Read it.

The “Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime” gathered this week in Memphis, Tennessee to discuss the dangers of crime across the US, as well as apparent solutions to the growing threat. The question is, was the meeting really about stopping crime, or, was it all about maintaining optics and making the public believe crime is going down when it’s not?

It’s difficult to say because public and media access to the event was strictly limited. In many states private meetings between public officials related to policy are illegal. However, in Tennessee the regulations are a bit more lax in terms of what constitutes a “meeting subject to law.”

The Tennessee Open Meetings Act defines a “meeting” as “the convening of a governing body of a public body for which a quorum is required to make a decision or to deliberate toward a decision.” A “governing body” is “any public body [consisting] of two or more members, with the authority to make decisions for or recommendations to a public body on policy or administration.”

In other words, a quorum is required, which means Tennessee was very carefully chosen by the Black Mayor’s Coalition (the vast majority of them Democrats) because it allowed them more legal room to hold closed door meetings. But why not include the press and the public in this discourse?

Perhaps they don’t want people seeing what goes on behind the curtain?

Read it.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) was confronted by a mourner during the wake for slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller Friday afternoon, after which a round of applause could be heard as she left the scene.

Newsbusters.

For some American Jews, the months since Oct. 7 have felt like a horror movie, as they watch, with increasing alarm, as our president—for whom many voted, and in whom many placed inviolable trust—seemed to, moment after crucial moment, throw Israel under the bus.

Earlier this month, a U.N. report from its Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General revealed what Israel has been saying for months, namely that Hamas committed the most vile sexual violence and torture on Oct. 7, and such treatment likely continues to be perpetrated on hostages. Experts from the U.N.—an organization that is routinely hostile to the Jewish state—actually found “clear and convincing information that some [hostages] have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”

In reaction, Joe Biden’s State Department chose to level the charge of sexual abuse—at Israel. Recently, IDF Brig.-Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi recounted his meeting with a senior State Department official—since identified as Jill Hutchings, director of the Office of Israeli and Palestinian Affairs—who proceeded to accuse Israel of “systematically sexually abusing Palestinian women.” The State Department’s claim was based on information from Hamas pushed by Al Jazeera—which ended up deleting the story after it proved to be fabricated.

Read it.

Baltimore leader Brandon Scott appeared on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show to assert that white conservatives “should be afraid” of the consequences of calling him the ‘DEI Mayor’ and that his “purpose in life” was to make them uncomfortable.

Watch the white people leave your city. Whom will you get to run it then?

Read it.

During a speech at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner in LA Sunday, Jill Biden suggested that not having gay porno books available in children’s libraries in schools is akin to Nazi Germany.

Biden’s wife stated “Rights are being stripped away. Freedoms are eroding. More and more state laws are being passed…Just last night, we had to fend off more than 50 anti-gay amendments that Republicans tried to force into the government funding bill… they served only one purpose: to spread hate and fear.”

She continued, “History teaches us that democracies don’t disappear overnight. They disappear slowly. Subtly. Silently.”

Well, Democrats certainly know about that….

Jonathan Turley.

Below is my column in the New York Post on reported plan of the Democratic National Committee and allied groups to try to block third-party candidates from the 2024 ballot. The contradiction is stunning as these groups raise money to “save democracy” by limiting democratic choice.

Read it.

The Chicago Board of Elections says it “mistakenly left out” 10,000 vote-by-mail ballots when tabulating the results for the Democratic primary race for Cook County state’s attorney that is currently separated by approximately 2,000 votes, the Daily Mail has reported.

Imagine that.

UPDATE: Election Fraud Never Happens. Election Fraud Never Happens. Election Fraud Never … Oh, Wait — Chicago?

Read it.

Let us examine the 2024 Democrat political narrative surrounding abortion, including efforts to leverage the 2022 Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that has roiled American politics for 50-plus years and counting.

Rolling Stone.

Long before Trump began leading in battleground-state polling — and years before he was a declared 2024 candidate — the ex-president and many of his influential allies were already busy plotting ways to tilt the election in his favor. These yearslong efforts, conducted both secretly and out in the open, have already yielded tangible results for Trump and the conservative election denier movement. These wide-ranging operations have alarmed the Democratic Party elite, who aren’t just worried about Biden’s sagging poll numbers. Numerous Democratic lawmakers, operatives, Biden campaign advisers, and administration officials tell Rolling Stone that if the president does ultimately beat Trump this November, the election will be exceedingly close.

