After initially saying the Monday shootings that left six dead in Jersey City, N.J., were a random act, officials now disclose that one of the two attackers had published anti-Semitic posts online and had, in fact, targeted the site, the New York Times reports.
A senior law enforcement official said the attack on the kosher market is now being investigated as a hate crime, reported NBC. Read more…
A disrupter, say his partisans, a purposeful provocateur. C’mon, knock it off. You know that’s not what I’m getting at.
A raging narcissist, say his foes, a serial violator of decency and law. No, that’s not where I’m trying to go here, either. Read more…
Trump will reimpose steel and aluminum tariffs on Brazil and Argentina, opening new trade war fronts
President Trump announced tariffs, effective immediately, on all steel and aluminum shipped into the United States from Brazil and Argentina.
“Brazil and Argentina have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies. which is not good for our farmers,” Trump said in Monday morning tweet. He then directed his attention to the Federal Reserve, saying the central bank should “act so that countries, of which there are many, no longer take advantage of our strong dollar by further devaluing their currencies. This makes it very hard for our [manufacturers] & farmers to fairly export their goods. Lower Rates & Loosen — Fed!”
The surprise announcement came after it appeared as though the White House was preparing to dial back its adversarial trade approach in the lead up to next year’s election. The administration appeared close to a deal with House Democrats to revamp the North American Free Trade Agreement, and tensions with China had eased in recent weeks. Read more…
Donald Trump’s Republican congressional allies are throwing up different defenses against impeachment and hoping that something may sell. They say that he didn’t seek a corrupt political bargain with Ukraine, but that if he did, he failed, and the mere attempt is not impeachable. Or that it is not clear that he did it, because the evidence against him is unreliable “hearsay.”
It’s all been very confusing. But the larger story — the crucial constitutional story — is not the incoherence of the president’s defense. It is more that he and his party are exposing limits of impeachment as a response to the presidency of a demagogue.
The founders feared the demagogue, who figures prominently in the Federalist Papers as the politician who, possessing “perverted ambition,” pursues relentless self-aggrandizement “by the confusions of their country.” The last of the papers, Federalist No. 85, linked demagogy to its threat to the constitutional order — to the “despotism” that may be expected from the “victorious demagogue.” This “despotism” is achieved through systematic lying to the public, vilification of the opposition and, as James Fenimore Cooper wrote in an essay on demagogues, a claimed right to disregard “the Constitution and the laws” in pursuing what the demagogue judges to be the “interests of the people.”
Should the demagogue succeed in winning the presidency, impeachment in theory provides the fail-safe protection. And yet the demagogue’s political tool kit, it turns out, may be his most effective defense. It is a constitutional paradox: The very behaviors that necessitate impeachment supply the means for the demagogue to escape it. Read more…
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, of which I’m a member, released a report yesterday entitled “In the Name of Hate: Examining the Federal Government’s Role in Response to Hate Crimes.” The report appears to lend credence to the Left’s narrative that the U.S. is enduring a wave of white supremacist hate crimes spurred by the election of Donald Trump. The practical effect of the report is to malign supporters of the president as violent extremists and portray the nation as a whole as intrinsically racist. The proposed solution, unsurprisingly, is greater federal involvement in local law enforcement, increased classification of crimes as “hate crimes” subject to federal prosecution, and curtailment of First Amendment freedoms.
The report is grievously flawed.
As I noted earlier this year when Jussie Smollett captivated the nation with his valiant tale of fighting two Nigerian white supremacists without losing hold of his Subway sandwich, the actual statistics about hate crimes in this country confound the Left’s narrative. Last year we were told that an increase of 1,000 reported hate crimes in 2017 versus 2016 was evidence of a “wave of hate” sweeping the country. But as journalist Robby Soave pointed out at the Commission’s hearing, the increase is likely due to the fact that 1,000 more law enforcement agencies began reporting hate crimes to the FBI in 2017. If each new agency reported just one hate crime, that alone would account for the increase. Read more…
What makes an assault, act of vandalism or even a bombing a hate crime? In Minnesota, it depends on who you ask.
When a 54-year-old Shorewood man allegedly punched and elbowed Door Dash driver Haarun Galbayte repeatedly one morning last month, he is said to have punctuated his blows with racial slurs and calls for Galbayte to return to his home country of Somalia.
