote, “No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

Novi’s Islamic teacher-training is just the latest example of professional Islamic indoctrinators infiltrating U.S. public schools even as Christianity has been forced out of the classroom.

“This type of infiltration amounts to an Islamic Trojan horse within our public-school systems,” Thompson said. “No other religion gets this kind of special treatment in our schools.”

Only action by patriotic American parents will put a stop to the indoctrination of teachers and students. They must attend school board meetings and call their board’s attention to the existence of unconstitutional Islamic propaganda whenever they find evidence of it in their children’s schools. And when their board is unresponsive, they must be willing to take legal action to stop it whenever the law permits.

TMLC has several active cases involving public schools bending over backwards to promote Islam while trashing Christianity.

In New Jersey, seventh-grade students at Chatham Middle School were taught “Islam is the true faith,” required to learn the Shahada, or Muslim creed, and forced to watch videos that sought to convert them.

TMLC is representing another student at La Plata High School in Maryland, where pupils in world-history classes were taught that “Most Muslims’ faith is stronger than the average Christian” and “Islam at heart is a peaceful religion.”

Jihad, meanwhile, was introduced to La Plata students as a “personal” spiritual struggle, having nothing to do with using violence to spread the faith. And, like in New Jersey, the Maryland students were forced to learn the Five Pillars of Islam and memorize the Shahada.

A SERIES OF DECEPTIONS

Essa spent a great deal of time in her Novi presentation talking about Muslim women, whom she described as victims of Islamophobia on the part of bigoted Americans.

She said her own mother’s decision to wear the hijab was met with “rage” from random Americans. Other hijab-wearing Muslim women have been spat upon, had hot liquids poured on them, been beaten and even killed because they wear the hijab, Essa said, without giving details of when or where these atrocities supposedly occurred.

Essa presented no statistics on hate crimes to back up her claims. FBI crime stats show that anti-Muslim attacks are relatively rare in America and actually fell by 17 percent in 2017. Anti-Jewish hate crimes that year out-numbered anti-Muslim offenses by nearly four to one.

Globally, Christians are the most persecuted of all religious groups, according to the watchdog Open Doors. Of the top-ten most dangerous countries to be a Christian, all but two of them are Muslim-majority nations, according to Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List.

But Essa’s attempts to con Novi teachers into accepting her anti-American, pro-Islamic worldview didn’t stop with the idea that Muslims are the most persecuted and victimized people.

She said any poor treatment of women in Islamic countries should be attributed to “cultural” differences, not the religion of Islam.

She failed to mention that Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, is reported to have said that the majority of hell would be populated by women (hadith by Sahih Bukhari Vol. 1:28, 301, Vol. 2:161, Vol. 7:124-126). Also absent from her presentation was the Koranic instruction for husbands to beat a disobedient wife (Sura 4:34).

Exercising the art of deception, Essa said Muslims love Jesus and refer to him as “messiah.”

But the word “messiah” has a different meaning for Muslims than for Christians. When Christians speak of Jesus their Messiah, they are referring to God’s “anointed One,” who has the power to forgive sin and grant salvation.

Muslims confer no such divine authority to their Jesus. Under Islam Jesus was only a man, a lower prophet under Muhammad, not the Son of God, and he did not die on a cross or rise from the dead as documented in the gospels.

Essa hammered Novi teachers with the Islamic teaching that the Jewish and Christian scriptures are not to be trusted. Although once pure, they were gradually “corrupted” by unscrupulous men. Only the Koran contains the final, “pure” words of God, she said.

Essa also schooled teachers in the proper use of the phrase “Allahu Akbar!” or “Allah is greatest!” While this is widely known as battle-cry of Muslim terrorists, Essa said it’s really just a refrain that Muslims use to convey feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, or thankfulness while praising Allah.

Essa said the word “Islam” is an offshoot of the Arabic term “Salaam,” which means peace. This is a common ploy used by Muslim apologists to deceive uninformed Westerners.

“Islam” is more accurately translated as “submission” and good Muslims know they must submit to Allah and his Sharia (Islamic law), above all other systems of law.

Essa noted Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion without mentioning that Muslims are forbidden from leaving the faith. Considered apostates, those leaving the faith are subject to severe punishment, up to and including death. And forced conversions have been a well-documented fact of history.

The Middle East and North Africa, once overwhelmingly Christian, were Islamized by a series of jihads starting with Muhammad, his successor caliphs and later by the Ottoman Turks.