Over the past year, Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies, and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, “all-hell-breaks-loose” scenarios. The preparations include planning for a contingency in which Biden’s margin of victory is so razor-thin that Trump and the GOP launch a tidal wave of legal challenges and political maneuvers to rerun his 2020 election strategy: declare victory anyways, and try to will it into existence.

The Law of Progressive Projection says that this indicates that the Left is intending to steal the election, and how it intends to do so.

Read it.

All carefully calculated not to touch rich Democrats and rich Democrat donors.

The Foundry.

I’m guessing they’re for it.

CBS News.

The thought of fewer New Yorkers is a blessing that everyone can get behind.

Now, if we could only make it mandatory in blue states….

Read it.

During a segment on the political sentiments of Black voters in Georgia, a reporter was shocked when a couple who were formerly Democrats declared that they are now going to vote for Donald Trump.

Read it.

I wonder whether French has given over pretending to be a conservative? Probably not.

Power Line.

Donald Trump has held a narrow but consistent lead in just about every poll for several months now—having never led in the polls in either the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. More significant is where this lead has come from. Trump has not improved his share of white vote at all; his improved standing has come from huge gains in minority votes, as John pointed out recently in drawing our attention to a Financial Times meta-analysis of polls going back several cycles.

Read it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has been a young darling of the Democratic Party, but residents of a Queens neighborhood in her district have become disenchanted with the lawlessness and illegal activity, including prostitution.

My, what a surprise….

You can’t say she doesn’t reflect her district.

Read it.

In 2022, Seattle’s City Council passed an ordinance mandating a minimum earnings floor for app-based food delivery drivers in the city. The law finally went into effect in January 2024, but so far the main result has been customers deleting their delivery apps en masse, food orders plummeting, and driver pay cratering.

The ordinance, part of a legislative package called “PayUp,” was passed under the banner of protecting gig workers. By setting a compensation floor for app-based delivery drivers based on miles driven and amount of time worked, the ordinance operates as a (supremely complicated) minimum wage.

The wage floor is based on labyrinthine calculations: the “engaged minutes” for drivers are multiplied by a “minimum wage equivalent rate,” which is then multiplied again by an “associated cost factor” and then multiplied yet again by an “associated time factor.” Next, this sum is added to the total of “engaged miles” of drivers, multiplied by the “standard mileage rate” and then multiplied once more by the “associated mileage factor.” (If you’re lost, don’t worry—the text of the ordinance itself literally does the math for you).

Read it.

Apparently making up lies about Republican-adjacent celebrities is a genuine career path these days.

Read it.

Fulton Country district attorney Fani Willis must fire her former lover Nathan Wade if she wants to continue to prosecute former president Donald Trump for election interference, a Georgia judge ruled on Friday.

Liberal lawyer Bradley P. Moss, Esq., who frequently appears on CNN, posted his reaction to the news on social media. “I am trying to imagine something scarier right now than being prosecuted by an angry Fani Willis,” he wrote.

Come on, dude. You must not be trying very hard. Here are 10 things that are definitely scarier than being prosecuted by an angry Fani Willis.

The Antiplanner.

“What drives Republican opposition to transit?” asks Governing magazine. I’ve often wondered the reverse of this question: Why do Democrats support transit?

Governing‘s implicit assumption is that transit is a good thing and anyone opposed must have some warped reason to question it. The magazine’s answer is that opposition to transit reflects an urban-rural divide and since Republicans are more likely to represent rural areas that get less or no transit service than urban areas, they have little reason to support it. This belief may be why the Federal Transit Administration is so eager to support rural transit as it is a way to co-opt more political support for transit in general.

Power Line.

As John notes, blue collar workers or minorities voting for policies that actually help them is an important trend, and a complement to Steve’s post about the border problem. As he showed, “immigration” helped to flip California from red to blue in presidential elections, so Democrats seek to repeat that trend “across the entire country.” That’s why Biden has brought in millions, and that’s a problem.

The possibility of becoming a public charge can cancel the prospect of legal immigrants becoming legitimate American citizens. On the other hand, for many illegals becoming a public charge is the goal. The ideal set-up is to get on welfare and work under the table for cash. That’s what enables the transfer of more than $63 billion to Mexico in 2023, a seven-percent hike from the previous year. In effect, the USA subsidizes the Mexican government.