Yet despite the victim’s account of being the recipient of one of the oldest racist tropes in the book, police in the southwest metro suburb say they are not investigating the attack as a hate crime. That is to the dismay of groups like the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which last week brought attention to the case and demanded that it be counted as an example of a “bias-motivated” crime. Read more…
(JTA) — California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that provides grant funding to nonprofit organizations at risk from hate-inspired violence.
AB-1548, partially catalyzed by the deadly shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California, in April, establishes the California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which provides grants up to $200,000 for security guards, reinforced doors, alarm systems and other measures to protect “high risk” nonprofits.
The bill was introduced by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, the vice chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus. In a statement Friday, Gabriel welcomed the signing of the law, saying it “sends a powerful message that California stands firmly with those targeted by hate.” The Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California also welcomed the law.
“As a sponsor of AB 1584, the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California is grateful to Governor Newsom for his leadership on the California Nonprofit Security Grant Program and his commitment to funding the program in his 2019 budget,” said Julie Zeisler, JPAC’s executive director. Read more…
Last month, 12-year-old Amari Allen appeared on television to share how she had been brutalized by racist white boys at Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia. The sixth-grader, who is black, wept as she recalled how she was pinned down during recess, had her arms pulled behind her back and had a hand placed over her mouth so she couldn’t scream.
She said the boys cut off her dreadlocks, calling it “nappy.” By Monday, it was revealed that, following an investigation by Fairfax County Police, the girl admitted she had made it all up.
When the story first broke, left-wing politicians and activists raged. Rep. Rashida Tlaib published a personalized message on Twitter to the girl: “You see, Amari, you may not feel it now but you have a power that threatens their core. I can’t wait to watch you use it and thrive.” On Twitter, some even found a way to blame the Trump administration, noting ominously that Vice President Mike Pence’s wife, Karen, teaches art part-time at the school. Read more…
President Trump arrived in California on Tuesday night and declared that Los Angeles and San Francisco will “destroy themselves” if they don’t clear out homeless encampments that threaten to ruin the “prestige” of our “best highways, our best streets, our best entrances to buildings.” Trump has directed aides to launch a major crackdown on homelessness in California, which could involve removing people residing on California’s streets. It all seems to echo Trump’s attempted crackdowns on undocumented immigrants in liberal “sanctuary cities,” this time applied to another marginalized group in Democratic strongholds. The president often blames Democrats for sustained poverty and crime in major cities, and he’s used typically stigmatizing language to describe homelessness: “You take a look at what’s going on with San Francisco, it’s terrible,” he told Fox News recently. “. . . We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up. It’s inappropriate. Now, we have to take the people and do something.”
But the residents and leaders of these liberal cities are also intolerant of the unhoused. On the West Coast, criminalizing homelessness is already policy orthodoxy — even among those who are part of the vanguard of the anti-Trump resistance.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesman called on Trump to put “serious solutions, with real investment, on the table,” rather than just divisive rhetoric. But as mayor of San Francisco, Newsom pushed a successful ballot initiative to make it illegal to sit or lie on city sidewalks. State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who said this month that Trump should “back off,” co-sponsored a successful ballot initiative that bars camping in public spaces in his hometown. San Francisco Mayor London Breed said that “simply cracking down on homelessness without providing the housing people need is not a real solution.” Meanwhile, during her term, the city’s police department has increased the number of officers assigned to addressing homeless complaints from 24 to 58, while also raising the number of sanitation workers dedicated to sweeping encampments. Voters in these liberal cities not only continually pass these laws, they call on the police to enforce them. In 2017, San Francisco police were dispatched nearly 100,000 times for caller complaints of homeless concern. Read more…
Black-Owned Mississippi Restaurant Vandalized With Racist Graffiti
Black-Owned Mississippi Restaurant Vandalized With Racist Graffiti
The owner of a popular restaurant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, returned to her establishment earlier this week to a shock after discovering that the establishment had been trashed and vandalized.
According to the Clarion Ledger, Vikki Layne Terrell, owner of Vikki Layne’s Bar and Grill, found tables overturned in the dining room and kitchen, damaged equipment and wrote the n-word on a mirror and spray-painted “Get out” and “You not welcome” on the walls.
“I don’t know why anyone would do this,” Terrell told the news site. “I should not walk into the women’s room and see racial slurs on the walls.”