She completely ignored the jihadi terrorist attacks conducted on U.S. soil: The 9/11 attack that murdered nearly 3,000 people, the Fort Hood massacre of 12 U.S. soldiers, the Pulse Nightclub attack that killed 49 Americans in Orlando, the San Bernardino attack that killed 14 at a Christmas party, the Chattanooga shooting that killed five at a Navy recruitment and reserve center, the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and left hundreds wounded, and the Chelsea, New York, pipe-bombing that injured 30 innocent Americans. Not to mention the countless terror attacks that have been foiled by the FBI.

Here are some other facts uncovered by TMLC’s Freedom of Information Act requests:

  • Novi school district has no guidelines for the selection of presenters for teacher-training events.
  • The school district did not fully vet Huda Essa before selecting her as a presenter and providing her with data about the school district and its students.
  • Essa was given access to data from student and teacher surveys.
  • The school district said it had no records that would indicate it ever conducted a factual analysis of Essa’s presentation.
  • The school district signed a contract on August 2, 2017, agreeing to pay Essa $5,000 for her two-day seminar on August 28 and 29, 2017.

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

Why Won’t The Press Call the NY Bomber An Islamist Terrorist?

Certain sections of the media have been reticent to identify Ahmad Khan Rahami’s Muslim identity in their coverage of his attack.

New York bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami, who stands accused of setting a pressure cooker bomb in Chelsea which injured 29 people on Saturday, has been charged in a criminal complaint. Rahami was arrested after a shootout on Monday.

He is also suspected of planting bombs in Seaside Park and Elizabeth, New Jersey.

After the shootout, police recovered a journal containing Islamist rhetoric and praise for known terrorist groups and ideologies.

“I looked for guidance came Sheikh Anwar, Brother Adnani, Dawla. Said it clearly – Attack the kuffar (non-believer) in the back yard,” Rahami wrote, referencing American Al-Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed in a drone strike in 2011 and the Islamic State’s spokesperson Abu Muhammad al Adnani who was killed in August. (Dawla is an honorific term for a ruler or senior statesman.)

Adnani issued frequent calls to Westerners to carry out terrorist attacks within their home countries.

Rahami also wrote, “The sounds of bombs will be heard in the streets.”

The federal complaint makes mention of Rahami’s support for Al-Qaeda, but not his support for the Islamic State. However, an official told Fox News that more charges and complaints would most likely be brought and the complaint may be included later on.

Pictures of the journal, which is covered in blood from the shootout, are available on Fox News.

Yet networks such as NBC downplayed or ignored Rahami’s faith. The Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor assessed coverage of the attack and found that many news outlets sought to downplay possible links to terrorism as a motivation.

ABC and CBS focused on the fact that Rahami’s family filed a suit a few years ago against the local mayor and police alleging they had been subjected to anti-Muslim harassment.

USA Today wrote a piece on Tuesday which did not mention Rahami’s Muslim faith.

There are several reasons why the press and the government might want to downplay the Islamist motivations behind a terrorist attack:

1To Avoid Mass Panic

The desire to avoid mass panic by presenting the incident as calmly as possible may be a factor. While some may say this is a laudable goal, it sacrifices the virtue of accuracy. Media are supposed to bring their audience the truth in order to help them make informed decisions about the world.

Also, it remains questionable if an incident such as this would cause mass panic in the American public.

2To Downplay the Influence of Islamist Terror Groups

The press and government may think that they are avoiding strengthening Islamist terrorist groups by not giving them the oxygen of publicity for their ideas. If an attack carried out in the name of Islamist terrorism is not widely reported as such, then, so says this logic, the attack will be less effective.

Yet, if we are unable to accurately discern the motives we will not be able to construct effective solutions. Misdiagnosing the problem can lead to misapplication of solutions and therefore it behooves the media to give all the information it can in their coverage.

3To Avoid Accusations of Islamophobia  

Our politically correct society is hyper-focused on avoiding accusations of Islamophobia. Highlighting the perpetrator’s Islamic faith may be perceived as causing undue distress to the Muslim community by putting them under the spotlight. No one wants to be a bigot or to be accused of bigotry. Neither do people want to make a community uncomfortable in an increasingly tense climate.

But the rationale is misguided. The fastest way to combat anti-Muslim bigotry is to deal with the menace of Islamist extremism and put a stop to it. Once that is done, relations between Muslims and non-Muslims will improve and anti-Muslim bigots will lose credibility.

Contrary to the goal of decreasing bigotry, obfuscating in this way actually increases it, since people feel there is a cover-up.

4Lack of Importance in the Eyes of the Media

News organizations may have actually convinced themselves that Rahami’s Muslim faith is not an important part of the story. However, if this is really their reason, they are simply wrong. As his own journal shows, his radical ideology was a major factor in motivating him to carry out the attack.

Failing to mention Rahami’s faith is not only poor journalism, it’s an omission of necessary facts.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Ahmed Rahami superimposed over his journal. (Photo: © House Homeland Security Committee)