Those on welfare have a problem becoming U.S. citizens and that’s what California attorney general Xavier Becerra was on about when he cited 10 million “immigrants” in California alone. It is illegal for foreign nationals and even registered aliens to vote, but California’s “motor voter” program registers false-documented illegals to vote when they get their driver’s license. Squads of politiqueros bribe, coerce and threaten the illegals to vote “a certain way,” code for Democrats.

Read it.

And, of course, guaranteeing to get Paul’s vote(s), which is the whole point.

Axios.

New data shows that Democrats’ longtime advantage with Black, Latino and Asian American voters has shrunk to its lowest point in more than 60 years — creating a massive vulnerability for President Biden and congressional Democrats.

Why it matters: One of the most loyal parts of the Democratic coalition is suddenly in danger. Black and Hispanic men could vote Republican in numbers not seen since President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in the 1950s.

The big picture: Latinos, the nation’s largest non-white group, still lean Democratic. But they’ve been shifting Republican over the last two decades, and are no longer the slam-dunk Democrats they were in 1960 when JFK ran for president.

PETA.

Ahead of the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, PETA sent a letter to Dr. Jill Biden today asking the first lady to modernize the celebration by replacing eggs with dyed Easter potatoes. PETA notes that an annual “White House Potato Roll” would please everyone who doesn’t eat these cholesterol bombs for health, cultural, religious, or environmental reasons or because they don’t want to support filthy factory farms, where hundreds of millions of hens are confined to cages smaller than a letter-size sheet of paper, unable to stretch even one wing. In starch contrast, potatoes are cheaper and healthier than eggs and leave birds in peace.

I rather suspect that everybody working for PETA is pro-abortion. I guess a bird’s egg is more worthy of respect than a human egg.

Of course, if ‘Dr.’ Jill Biden is in need of a vegetable to roll, Creepy Joe is right to hand.

Read it.

Joe Biden has claimed that his opponents are assaulting democracy on the basis of the January 6, 2020, buffoonish riot.

Aside from the fact that storming the Capitol Rotunda sometimes is apparently deemed permissible – as in the recent pro-Hamas takeover of it – or aside from the fact that disrupting a federal government proceeding is deemed exempt – as in the recent pro-Hamas throng that blocked the route of the presidential motorcade and thus delayed the State of the Union address to the nation by 26 minutes – who really is attacking democracy?

Read it.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul’s subway bag checks continue to make headlines as she has banned the National Guard from carrying rifles while in the subway system.

Well, that’s all right, then.

Perhaps they ought to wear smiley-face armbands, just to be sure.

Read it.

I guess they didn’t love Big Brother enough.

Read it.

The National Guard and the State Police are now patrolling the New York City subway system in an attempt to do something about the explosion of crime. As part of this, there are bag checks and new surveillance of all passengers. No legislation, no debate, just an edict from the mayor.

Read it.

An interactive slide show posted to the New York Times site on Wednesday, the day before President Biden’s State of the Union address (“How the State of the Union Became a Picture of Disunion”) relayed a slanted history of partisan scrapping at recent State of the Union addresses that suggested Republicans were almost wholly responsible for the turn to incivility.

The slideshow featured historical text by Peter Baker, White House correspondent.

Here’s the entry for George W. Bush suggesting nothing untoward had happened at a SOTU before at least 2007: “Even at the height of the Iraq war, decorum still reigned. In 2007, George W. Bush called it a “high privilege” to address the first female speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, even though she was a vocal critic of his war policy.”

But Baker completely skipped over the start of the present-day SOTU partisanship: The booing of George W. Bush by Democrats during his State of the Union addresses in both 2004 and 2005.

The Foundry.

I remember learning about democracy back in grammar school. We learned about it in the context of the American Revolution: Britain’s King George III may have ruled as a capricious monarch, but the intrepid Colonists fought for the then-novel concept of democratic self-government.

A cursory glance at Merriam-Webster is instructive. That venerable dictionary defines “democracy” as “government by the people” or, more elaborately, as “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.”

Simple enough. But someone ought to remind our nation’s liberal elites and the foot-soldier activists of today’s Democratic Party.

Read it.

The essence of progressivism is to obsess about trivialities and ignore the main issue.

Read it.

A controversial bill that would let illegal immigrants receive the same kind of homebuyer assistance as U.S. citizens has advanced in the California state legislature, drawing criticism from those who object to granting perks to people who break the law by entering the country illegally.

Funny how that works.

Power Line.

Politico reports that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (a Democrat, of course) is accelerating an investigation that may lead to prosecutions of people close to President Trump’s 2020 campaign. Which is odd on its face, since the events that are the basis for the investigation happened more than three years ago. Why the sudden hurry? Obviously, Democrats see that Joe Biden is losing, and are throwing the kitchen sink at Trump.

Tim Graham.

The pro-Biden media perpetually pat themselves on the back. They are a gift to the people, the essence of democracy, as in, “We inform the voters and then we expect the voters to make smart choices” (the ones we recommend). But when journalists lose, they have a disturbing tendency to argue democracy lost.

On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously disapproved of the Left’s latest desperate attempt to rip Donald Trump’s name off the ballot, pushed by blue states, among them Colorado and Illinois. Their novel theory was that the 14th Amendment contains Civil War-era verbiage about keeping “insurrectionists” off the ballot.

To the average American, it might seem odd that it’s somehow “protecting democracy” to remove the Republican front-runner’s name from the ballot. That looks like throwing large obstacles in the way of democracy, not protecting it.

Read it.

At least we’re finding out which judges are willing to break the law in pursuit of a partisan agenda.

The American Mind.

“Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,” said Dostoyevsky, and indeed, we’ve become so accustomed to the manipulation of our elections that it’s become almost the norm. But the Democrats have already far exceeded even their previous serious misdeeds. Conservative complaints about this tend to be dismissed as conspiracy-mongering or poor sportsmanship. But to pretend that the Democrats’ actions since November 2020 are just part of the rough-and-tumble of politics is to ignore a mountain of evidence staring us in the face.

There is nothing normal about the presidential election of 2024—nor should we attempt to normalize it, because the Democrats’ behavior has been a tragedy for American democracy. As Matt Taibbi put it in an outstanding article analyzing recent moves from the Democrats, the “2024 presidential race increasingly looks like it will be decided by lawyers, not voters, as Democrats unveil plans for America’s first lawfare election.”

If anything, Taibbi understates the case. Democratic election interference has been so pervasive that it is hard to see how we could have an election that objective outside observers would consider free and fair. This is a grave and serious accusation to level and one which holds frightening implications for the future of American democracy. But it does us no good to hide from the truth.

New York Times.

With the battle for House control likely to run through New York, Democrats in the State Legislature voted down a plan drawn by a bipartisan commission.

Yeah, that sounds like Democrats.

Never forget that ‘gerrymandering’, like the corrupt urban political machine, was invented by Democrats.

UPDATE: Proposed NY Congressional Map Could Tip House to Dems  Which is,  of course, why they’re doing it. Democrats never let mere democracy get in the way of seizing and retaining power.

The Foundry.

Trump was indicted by Bragg on April 4, 2023, on 34 felony counts of allegedly falsifying business records related to his alleged payments of “hush money” to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, known by her stage name of Stormy Daniels, to conceal an alleged extramarital affair with her.

On Monday, following Trump’s frequent criticism of the case and of Bragg, personally, the New York County District Attorney’s Office filed a notice of intent to bring a motion to prohibit Trump from making “extrajudicial statements” regarding the case, commonly known as a “gag order.”

Everybody has Freedom of Speech … except white men that the Woke don’t like.

Read it.

It’s been nearly four months since a judge tossed out the results of a Democratic mayoral primary in Connecticut’s largest city due to allegations of ballot stuffing, sending voters repeatedly back to the polls and thrusting Bridgeport into an unflattering national spotlight.

Many frustrated local voters say they just want it to be over with.

A do-over general election on Tuesday will mark the fourth time registered Democrats have voted for the city’s next mayor, after the judge voided the initial primary over surveillance footage showing a supporter of incumbent Mayor Joe Ganim putting multiple absentee ballots into a drop box.

For those counting, there have now been two primaries and one general election, which didn’t count.

Democrats invented and almost monopolized the classic urban political machine, from Tammany in New York to Daley in Chicago. When it comes to graft and crooked elections, Democrats lead the field.

Babylon Bee.

A polarizing TV talk show sought to bring the Democratic Party back to its foundational roots this week, as John Oliver attempted to purchase a black man.

Read it.

Nancy Pelosi has once again floated the tired conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is controlled by Vladimir Putin, and that the Russian leader is blackmailing Trump with “something financial.”

The Verge.

President Biden’s administration plans to pull back on strict new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that would have forced US automakers to turn EVs into their main business by 2032. That’s according to The New York Times, which wrote yesterday that industry players had moved the administration to give them more time to bring down EV costs, and for a nationwide charging infrastructure to be more fully built out.

The Times writes that labor leaders pressured Biden to give them more time to extend union membership to those working in new US EV plants. As the article notes, labor union support is crucial as Biden faces re-election where he’s straddling a dire climate situation and attacks from candidate and former President Donald Trump.

Climate change is our most urgent crisis! Unless it interferes with union organizing, of course.

Power Line.

California’s Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act requires voter approval for all new taxes passed by the legislature and two-thirds voter approval for all new special tax increases. The Act also demands clear definitions of what is a tax or a fee, along with truthful descriptions of new tax proposals. Before any tax or fee is enacted, politicians must clearly outline how the revenues would be spent, and so on.  The measure has qualified for the November 5 ballot but Gov. Gavin Newsom and former governor Jerry Brown want the state supreme court to take the Act off the ballot.

…

In runs for the presidency in 1976, 1980 and 1992, Jerry Brown came up a loser, and in 1982 Brown lost a Senate race to Republican Pete Wilson, mayor of San Diego. On the other hand, Brown did succeed in transforming the Golden State from a place people wanted to live to a place people want to leave.

Q. How can you distinguish Democrats from ordinary people?

A. They hate democracy and undercut it at every opportunity.

Read it.

As a native son, it is hard to watch this wonderful city undermined by Johnson and radical allies in the city council. Some initiatives like reparations and state-funded grocery stores will cost money but will not impose nearly the costs of Johnson’s dismal record on crime and taxes.

However, this week saw a particularly confusing moment when, after calling the anti-crime program ShotSpotter “racist,” Johnson asked the company to extend its contract beyond the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So Johnson will put an end to this supposedly racist program but only after the Democratic luminaries (and the most violent summer months) have passed.

Newsbusters.

When the far-left protests outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices, the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) think that’s freedom of speech in action. The Washington Post published a puff piece on a woman disturbing the peace outside Brett Kavanaugh’s home: “We’re about to get doomsday, so I’m not going to be civil to that man at all.” The Trump era made disturbing conservative dinners at restaurants a tactic that’s “not going away.”

…

Under a photo of women pouring out plastic gallon jugs with red liquid in it, the caption reads: “Hazami Barmada (left), holding her one-year-old son, Kayden, and Fatima Showkatian pour fake blood in front of a vehicle carrying Secretary of State Antony Blinken as it arrives at Blinken’s home in McLean, Virginia, Feb. 14, 2024.”

Read it.

One survey, the Elite, included only respondents with postgraduate degrees, household incomes above $150,000 and residents in a ZIP code with more than 10,000 people per square mile. Another, Ivy League graduates, included adults who attended Ivy League or other selective private colleges such as Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, or Stanford.

You probably won’t be surprised that the large majority of this Elite feels economically well off. Nor, if you’ve kept up with recent changes in party identification, will you be much surprised that 73 percent of these elites identify as Democrats and only 14 percent as Republicans.

What is surprising is the extent to which this American overclass would deprive its fellow citizens of things they have taken for granted. Half of these groups, 47 percent of Elites and 55 percent of Ivies, say the United States provides people with “too much individual freedom.”

Read it.

Read it.

Remember the New Jersey “Switcheroo” way back in 2002, when Democrats turned a sure loss of a Senate seat into a win by swapping out their losing candidate at the last minute, overriding a state law that said it was too late in the cycle for such a switch?

Bet on Democrats to pull the same “switcheroo,” but at an even higher level – and even later than you expect – possibly at but more likely about two weeks after their convention, giving us a “September Surprise.” Joe Biden is a placeholder quelling current competition for a much better bet – Michelle Obama – just in time to turn a sure loss in 2024 into a surprise potential victory.

“Tosh!” you say. “She’s said she hates politics, she doesn’t want to run.” Ah, she made every one of those statements before she got to see Biden redefining the job and expectations for the presidency. Now she knows that when the media wants a president in place, a four-day workweek, consisting of one social obligation per day, and everything else delegated, will suffice. And that’s without a highly experienced First Gentleman.

Read it.

Remember when Democrats advocated for working-class Americans?

No, I don’t. They’ve never done that in my lifetime.

My maternal relatives were all Irish Catholic Democrats in decades past. They were deeply conservative in their personal lives and social views, and concurrently deeply committed to the party of John F. Kennedy and Tip O’Neill.

Those days now seem like an era of antiquity compared to the radical, even Marxist, Democratic Party of the 2020s. The Biden-Harris Democrats push secular humanist ideology while acting fully in concert with the economic ruling class of America, all at the cavalier expense of middle- and lower-income citizens.